ELGIN, a royal burgh, the co. t. of Elgin or Morayshire, and a station on the Inver ness and Aberdeen Junction railway, situated on the right bank of the river Lossie, about 5 m. from the sea. Pop. '71, 7,339. E. joins with Banff, Peterhead, Inverury, Cullen, and Kiutore, in returning a member to parliament. It was probably a royal burgh so early as the reign of king David I. (1124-53), and had its privileges confirmed by several of his successors. Its trade is now almost wholly retail. E. has 12 yearly fairs, and a weekly grain market. It has a parish church, which is collegiate, 2 free churches, 2 United Presbyterian churches, 1 Baptist church, 1 Original Secession, 1 Independent, 1 Episcopal, and 1 Roman Catholic; with 10 schools. Gray's hospital for the sick poor, built and endowed from a bequest of £20,000 by the late Dr. Alex ander Gray, of Bengal, and opened in 1819, with a lunatic asylum attached, now the Elgin district asylum; and the Elgin or Anderson's institution for the support of old age and the education of youth, built and opened 1831-33, on the foundation of £7C,000 bequeathed by the late maj.gen. Anderson, H.E I.C.S.—are the principal of many public and private charities. E. is chiefly remarkable for the beauty of its situa tion, lying placidly in a gentle curve of the Lossie, for the salubrity if its climate, and for its history as the see of the bishop of Moray. Its appearance, about 60 years ago, was that of a little cathedral city, with an antique fashion of building, and with "a certain solemn drowsy air about the town and its inhabitants." That appearance is fast giving way to that of a gay modern county town, surrounded by elegant villas.
The old town was partially burned in 1390 by the notorious Wolf of Badenoch (Alex ander Stewart, earl of Buchan); in 1402, by Alexander, the son of the lord of the Isles; and in 1452, by the earl of Huntly—this last calamity originating the proverb, "Half done, as Elgin was burned." Its once magnificent cathedral church, partly of early English and partly of middle-pointed architecture, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, was begun by bishop Andrew Moray in 1224, on the transference of the see from Spynie; was injured by fire in 1270; was nearly burned down by the Wolf of Badenoch in 1390; was restored under bishops Bur, Spyny, Innes, and Leighton (1390-1424); and from subsequent accident and dilapidation is now a mere ruin. The other religi ous buildings of the olden time were the church of St. Giles, a picturesque example of our old parish churches, replaced 1826-28 by the modern less interesting structure; the monastery of the Black Friars, long since demolished; the convent of the Gray Friars, the walls of whose church remain; the hospital of the liaison Dieu, on the site of which is Anderson's institution; the Leper house, still commemorated by the grounds called the Leper lands; and the chapel of St. Mary of the castle, which gave name to the Lady hill and Lady well on the w. of the town. The castle itself, styled of old the manor of Elgin, whose ruins, surmounted by an obelisk—erected to the memory of George, fifth and last duke of Gordon—crowned the Lady hill, was a resi dence of the earls of Moray, for some time superiors of the burgh under our Scottish kings.