Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1901 — CARNEGIES’S CASTLE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

CARNEGIES’S CASTLE.

; Andrew Carnegie is continuing In Scotland the munificent generosity to the aid of education as he began in the United States. We were told recently of his donation of $500,000 to establish branch libraries in Glasgow upon the same plan for which he gave $3,000,000 to Greater New York. Last week came the news of his gift of $10,000,000 to establish free scholarships in the historic Scotch universities for z poor young Scotchmen. Of course, this is a materialistic age, and no one, on this side of the Atlantic at least, pays any attention to superstititions. But there are folks in Scotland (no Insinuation is meant against the Scotch, but their old legends have greater influence than in this new country, especially among the folk on the country side) —who believe that by these donations, Andrew Carnegie will lift the curse from Skibo Castle, the old estate which he has purchased as his home In the Highlands. Every one north of the Tweed is cognizant of the fact that a bloodcurdling curse rests upon Skibo Castle, and the Scots are asking, whether this curse will work against the American owner in the same way that the curse pronounced against the third Ixird Byron (who made a drinking cup of the skull of one of the old Abbots of Newstead Abbey),-continued to blight not only all the subsequent owners and occupants of Newstead Abbey, including the poet Lord Byron, until the late Colonel Webb a few years ago found the long lost drinking cup in an old curiosity shop in London, and by restoring it to the Abbot’s tomb at Newstead put an end to the curse that rested on the place. The ban resting upon Skibo Castle dates from the early part of the eighteenth century, when by some foul wrong the Grays, who had owned the castld for several hundred years, were deprived of their ancestral possessions

by the family of Doul. Misfortune overtook the latter, and since that time the curse has been fulfilled in this that no family has possessed Skibo for more than one generation. It has passed through many hands, including the Mackays, the Gordons, the Dempsters and the Chirnsldes, illluck pursuing them all, until the place was acquired by Andrew Carnegie, who apparently is not superstitious, as ho assured his tenants and neighbors the other day that he intended Skibo to be the home of bls family "for many generations.” He is very popular in the district by reason of the money he has brought into the country, and is known there as "Skibo,” in the same way as most other territorial magnates are known

by the name of their land, rather than by their patronymic.

SKIBO CASTLE—ANDREW CARNEGIE'S SCOTTISH BEAT.