库克斯顿城堡

城堡，是欧洲典型的建筑之一，每个城堡都有一个美丽的传说或是一段历史。从本期开始，我们将推出“城堡之旅”，带各位读者去浏览、观赏欧洲各地的城堡，开始一段文化与历史的旅途！

There is perhaps no character throughout the whole range of Scottish history that so completely awakens the enthusiasm of Scotsmen as Mary, Queen of Scots. The tale of her gay youth, her happy early years, the heavy clouds of misfortune which encompassed her middle life and deepened into the darkest misery（痛苦）, until finally completed by the thrilling horror of her tragic end―all form a life―drama which cannot fail to move the most stolid（冷漠的） hearer to pity. This is not the place to narrate the oft-told tale; but as marking some of the great epochs（时期） in her eventful life, attention may be directed to some of the Castles which are inseparably associated with her name. The first of these is Crookston Castle, where she spent her honey-moon with Henry, Lord Darnley.

Three miles southeast from Paisley, on the Glasgow Road, there stands the ancient Castle of Crookston, which, though seldom mentioned in connection with Queen Mary, has still a most pathetic（可悲的） relation to her history. The green lane, flanked with hawthorn（山楂树） hedges, which strikes off the main road at Hillington Bar, leads up a gentle ascent for about half a mile, bringing the traveller, somewhat unexpectedly, at once upon the Castle. Ere reaching this altitude, however, he must cross the course of the extinct Glasgow and Ardrossan Canal (now a railway line), and pass the entrance to Hawkhead, one of the seats of the Earl of Glasgow. Though thus reached by an easy slope, and quite free from the appearance of any precipitous elevation, the position of the Castle’s most commanding. Upon three sides―south, east and west―the fertile fields of Renfrewshire are stretched at the base of the hill; while towards the north the Bowling Braes stand forth in a bold（突出的） outline, their base being laved by the waters of the Clyde. Southwards no eminence is visible, save the dim figure of Neilston Pad in the distance; while the intervening space is filled with “gentle slopes and groves between,” giving evidence of a richly fertile soil, and an industrious agricultural population. The gleaming silver line which meanders（蜿蜒流动） through the plain marks the course of the White Cart as it “rins rowin’ to the sea”; and near the spot where the Castle stands it receives the tributary water of the little rivulet, called the Levern.

Though never of great extent the Castle seems to have been compactly built, and designed in a lawless age to withstand a powerful enemy. Its position as a look-out station has been admirably chosen; and so commanding is the site that a few retainers might have held a considerable force at bay（不让……逼近） with comparative ease. The first Castle was probably built by Robert de Croc, apparently a scion of a Norman family, who was proprietor of the estate about 1190, and whose name survives in a corrupted form as “Crookstoun”. In 1330 the estate was purchased by Sir Alan Stewart, a kinsman of the Stuarts, Seigneurs of D’Aubigny, famous in the history of France and Scotland. Sir Alan, in 1361, granted the Castle and estate to Sir 3, Stewart of Darnley; and thus they ultimately came into the possession of Henry, Lord Daruley (1546~1567), centuries afterwards, with whom we have to deal.