The ‘Prentice’s Pillar at Roslin

Early in the nineteenth century visitors to Roslin Chapel were shown round by an old woman, Annie Wilson, who recited its legends in a sing-song without a pause. She told them the barons of Roslin were buried in armour and that the chapel always seemed to be on fire the night before one of them was to die. Her favourite was the Apprentice Pillar: the master mason went to Rome for a design, his apprentice made and finished the pillar while he was away, and the master killed him with a hammer in a rage. Carved heads of the apprentice, his weeping mother and the master are still pointed out.