YESTER HOUSE, GIFFORD

Yester House has been the seat of the Marquess of Tweeddale ever since it was built, and the ground on which it stands
has belonged to his forbears since the twelfth century.
A considerable legend has grown up around the old castle of Yester and the underground room known as the Goblin Hall.
The legend was immortalised by Sir Walter Scott in the section of Marmion entitled The Host's Tale. In this canto Alexander III of Scotland visits the wizard,
Sir Hugo de Gifford, in the hall he is supposed to have built in one night with the help of goblins, to ask him the outcome of the battle he is
about to fight with the Danes. Sir Hugo sends him to fight the Phantom Knight at the foot of Redstone Rig.
The King overthrows the Phantom who prophesies victory. Sir Hugo is also supposed to have picked a wild pear off a tree on the way
to the church and given it to his daughter Marion as a dowry on her marriage to Sir David Broun of Colstoun.
This pear is preserved to this day, which seems magical enough, and enshrines the luck of the Broun-Lindsays of Colstoun, Sir David's descendants.
A family tradition of the Hays says that Sir Hugo also laid a curse on the castle, by which any of his descendants to dig there for treasure, will die.
It is true that George, Earl of Gifford, son of the 8th Marquess, was mortally injured while excavating the ruins.
Luckily we have more to go on than legend. A Charter of William the Lion, dated 1160, gives "The Lands of Yestrith that Gamel held,
by the bounds that he held them " to Hugh Gifford. This Charter refers to an earlier one granted by Malcolm IV but this has been lost.