AULD REEKIE
“Auld Reekie,” as it is fondly called, still raises its smokiest
chimneys and most weathered walls along the “hoary ridge of ancient
town” that culminates in the Castle Rock, looking across a long central
line of gardens to the farther swell of land on which stands the New
Town of Scott’s day. But New Town now seems a misnomer, since the
cramped site of the old city, itself much sweetened and aerated by
innovations, is surrounded by newer towns expanding in other directions.
Southwards, of late years, Edinburgh has grown more rapidly up to the
foot of the hills that here edge the suburbs of Newington, Grange, and
Morningside. Westwards she spreads out towards Corstorphine Hill and
Craiglockhart. On the east her progress is barred by the mass of
Arthur’s Seat, but round the base of this creep rows of tall houses that
will soon connect her with Portobello, that minor Margate of the
capital, now comprised within her municipal boundaries. Northwards, she
goes on “flinging her white arms to the sea,” which she almost touches
at Granton and Trinity; and a long unlovely street leads to the Piræus
of this modern Athens, Leith, still stiffly standing aloof in civic
independence. Including Leith, which refuses to be included, the
Scottish metropolis began the century with a population not far short of
400,000.
On high in the midst of these modern settings, the charms of Old
Edinburgh are thrown into becoming relief, as the medley smartness of
Princes Street is enhanced by its facing the grim backs of the High
Street “lands.” Ruskin and other critics have said hard things of the
New Town’s architects; but their strictures do not go without question.
What, at all events, must strike strangers is an imposing solidity of
the modern buildings, whether tall “stairs”--_Anglicé_ flats--or roomy
private houses, nearly all built of a grey stone that seems in keeping
with the atmosphere; and this not only in the central streets and
squares, but in outer suburbs, innocent of brick and stucco. If a too
classical regularity has been aimed at, this is tempered by the
unevenness of the ground, breaking up the “draughty parallelograms,”
giving vistas into the open country, and at night such long panoramas of
glittering lights displayed on slopes and crests. The place, says R. L.
Stevenson, who has so well caught the picturesque points of his native
city, “is full of theatre tricks in the way of scenery.... You turn a
corner, and there is the sun going down into the Highland hills. You
look down an alley, and see ships tacking for the Baltic.” And if the
city fathers have been ill advised in the past, its municipality may
claim the credit of being first in the kingdom to take powers for
disinfecting it against the plague of mendacious and hideous
advertisements that are too much allowed to pock our highways and
byways.
[Illustration: EDINBURGH FROM “REST AND BE THANKFUL”]
A peculiar feature of the city is its “Bridges,” by which certain
streets span others at different levels, physically and socially. From
the unique Dean Bridge, in the heart of the West End, one overlooks what
might be taken for a Highland glen but for the lines of mansions that
edge it above. When I came to Edinburgh as a homesick little schoolboy,
appalled by the “boundless continuity” of street, I devoted my first
Saturday freedom to an attempt at discovering the open country. This was
happily before the days of schoolboys being driven and drilled to play.
Striking the Water of Leith at Stockbridge, I turned along the path
leading into this glen that might well satisfy desires for a green
solitude. But on reaching the village of Dean, embedded below the
bridge, I climbed up to find myself beside the dome of St. George’s
Church, lost deeper than ever in that bewildering city. Still, a little
trimmed and tamed, an oasis of wooded bank shuts in the rushing stream,
now purified and stocked with trout, where we were content to catch
loaches and sticklebacks.
What a loss to this city was the classically-minded Gothicism or
carelessness through which came to be rooted up so many noble trees that
once dotted the parks of Drumsheugh and Bellevue! But Edinburgh has been
well endowed afresh with open spaces and shrubberies, those that
separate the blocks of the New Town mainly private joint-stock
paradises, yet serving for public amenity. The Old Town is enclosed
between the noble stretch of the Princes Street Gardens on the north,
and on the south the open Meadows, with its “Philosopher’s Walk” of
Dugald Stewart’s and Playfair’s days, rising into the Bruntsfield Links.
