It's not Hollywood - it's Holyrood

America has Hollywood - a very new place.
Scotland has Holyrood - a very ancient place.
Holyrood is a small area in Edinburgh, where now stands the beautiful Royal Holyrood Palace and  the ruins of Holyrood Abbey.
It is at one end of the Royal Mile. Edinburgh Castle is at the other end.
Sadly Holyrood now also houses the extremely ugly new Scottish Parliament buildings.
But
What does Holyrood mean?
Well - being Scotland there is an old legend.
About 1166  - just 100 years after '1066 and all that'  when William the Conqueror and his Normans invaded England - King David the first ruled in Scotland.
He liked to hunt in the Royal Forest, part of which was the area now called Holyrood and the rest was the area now called The Queens park (Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags)
In Scotland, hunting on The Sabbath is a no-no. The Sabbath is The Lord's day.
But - one Sunday - King David sneaked out after a stag.
He found one, but it turned out to be no ordinary stag. It was white and it had a cross sticking out of it's forehead!
Now I know what I would think if my husband came back from hunting talking about white stags and crosses but things must have been different then.
In Scotland  - a cross used to be called a rood.
King David took it as a holy sign that he should not have been hunting on The Sabbath.
To assuage his guilt he commanded that an abbey be built at the place where he saw the stag  with it's Holy Cross. Hence the name Holy Rood - Holyrood
And - so the legend goes one -
The Rood - the miraculous cross from the stag- was preserved there on the high altar until about 1346 when someone nicked it.
Perhaps Hollywood should make a film about Holyrood