DUNSTAFFNAGE, a castle situated in the island of Skie, said to have been founded by Ewin a Pictish monarch, contemporary with Julius Cæsar, naming it after himself, Evonum. In fact, the founder is unknown; but it is certainly of great antiquity, and the first seat of the Pictish and Scottish princes. In this place was long preserved the famous stone the Palladium of North Britain; brought, says legend, out of Spain, where it was first used as a seat of justice by Gathelus, coeval with Moses. It continued here as the coronation-chair till the reign of Kenneth II. who removed it to Scone, in order to secure his reign; for according to the inscription,
Ni fallat fatum, Sæti quæcunq; locatum
Invenient lapidem, regnare tenentur ibidem.
The castle is square; the inside only 87 feet; partly ruinous, partly habitable. At three of the corners are round towers; one of them projects very little. The entrance is towards the sea at present by a staircase, in old times probably by a draw-bridge, which fell from a little gate-way. The masonry appears very ancient; the tops battlemented. This pile is seated on a rock, whose sides have been pared to render it precipitous, and to make it conform to the shape of the castle.
In 1307, this castle was possessed by Alexander Macdougall lord of Argyle, a friend to the English; but was that year reduced by Robert Bruce, when Macdougall sued for peace with that prince, and was received into favour.
We find, about the year 1455, this to have been a residence of the lords of the isles; for here James last earl of Douglas, after his defeat in Annandale, fled to Donald, the regulus of the time, and prevailed on him to take arms and carry on a plundering war against his monarch James II.
At a small distance from the castle is a ruined chapel, once an elegant building; and at one end an inclosure, a family-cemetery. Opposite to these is a high precipice, ending abrupt and turning suddenly toward the south-east. A person concealed in the recesses of the rock, a little beyond the angle, surprises friends stationed at some distance beneath the precipice, with a very remarkable echo of any word, or even sentence, he pronounces; which reaches the last distinct and unbroken. The repetition is single, but remarkably clear.