Then the city is almost ringed about by parks, more than one of them
including grand features of natural scenery. Philadelphia is the only
city I know which has such wild scenes at her very doors, in her case
collected together in the Fairmount Park, where miles of hill and river
landscape have been left almost untouched among the streets and suburbs,
yet boasting no points so noble as the head of Arthur’s Seat, with its
girdle of crags, screes, and lakes.
This miniature Ben, imposing as it looks, is under 1000 feet high, and
easily climbed. Those almost past their climbing days may seek Blackford
Hill on the south side, where Scott tells us that he bird’s-nested as a
truant boy, and speaks of it as at a later day brought under
cultivation; but it has relapsed again to its native wildness, laid out
as a rough park and as site for the squat domes of the new Observatory.
From this eminence one gets Marmion’s view of the city, now grown up to
its foot, shut in between Arthur’s Seat and the wooded ridge of
Corstorphine, and bounded to the north across the Firth by the heights
of Fife, above which, in clear weather, stand up the blue bastions of
the Highlands. Behind Blackford, one may keep up the wooded hollow of
the Hermitage, by a public path following the stream, and thus gain the
Braid Hills, overlooking the city a little farther back. Keeping along
their edge, at some risk from flying golf balls, one can hold on to the
hotel built between the old and the new south roads. Here, at the
terminus of suburban trams, looking to the Pentlands up the valley of
the Braid Burn, by which runs a field path towards Swanston, the country
home of R. L. Stevenson, one might hardly guess oneself so near a great
city, but for the lordly poorhouse and fever-hospital buildings to the
back of Craiglockhart Hill.
In the very heart of the city are view-points fine enough to content
hasty travellers, from the battlements of the Castle, from the spire of
Scott’s Monument, from the slopes of the Calton Hill, with its array of
ready-made ruins and monuments with which Edinburgh has sought to live
up to her classical pretensions. This rises beyond the east end of
Princes Street, opposite the battlemented gaol, and a little way past
that Charing Cross of Auld Reekie, where its main ways meet between the
Post Office, the Register House and the tower of a new North British
Hotel looking down upon the glass roofs of the sunken Waverley Station.
At the other end of Princes Street, an opening before the Caledonian
Station may be called Edinburgh’s Piccadilly Circus, radiating into its
Mayfair quarter. This end is dominated by the Castle, suggesting to
Algerian travellers a duodecimo edition of that wonderful rock-set city
Constantine. It shows little of the modern fortress, rather a pile of
ugly barracks which a Japanese cruiser could knock to pieces from the
Firth; but one understands how in old days its site made it a Gibraltar
citadel, that often could hold out when the town was overrun by foemen
taking care to keep themselves beyond range of the Castle guns. Taylor,
the Water Poet, who had seen something of war in his youth, judged it
“so strongly grounded, bounded, and founded, that by force of man it can
never be confounded.” The King himself did not gain admittance on his
recent visit without a ceremony of summons by the Lord Lyon King of
Arms; but all and sundry, at reasonable hours, may stroll across its
drawbridge to lounge on the ramparts, to be conducted over historic
relics by veteran ciceroni, or to wait for the stunning report of the
gun, which, fired from Greenwich at one o’clock, brings every watch
within hearing to the test.
From this “Maiden Castle,” safe refuge for princesses of the good old
times, a conscientious tourist makes for Holyrood by the long line of
High Street and Canongate, bringing him past most of the historic sites
and monuments--the “Heart of Midlothian,” the Parliament House, the
swept and garnished Cathedral of St. Giles, beside which John Knox now
lies literally buried in a highway, as was Dr. Johnson’s pious wish for
him; the restored Market Cross, the Tron Church, Knox’s House, which
counts rather among Edinburgh’s Apocrypha, and many another ancient
mansion, once alive with Scotland’s proudest names, now degraded to an
Alsatia of huge dingy tenements, swarming forth vice and misery at
nightfall. The way narrows through an unsavoury slum as it approaches
the deserted home of kings, beyond which opens a park such as no king
has at his back door.
