"He threw the bridegroom from the nuptial bed,
Into the chimney did so his rival maul,
His bruised bones ne'er were cured but by the fall."
The "fall" referred to by this scurrilous lampoon, written by Sir William Hamilton, a bitter enemy of Lord Stair, was the accident by which Dunbar of Baldoon met his death. While riding from Leith to Holyrood on March 27, 1682, his horse fell with him. His injuries proved fatal, and he died next day, and was buried in Holyrood Chapel.
Of the other actors in the tragedy there is little to tell. That great and able lawyer, Viscount Stair, has left behind him permanent record of the ability that brought him his title. For fifty years his wife and he lived together, and history tells us that "they were tenderly attached to the last." A witty, brilliant, worldly woman, she had the power of keeping the love of her husband fresh and living to the very end. She it was who is reported by a local historian, whose standard possibly may not have been of the very highest, to have made "one of the best puns extant." "Bluidy Clavers" was Sheriff of Wigtown in her day, and in her presence he dared to inveigh against one who was still the idol of Presbyterian Whigs, John Knox.
"Why are you so severe on the character of John Knox?" asked the Lady Stair. "You are both reformers: he gained his point by clavers; you attempt to gain yours by knocks."
When the lady died, in the year 1692, she left an order regarding the disposal of her body which entirely confirmed the popular belief that, early in life, she had bargained with the Evil One for the worldly success of herself and her descendants, and had paid her soul as price.
She asked that her body might not be buried underground, but that the coffin containing her should be stood upright in the family vault of Kirkliston. While she remained so placed, she said, the Dalrymples should flourish. But woe betide the line when that coffin should be moved and laid on common earth as those of common people. Her orders were carried out. Does she, a dismal sentry, keep guard there still? And what sort of a Purgatory has her poor soul had to pass through to atone for the cruel murder of the child she bore?