“Or d’une corde d’une toise
Saura mon col que mon cul poise.”
But you are sure Patrick had never heard of François, and the same
dismally ludicrous idea had occurred independently.
[Illustration: ALLAN RAMSAY, POET,
From an Engraving after William Aikman]
Certain picturesque figures or rather classes of men lent a quaint or
comic touch to the streets of old Edinburgh, but all are long swept into
Time’s dustbin. One of these consisted of the chairmen. The Old Town was
not the place for carriages; cabs were not yet, and even to-day they do
not suit its steep and narrow ways; but the sedan chair was the very
thing, you could trundle it commodiously up and down hill, and narrow
must have been the close through which it could not pass. The chairmen
who bore the burden of the chair were mainly Highlanders, who flocked to
Edinburgh as the Irish did afterwards, and in early days formed a
distinct element in city life. They are reported as of insatiable greed,
but their earnings probably were but small and uncertain. Still such was
their reputation, and it was once put to the test to decide a wager.
Lord Panmure hired a chair and proceeded a short way down the Canongate.
When he got out he handed the chairman a guinea. Millionaires were not
yet in the land, possibly the chairman imagined he had found a
benevolent lunatic, or he may even have smelt a wager. “But could her
honour no’ shuist gie the ither sixpence to get a gill?” The coin was
duly handed over, then Donald thought he might do something for his
companion and preferred a modest request for “three bawbees of odd
change to puy snuff.” But even the chairmen had another side. Among them
was Edmund Burke, who died in 1751. He had been an attendant on Prince
Charlie, and had as easily as you like netted £30,000 by treachery, for
such was the handsome price fixed for the young chevalier, “dead or
alive”; but it never crossed his mind to earn it!
Of much the same class were the caddies, whose name still lingers as the
attendants on golf-players; the caddie was the man-of-all-work of old
Edinburgh, for various indeed were his functions. Even to-day, if you
look at some of the high houses, you remember how much time inhabitants
must have spent in going up and down stairs; load the climber with
burdens and life were scarce worth living. The chief burden was water,
and the caddies were the class who bore the stoups containing it up and
down. These water-carriers soon acquired a pronounced and characteristic
stoop; they were dressed in the cast-off red jackets of the City Guard,
the women among them had thick felt great-coats and hats like the men,
their fee was a penny a barrel. The same name was applied to a division
that worked with their brains rather than their hands; they knew every
man in the town, and the name, residence, and condition of every
stranger to whom they acted as guides and even companions. You sought
your caddie at the Cross, where he would lounge of a morning on a wooden
bench till some one was good enough to employ him. You remember the
interesting account Scott gives of the caddies in the part of _Guy
Mannering_ which treats of the visit to Edinburgh of the Colonel.
Still more characteristic of old Edinburgh was the Town Guard, who for
many a long day acted most inefficiently as police and guardians of the
peace to the city. They are, so to speak, embalmed in the pages of Scott
and Fergusson. The first treats them with a touch of comic contempt, the
other calls them “the black banditti,” and deprecates their brutal
violence. He had some cause, personal or otherwise. One of their number,
Corporal John Dhu, a gigantic Highlander, as short of temper as he was
long of body, during a city row with one fell stroke stretched a member
of the mob lifeless on the pavement. The populace told wondrous legends
of this corps. They existed, it was averred, before the Christian era,
nay, some of them were present at the Crucifixion as Pilate’s guard! In
truth they only dated from the seventeenth century, at any rate as a
regularly constituted corps, and they came to an end early in the
nineteenth. They attended all civic ceremonies and civic functions,
their drums beat every night at eight o’clock in the High Street. Their
guard-house long stood opposite the Tron Church. There was always a
collision between them and the populace on occasion of rejoicing, as
witness Fergusson’s _Hallow Fair_:
“Jock Bell gaed forth to play his freaks,
Great cause he had to rue it,
For frae a stark Lochaber aix
He gat a _clamihewit_
Fu’ sair that night.”
The unfortunate wretch received a still worse blow, nor even then were
his troubles ended:
“He, peching on the causey, lay
O’ kicks an’ cuffs well sair’d.
A highland aith the serjeant gae
She maun pe see our guard.
Out spak the warlike corporal,
‘Pring in ta drunken sot!’
They trail’d him ben, an’ by my saul
He paid his drucken groat
For that neist day.”
Once in the year, at any rate, the populace got their own back
again—that was the King’s birthday, when the authorities assembled in
the Parliament House to honour the occasion. Thereafter the mob went
with one accord for the Guard, and always routed them after a desperate
resistance. Scott jocosely laments the disappearance of those
picturesque figures, with their uniform of rusty red, their Lochaber
axes, their huge cocked hats. But two survived to be present at the
inauguration of his monument on 15th August 1846. Their pay was sixpence
a day. The Gaelic poet, Duncan Macintyre, was once asked if anything
could be done to improve his worldly prospects. He confessed a modest
ambition to be enrolled in the Edinburgh Town Guard! After this Burns’s
post as a Dumfries exciseman might seem princely. All competent critics
agree that Macintyre was the sweetest of singers, a poet of true genius,
and that his laudatory epitaph in old Greyfriars was justly earned.