Holyrood was originally an abbey, founded by David I. “in gratitude,”
says the legend, “for his miraculous deliverance from a stag on Holy
Rood Day, and prompted thereto by a dream.” Similar stories are told of
many another prince less disposed to ecclesiastical benefactions than
David, that “sair saint to the crown”; even John of England founded one
abbey, at Beaulieu, as an act of grace prompted by nightmare visions.
Beside David’s Abbey of the Holy Cross sprang up a palace that, as well
the sacred precincts, suffered much in the troubles of the Stuart
reigns, being frequently burned or spoiled by
[Illustration: EDINBURGH FROM SALISBURY CRAGS--EVENING]
English tourists of their period, on the last occasion “personally
conducted” by one Oliver Cromwell, who had small respect either for
palaces or abbeys. In Charles II.’s time it was rebuilt somewhat after
the style of Hampton Court, while the Abbey, devastated by a
Presbyterian mob, came to be refitted with a too heavy roof that crushed
it into utter ruin. The present building is thus modern, but for the
ruins behind, and the restored portion incorporating Queen Mary’s
apartments. The name of the Sanctuary opposite was no vain one up till
about half a century ago, when impecunious debtors used to take asylum
within its bounds, privileged to issue free on Sundays, else venturing
forth to feast or sport only at the risk of thrilling adventures with
bailiffs.
Everyone who has been to Edinburgh knows the sights of this show place:
the portraits of Scottish kings, more or less mythical, “awful examples”
as works of art, the whole gallery, it is said, done by a Dutch painter
of the seventeenth century for a lump sum of £250; the tapestried rooms
of Darnley; the Queen’s bedchamber; and the dark stain on the flooring
where Rizzio is believed to have gasped out his life, after being
dragged from the side of his mistress. Every reader must know Scott’s
story of the traveller in some patent fluid for removing stains, who
pressed the use of his nostrum on the horrified custodian. What every
stranger does not know is how this “virtuous palace where no monarch
dwells” is still used for functions of state. Annually, in May, the Lord
High Commissioner takes up his quarters here as representative of the
Crown in the General Assembly of the Church, when green peas ought to
come into season to make their first appearance on the quasi-royal
table. Ireland, that makes such loud boast of her grievances, basks in
the smiles of a Lord-Lieutenant all the year, while poor patient
Scotland has a blink of reflected royalty for one scrimp fortnight,
during which the old palace wakes to the life of _levèes_, drawingrooms,
and dinners, where black gowns and coats are more in evidence than in
most courtly circles. The Commissioner’s procession from the palace to
open the Assembly lights up the old Canongate with a martial display;
and more or less festivity is held within the walls according to the
wealth or liberality of the Commissioner, who, like the Lord Mayor of
London, should be a rich man to fill his office with due _éclat_. But
when King Edward VII. recently visited Edinburgh, to the regret of the
citizens, he did not take up his quarters in the palace, pronounced
unsuitable by the prosaic reason of its drains being somewhat too
Georgian, a matter that has now been amended.
A more occasional function fitly transacted here is the election of
representative peers for Scotland in a new parliament. As every
schoolboy ought to know, our Constitution admits only sixteen Scottish
peers to sit in Parliament, most of them indeed having place there in
virtue of British peerages--the Duke of Atholl as Lord Strange, for
instance, the Duke of Montrose as Lord Graham, and so forth. Of those
left out in the cold, sixteen are “elected” by a somewhat cut-and-dried
process very free from the heat and excitement of popular voting. As I
have seen it, the ceremony seemed to lack impressiveness. Some dozen
gentlemen in pot hats and shooting jackets assembled in the Picture
Gallery before an audience chiefly consisting of ladies, more than one
of these legislators in mien and appearance suggesting what Fielding
says about Joseph Andrews, that he might have been taken for a nobleman
by one who had not seen many noblemen. Each of the privileged order, in
turn, wrote and read out a list of the peers for whom he voted, usually
ending “and myself.” Certain practically-minded peers sent in their
votes by post. The most moving incident was the expected one of an
advocate in wig and gown rising to put in for a client some unrecognised
claim to a title or protest as to precedency, duly listened to and noted
down. The whole ceremony struck one as rather a waste of time; but
perhaps the same might be said of most ceremonies. One thing has to be
remembered about these unimposing lords, that they are a highly select
body in point of blue blood, all representing old families, as the fount
of their honour was dried up at the Union, and the king can make an
honest man as soon as a Scottish peer.
