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Video: The ghost of the bagpiper and other legends of Edinburgh Castle that frighten visitors
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Under the Royal Mile, the streets that connect Edinburgh Castle with Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, a network of underground tunnels has been discovered. There are many rumors, legends and chilling stories among the people around these ancient passages. For example, about a boy who disappeared without a trace in the labyrinths of the dungeon.
According to statistics, the capital of Scotland, Edinburgh is the second most visited city in the UK after London, and millions of people from all over the world come here to see its many World Heritage Sites, beautiful music festivals, historical reenactments. But the most visited object of Edinburgh, of course, is recognized as this ancient castle with its rich history, legends of heroic battles and eerie stories of ghosts, where fiction and reality are so closely intertwined that you cannot tell what to believe and what not.
A castle on a volcano everyone dreamed of owning
There are not many places on our planet whose history would be as colorful, ancient and rich as the history of Edinburgh Palace. This castle is located at the top of the volcanic rock of Castle Rock, which was formed 350 million years ago. In the Bronze Age, there was already a settlement here: the tools of this period found by archaeologists date back to 850 BC. The location of this place, which in ancient times was called "rocky", was so convenient that people settled here constantly for many centuries.
By the time the castle was first officially mentioned in historical literature, its name and the rock itself were already shrouded in myths and legends.
The first mythical story is related to the pages of the medieval Welsh epic poem Gododdin. According to this valuable literature dating back to around the 7th century AD, a fortress called "Castle of the Virgins" served as a sanctuary for nine beauties, one of whom was the powerful sorceress Morgan le Fay, the devoted protector of King Arthur.
However, the imposing building that we can see today officially dates back to the 12th century, when, according to historical documents, David I, the son of St Margaret of Scotland, built a castle on Castle Rock in memory of his mother. The woman died of grief immediately after learning that her husband had been killed, so the construction of the castle was a very symbolic act.
Towards the end of the 12th century, tensions between England and Scotland had increased, and it seems that monarchs and nobles almost always focused on Edinburgh and the city's castle. Whoever owned it controlled the city of Edinburgh, and in fact the whole of Scotland. Therefore, over time, the castle has earned the right to be called "the defender of the nation."
Throughout its history, the building has often been sieged - it has been attacked and invaded two dozen times more often than any other castle in the world.
In 1650, the leader of the English Revolution, Oliver Cromwell, managed to capture the castle by killing Charles I, the last Scottish monarch to sit on the throne in Edinburgh. Since then, the castle has lost its status. Instead of being the protector of the nation, he turned into a prison where thousands of prisoners of war and political prisoners of the Seven Years War, the American Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars were held.
The Legends of the Bagpiper Ghost
It happened on one August night several centuries ago. A red-haired, freckled, bony boy in shabby boots and a plaid kilt inherited from his father, and with bagpipes tied around his thin body, on behalf of adults, went down the secret tunnel of the castle to see where he was leading.
The teen was told to enter the tunnel at the top of the Royal Mile and walk until the underground corridor ended. Once deep underground, he had to go and play a melody so that outside he could hear where he was. It was assumed that the boy would come out from the other side of the castle (where exactly it was not known), and his progress would be marked by people outside, focusing on the sounds of bagpipes.
At first everything went according to plan. The boy went down into the tunnel, and after a while the music began to play. Halfway along the Royal Mile, however, the bagpipes suddenly fell silent and there was a deathly silence.
The adults called the boy by name, but no one answered from the ground. They ran into the tunnel, but did not dare to go through it completely, and there was no one on the section that they combed. The boy disappeared without a trace, and no one knew why.
Hundreds of years have passed since then, and every year in August, Edinburgh hosts the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo in memory of this sad and terrible story. At the very end of it, after all the traditional parades of the Scottish regiment in kilts and all the songs performed by hundreds of drummers and pipers, a symbolic finale takes place. One of the pipers, standing apart from the others on the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle, illuminated by illumination, plays a sad melody.
Another legend of this castle is also associated with the music of bagpipes. For many years there were rumors that people who were in the chambers of the castle periodically heard the sounds of this instrument, which seemed to come from nowhere.
Some local residents also claim to have heard bagpipes while walking along the Royal Mile. Local legend has it that this is the crying song of a lost soul, whose ghost, forever wandering through the tunnels under the city, continues to play the bagpipes in search of a way out.
By the way, the Czech town of Jihlava is also known for its ancient underground passages and, of course, they are also legendary.
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