The tourist who comes in for any of such functions will realise the
truth of what R. L. Stevenson says for his native city:--
“There is a spark among the embers; from time to time the old
volcano smokes. Edinburgh has but partly abdicated, and still
wears, in parody, her metropolitan trappings. Half a capital and
half a country town, the whole city leads a double existence; it
has long trances of the one and flashes of the other; like the king
of the Black Isles, it is half alive and half a monumental marble.
There are armed men and cannon in the citadel overhead; you may see
the troops marshalled on the high parade; and at night after the
early winter evenfall, and in the morning before the laggard winter
dawn, the wind carries abroad over Edinburgh the sound of drums and
bugles. Grave judges sit bewigged in what was once the scene of
imperial deliberations. Close by in the High Street perhaps the
trumpets may sound about the stroke of noon; and you see a troop of
citizens in tawdry masquerade; tabard above, heather-mixture
trowser below, and the men themselves trudging in the mud among
unsympathetic bystanders. The grooms of a well-appointed circus
tread the streets with a better presence. And yet these are the
Heralds and Pursuivants of Scotland, who are about to proclaim a
new law of the United Kingdom before two-score boys, and thieves,
and hackney-coachmen.”
Tourists are too much in the way of seeing no more of Edinburgh than its
historic lions and rich museums, as indicated in the guide-books. I
would invite them to pay more attention to the suburbs straggling on
three sides into such fine hill scenery as is the environment of this
city. Open cabs are easily to be had in the chief thoroughfares; and
Edinburgh cabmen have the name of being rarely decent and civil, as if
the Shorter Catechism made an antidote to the human demoralisation
spread from that honest friend of man, the horse. Give a London Jehu
something over his fare, and his first thought seems to be that you are
a person to be imposed upon; but I, for one, never had the same
experience here. I know of a stranger who took a cheaper mode of finding
his way through Edinburgh; he had himself booked as an express parcel
and put in charge of a telegraph messenger, who would not leave him
without a receipt duly signed at his destination. But the wandering
pedestrian is at great advantage where he seldom has out of sight such
landmarks as the Castle and Arthur’s Seat. There is no better way of
seeing the city than from the top of the tramcars that run in all
directions, the main line being a circular
[Illustration: CRAIGMILLAR CASTLE, NEAR EDINBURGH]
route from the Waverley Station round the west side of the Castle, then
through the south suburbs, and back beneath Arthur’s Seat to the Post
Office. Public motor cars also ply their terror along the chief
thoroughfares. The trams are on the cable system, invented for the steep
ascents of San Francisco, but out of favour in most cities. The excuse
for its adoption here was that bunches of overhead wires would spoil
such amenities as are the city’s stock in tourist trade. It has the
objectionable habit of keeping up along the line a rattle disquieting to
nervous people, while the car itself steals upon one like a thief in the
night; but it appears that accidents to life and limb are not so common
as hitches in the working.
The trams now run on Sunday, an innovation that shocks many good folk,
brought up in days when the streets of a Scottish city were as stricken
by the plague, unless at the hours when all the population came
streaming on foot to and from their different places of worship. A few
years ago, I felt it my duty to correct the late Max O’Rell, who had
gathered some wonderful stories supposed to illustrate the manners of
Scotland. As he related how, getting into an Edinburgh tramcar on
Sunday, his companion insisted on their riding inside not to be seen of
men, one was able to inform him that since the days of Moses no public
vehicle had disturbed Edinburgh’s Sabbath quiet. It is not so now; and
all the old stories about “whustlin’ on the Sabbath” and so forth will
soon be legends, so fast is the peculiar observance of Scottish piety
melting away.
R. L. Stevenson humorously called himself “a countryman of the Sabbath,”
but this institution is not so clearly a native of Scotland as has been
taken for granted. John Knox played bowls on Sunday; and the rigidity
that came in later was due as much to English Puritanism as to the
thrawnness of Scottish revolt against Catholic practices. Whatever its
origin, Sabbatarianism once weighed heavily on human nature north of the
Tweed. “Is this a day to be talking of days!” was the rebuke of the
Highlander to a tourist who ventured to remark that it was a fine
Sunday. Not so many years ago, I have known a Highland farmer refuse the
loan of a girdle to bake scones for a breadless family, “not on the
Sabbath”; yet this orthodox worthy and his sons, living as far from a
church as from a baker’s shop, seemed to spend most of the day of rest
lying by the roadside smoking their pipes and reading the newspaper. An
exiled Scot, in far distant lands, has told me how the shadow of the
coming Sabbath began to fall on his youth as early as Wednesday night.
The holy day was a term of imprisonment for juvenile spirits, its
treadmill two long services, chiefly sermon, sometimes run into one, or
separated by only a few minutes’ interval, to economise short winter
light in which worshippers might have to trudge miles to church. It is
in the Highlands and other out-of-the-way parts, of course, that such
austerities linger, while the urban populations more readily adopt
English compromises on this head.
In Edinburgh one generation has seen a great thawing of the Sabbath
spirit. I can remember the excitement caused all over Scotland by a
sermon in which Dr. Norman Macleod proclaimed that there was no harm in
taking a walk on Sunday. The _Scotsman_, a paper that has never much
flattered its readers’ prejudices, came out with a sly humorous article
headed “Murder of Moses’ Law by Dr. Norman Macleod,” and it is said that
some good people read this in the sense that the “broad” divine had
actually committed homicide. Even earlier, Edinburgh people had tacitly
sanctioned a walk to a cemetery, as echoing the teachings of the pulpit.
The story went that the present King, when at Edinburgh University, was
sternly denied admission to the Botanic Gardens on Sunday; but he might
unblamed have taken a stroll through the adjacent tombs of Warriston.
From the Dean Cemetery, the West End ventured on extending its Sunday
ramble as far as “Rest and be Thankful” on Corstorphine Hill; then it
was a fresh scandal when a very Lord of Session came to show himself on
this road in tweeds, instead of the full phylacteries that might attest
previous church-going. Of another judge living at Corstorphine it is
told that he once sought to mend the morals of a cobbler helplessly
drunk at his gate on Sunday afternoon, but was met by the hiccoughed
repartee, “Wha’s you, without your Sabbath blacks?”
In my youth the police would put a stop to skating or such like
diversions on Sabbath; but now Sunday bicycles flit over the country;
the iniquity of a Sunday band is tolerated in the parks; while a society
is suffered to promote Sunday concerts and lectures indoors. Another
sign of the times is that Christmas in Edinburgh begins to be almost as
much observed as the national festival of New Year’s Day, whereas
orthodox Presbyterianism once made a point of ignoring fasts and feasts
sanctioned by prelacy or popery. As for its own fasts, they have long
been transmuted into junketings; and the sacramental “preachings” of
large towns are now frankly abolished in favour of public holidays
answering to the English saturnalia of St. Lubbock, observed only by
banks across the Tweed. The Communion, in old days administered but once
or twice a year, and regarded in some parts with such awe that few
ventured to put themselves forward as participants, is now a frequent
rite in Presbyterian Churches, whose congregations are throwing off
their horror of ornament and ceremony, as may be seen in St. Giles.
Old-fashioned English rectors of the Simeon school have been known to
shake their heads at the services now read in the ears of descendants of
that Jenny Geddes who so forcibly testified against a prayer-book
declared by ribald jesters hateful to Scotland through its too frequent
mention of “Collect.”
The honest stranger, then, has nothing to fear from the austerity of
Scottish morals, not even the supposed risk of being married by mistake.
It will be his own fault if he fail to find a welcome across the Tweed.
Effusive manners are not the Scot’s strong point, and he may be accused
of a certain suspicion of offence, kept sharp by the careless and not
ill-natured insolence of southrons who are so free with their jovial
jests about “bawbees” and such like, well-worn and rusty pleasantries
coined in the days of Bute’s unpopularity and Johnson’s bearish
dogmatism. Among the baser sorts of Scots are still current inverse
sarcasms against English “pock-puddings,” conceived as fat and greedy;
but they would have to be fished up from a low social stratum by the
travelling gent who cannot understand that, however little disposed
[Illustration: LINLITHGOW PALACE]
Sandy may have been to hang his head for honest poverty, he ill relishes
its being flung in his face. “A sooth bourd is nae bourd,” says the old
proverb; but now, what with tourists, and trade, and Scotsmen who come
back again, bringing the spoils of the world with them, the reproach of
poverty ceases to be so sore a one.
Though in the eyes of busy Glasgow Edinburgh may pass as a retired
capital, living on its means of attraction, it has in fact several
industries from which to earn a livelihood. Along with the lodging and
amusing of strangers, it must do a good business in the tartans,
pebbles, silver-work, and other showy wares displayed in Princes Street
shop windows. “Edinbury Rock,” done up in tartan wrappers, is much
pressed upon the notice of tourists; the same indeed being sold in other
towns under their own name. As for shortbread, scones, biscuits, and
other manufactures of the “Land of Cakes,” these have invaded London,
where every baker not a German is like to be a Scot. It will be noted by
Cockney revilers as a proof of Scotch thriftiness, which might bear
another interpretation, that what costs a penny in a London baker’s shop
is here sold for a halfpenny. Well known to strangers are the Princes
Street confectioners’ shops, several of them extensive restaurants like
that one which, crowning its storeys of accommodation, has a roof garden
looking upon the Castle opposite.
The staple trades of Edinburgh have come to be printing and publishing,
and, as the nettle grows near the dock, brewing and distilling. The
great Scottish publishing firms have of late years shown a tendency to
gravitate towards London; but more than one still keeps its
headquarters here, beside some of the largest and best printing
establishments in the kingdom. It must be confessed that what is spoken
of as “_the_ trade,” is whisky, too much consumed about the premises, as
visitors are apt to note. The worst shame a Scotsman need take for
Scotland is on account of what Englishmen specially distinguish as
“Scotch.” I never heard sadder jest than the laughing comment of a group
of Dundee lasses, as they passed a braw lad wallowing in the gutter at
mid-day--“He’s having his holidays!” Yet as to this reproach, something
might be said in plea for mitigation of judgment. Something to the
purpose was said by that experienced toper who explained how “whusky
makes ye drunk before ye are fu’, but yill makes ye fu’ before ye are
drunk.” The whisky drunk by the lower classes here is a demon that takes
no disguise. It seems that, while there is more brutal intoxication in
Scotland, there may be less toping sottishness than in England. Men seen
so helplessly overcome at the ninth hour of a holiday are perhaps of
ordinarily sober habits, all the more readily affected by occasional
indulgence in fiery spirit. A woman frequenting public-houses implies a
lower depth of degradation. In the north, a larger proportion of the
population are abstainers; young people and the class of domestic
servants for instance, drink water where in English families they would
expect beer. In all classes, there are still too many Scotsmen religious
in the worship of their native Bacchus, vulgar and violent deity as he
is; but every year adds to the number of Protestants against this
perverted fanaticism. By the Forbes Mackenzie Act, all public-houses
are
[Illustration: THE BASS ROCK--A TRANQUIL EVENING]
closed on Sunday, when, however, if all stories be true, a good deal of
_shebeening_ or illicit drinking goes on in the cities. It is not
unreasonable to suppose that the austerity of Scottish Sabbatarianism
has driven many into vicious indulgence; and much is to be hoped from
the churches taking an interest in honest amusement as a help and not a
hindrance to religion. But a sneer often thrown out by strangers against
the supposed hypocrisy of Scotsmen, only shows ignorance of a country
where those most concerned about Sabbath observance have long been the
deadliest enemies of drinking habits.
Whisky, as well as golf, has now so masterfully invaded England, that
this can no longer be called “Scottish Drink,” as it was not by Burns.
In his day, home-brewed beer was the Lowland beverage, of which a
Cromwellian soldier complained as more like brose for its thickness. Up
to our day “Edinburgh Ale” made the capital’s chief contribution to the
heady gaiety of nations. Whisky came in from the Highlands, its name a
contraction of _uisgebeatha_, “water of life,” which Burns and Scott
write _usquebaugh_, the Celtic word for water being the same that
appears in so many river names _Esk_, _Usk_, _Exe_, _Axe_, and so forth.
Even in the Highlands, this mountain dew would seem to have supplanted
beer within historic times; and old writers admire the temperance as
much as the honesty and courage of Highlanders. Both Highland and
Lowland gentlemen preferred brandy, in the days when, as Lord Cockburn
tells us, claret was hawked about the Edinburgh streets in a cart, a jug
of any reasonable size being filled for sixpence.
Firm and erect the Caledonian stood,
Old was his mutton, and his claret good.
Let him drink port! a beef-fed statesman cried.
He drank the poison and his spirit died.
The preference for French wine and spirits before the days of Hanoverian
fiscalities, relates to the old alliance with France, which has left its
mark also on Scottish speech. That warning cry “Gardy-loo” (_gardez
l’eau_), which gave such scandal to early English tourists, was of
course a survival of a far-spread practice in cities before the days of
drainage or even of ash-backets (_baquets_). Many French household words
are used in Scotland at this day, as “caraff” (_carafe_), “ashet”
(_assiette_), a “jiggot” of mutton (_gigot_) a “haggis” (_hachis_); and
Burns’s “silver tassie” was of course a _tasse_. A “cummer” (_commère_)
“canna be fashed” (_se fâcher_) to step out to the “merchant’s,” who may
be “douce” or “dour” and an “honest” man (_honnête_), though sharp in
his bargains. “Ma certie (_certes_), that’s a braw (_brave_) vest!”
quoth a lass to her lad, a word here used like the French _garçon_ or
_gars_, while _gosse_ will be distinguished as a “laddie,” who grows to
be a “young lad” in spite of orgies on sour “grozers” or “grozets” and
“gheans,” which in France are _groseilles_ and _guignes_, but in England
gooseberries and wild cherries. French names too have taken root in
Scotland, Janet (Jeannette) being very common with one sex, as Louis or
Ludovic is not unknown in the other. For the matter of that, one might
string together instances of how the well of Old English flows undefiled
by time in the north.
Then brought to him that maiden meek
_Hose_ and _shoon_ and _sark_ and _breek_.
These words are used to this day in every Scottish cottage, as once in
the stately style of an early southron minstrel. Shakespeare and the
Bible show many picked phrases which are now wild flowers in the north;
and high example might be found for the _shalls_ and _wills_ that here
run loose from the enclosures of modern grammarians. But as Mr. David
MacRitchie suggests in an interesting pamphlet, “to _doubt_ that one is
_colded_ and can’t go to _the_ church,” seem rather specimens of French
idioms transplanted during the three centuries or so that Capets and
Stuarts stood together against the Plantagenets.
Protestantism availed to draw Scotland from the arms of France into
those of England; then Prelacy and Presbytery set the near neighbours
again at odds. For some generations, the young Scotsmen who had once
sought the Catholic schools of the Continent, were more in the way of
finishing their education at Dutch or German Universities. Scotland had
also an old connection, chiefly in the way of trade, with Scandinavia
and Poland, in both of which countries Scottish family names are
naturalised, as Swedish Dicksons and Polish Gordons. Scots students of
our day still look to Germany, under whose professors they are apt to
forget the Shorter Catechism for the categories of Kant and the secret
of Hegel. The Union was not fully consummated till Macs began to make
themselves at home in Oxford and Cambridge, while for a time the renown
of Scottish philosophy drew some of the promising English youth to
Edinburgh, whose medical school kept up the attraction. In the last
generation or two, Scotsmen have been only too ready to go south for
education, seeking a stamp of Anglified gentility as well as better
qualities which were perhaps not to be had from those rude old dominies
under whom the young laird and the barefoot loon once sat together in
friendly hatred of “carritch” and rudiments.
Such foreign communications cannot but help young Scotsmen to put their
native prejudices in due proportion, and to doubt if the sun of truth
has always shown most clearly in the sky of one small people much beset
by mists and east winds. Yet Scottish parents seem much “left to
themselves” in sending their sons and daughters beyond Edinburgh for
schooling. One of the most important industries of this city has come to
be education. It abounds in teaching of all kinds, from its venerable
University to spick and span board schools. Those who believe the fable
of Scotch niggardliness should consider that no place in the United
Kingdom, unless it be Bedford, is so rich in educational endowments, and
palatial charity schools, which have long ceased to be charities.
Edinburgh, indeed, suffered from such an embarrassment of benefactions
of this kind, that in our time, several of them have been turned into
day-schools, giving a complete education to thousands of boys and girls
of the better class. The latest large endowment, that of Sir William
Fettes for the children of necessitous families, was applied to building
a sumptuous pile, handed over _per saltum_ to the upper class as a
seminary on the model of English public schools, which only in the
course of generations came so far from the intention
[Illustration: LOCH ACHRAY, THE TROSSACHS, PERTHSHIRE]
of their pious founders. This competition has but set on their mettle
the once “New” Academy, for the best part of a century the chief school
in Scotland, and the old High School that nursed so many generations of
distinguished Scotsmen.
So, as at Bedford, where marriageable damsels complain of the _hims_ as
being either too ancient or too modern, the population of the Scottish
capital is increased by a selection of retired family-fathers, and a
swarm of youngsters who appear to thrive on the easterly winds and
haars. This hint about the weather is let slip unhappily, since I am
about to put forward a bold pretension for “mine own romantic town,” in
a character not obviously associated with it. In case of seeming too
presumptuous on its behalf, I will quote from Black’s _Guide to
Edinburgh_, which ought to be well informed on such matters:--
“In the holiday season, when Edinburgh is deserted by the upper
class of its inhabitants, why should it not be sought as a pleasant
change by the inhabitants of more grimy cities or less inspiring
scenes? It may seem strange to mention the capital of Scotland as a
health resort; yet, when one comes to think of it, ‘Auld Reekie’
has more claim to this extra title than many less famous places
which flourish in full reputation for gay and picturesque
salubrity. The fact is, that had Edinburgh not been a great city,
it might well be a Clifton or a Scarborough, and its ancient
dignity need not be allowed to overshadow its other merits. To
begin with, the climate is airy and bracing, notoriously rather too
much so at most seasons, but the sea-breezes cool the heat of
summer, and the moderate rainfall is soon carried off on the
sloping streets. Practically it stands on the sea, the shore being
hardly farther from the centre of Edinburgh than from some parts
of Brighton. By train or tram one can run down at any hour to
Portobello, where are sands, donkeys, crowds, bathing-machines,
pleasure-boats, and ornamental pier to satisfy the most fastidious
Margateer. At Craiglockhart, a mile or so from the outskirts of the
town, there is a first-class hydropathic establishment, nestling
under the wild scenery of the Pentland Hills. Nor is mineral water
wanting, if that be desired. In the valley of the Water of Leith,
below the stately mansions of Moray Place, a sulphurous spring may
be found dispensed in a little classical temple that elsewhere
would pass for a creditable pump-room, though many citizens of
Edinburgh, perhaps, know nothing about it. Bands play almost daily
in one or other of the parks; and even nigger minstrels, no doubt,
might be found, if that feature seemed indispensable to the
character of a holiday resort. There is no want of theatrical and
other performances. Then, as we have shown, few cities are so well
off for coach, steamboat, and railway excursions which would bring
one back in a day from a round through half of Scotland.”