Captain James Burnet, who died on the 24th August 1814, was the last
commander of this ancient corps. If not so famous as some of his
predecessors, Major Weir or Captain Porteous, for instance, he was still
a prominent Edinburgh character. He weighed nineteen stones, yet, for a
wager, climbed Arthur’s Seat in a quarter of an hour. You do not wonder
that he lay panting on the earth “like an expiring porpoise.” He was one
of the “Turners,” as those were scornfully called who assembled on
Sunday afternoons, _not_ to go to church, but to take a walk or turn. At
an earlier day he and his fellows had been promptly pounced upon by the
seizers, who were officials appointed to promenade the streets during
the hours of divine service. These would apprehend the ungodly wanderer
and even joints of mutton frizzling and turning with indecent levity on
the roasting-jacks. In or about 1735 the blackbird of a Jacobite barber,
in horrid defiance of the powers that were, civil and ecclesiastical,
and to the utter subversion of Kirk and State, touched “the trembling
ears” of the seizers with “The King shall enjoy his own again,” most
audaciously whistled. The songster was forthwith taken into custody and
transported to the guard-house.
Once the “seizers” got emphatically the worst of it. Dr. Archibald
Pitcairne, poet, scholar, Jacobite, latitudinarian, was not in sympathy
in many points with the Edinburgh of Queen Anne’s day, but he loved his
glass as well as any of them. He had sent for some claret one Sunday
forenoon, which the seizers had confiscated ere it reached his thirsty
palate. The wit was furious, but he had his revenge. He doctored a few
bottles of the wine with some strong drug of disagreeable operation, and
then he procured its capture by the seizers. As he expected, the stuff
went speedily down their throats; the result was all he could have
wished. But Burnet came too late for all this, and a nickname was the
only punishment for him and his fellows. He was also a prominent member
of the Lawnmarket Club—the popular name for certain residents who met
every morning about seven to discuss the news of the day, and to take
their morning draught of brandy together. Nothing was done in old
Edinburgh without the accompaniment of a dram; the “meridian” followed
the “morning” (the very bells of St. Giles that chime the hour were
known as the “gill” bells), as a matter of course, and both only
sustained the citizen for the serious business of the evening. True, a
great deal of the drinking was claret, indeed, huge pewter jugs or
stoups of that wine were to be seen moving up and down the streets of
Edinburgh in all directions, as ale jugs in London. When a ship arrived
from Bordeaux the claret hogsheads were carted through the streets, and
vessels were filled from the spigot at a very cheap rate. There was
always a native-brewed “tippeny.” The curtain was already falling on old
Edinburgh ere whisky was introduced as a regular article of consumption.
A thin veil of decency was thrown over the dissipation; it was made a
matter of aggravation in the charge against a gentleman of rank that he
had allowed his company to get drunk in his house before it was dark in
the month of July. The peculiar little separate boxes wherein the guests
revelled in the Edinburgh taverns threw an air of secrecy and mystery
over the proceedings. One of the most famous taverns was Johnny Dowie’s,
in Libberton’s Wynd, where George IV. Bridge now stands. Its memories of
Burns and Fergusson and a hundred other still famous names make it the
_Mermaid_ of Edinburgh. It had many baser clients. A visitor opens a
door and finds a room, the floor covered with snoring lads. “Oh,”
explains mine host with a tolerant grin, “just twa-three o’ Sir Wullie’s
drucken clerks!” (Sir William Forbes the banker is meant). “The clartier
the cosier,” says a wicked old Scots apothegm. Wolfe, the hero of
Quebec, says that it was not till after Christmas, when the better folk
had come into it from the country, that Edinburgh was “in all its
perfection of dirt and gaiety.” There could not have been anything like
sufficient water wherewith to wash, and all sorts of filth were hurled
from the lofty houses into the street, “_Gardy loo_” was the
conventional word of warning, uttered not seldom _after_ and not
_before_ the event. Whether it was from the French “_Gare à l’eau_” may
or may not be true. The delightful Mrs. Winifred Jenkins aptly
translates it as: “May the Lord have mercy on your souls.”
Until imprisonment for debt was abolished the precincts of Holyrood were
inhabited by fugitive debtors, for there these had the privilege of
sanctuary. They were called Abbey lairds, and many were the stories told
of the dodges to get them out of the bounds or to remain after Sunday
was finished, for that was a free day for them. Two anecdotes may be
quoted. On a certain Sunday in July 1709, Patrick Haliburton, one of
those Abbey lairds, was induced to visit a creditor, by whom he was
received with the utmost geniality. The bottle was produced and Patrick
quaffed to his heart’s content; as he staggered from the door _after_
midnight, a messenger seized him under a Writ of Caption and haled him
off to prison. In 1724 Mrs. Dilkes, a debtor, had an invitation to a
tavern within the verge, but to enter it she had to go a few paces
beyond the Girth Cross. The moment she was outside she was nabbed; but
this was too much for the women of the place, who rose in their might
and rescued her.
The wit of old Edinburgh was satirical, bitter, scornful, and the
practical jokes not in the best of taste. The Union, we know, was
intensely unpopular, nowhere more than in the Canongate.
“London and death gar thee look dool,”
sings Allan Ramsay. Holyrood was at an end, save for the election of
representative Peers. At the first after the Union it was noted that all
elected were loyal to the English government, “a plain evidence of the
country’s slavery to the English Court.” A fruit-woman paraded the
courts of the palace bawling most lustily, “Who would buy good pears,
old pears, new pears, fresh pears—rotten pears, sixteen of them for a
plack.” Remember that pears is pronounced “peers” in Scots and the point
of the joke is obvious.
In the suburb of the Pleasance a tailor called Hunter had erected a
large house which folk named Hunter’s Folly, or the Castle of Clouts.
Gillespie, the founder of Gillespie’s Hospital, was a snuff merchant;
when he started a carriage the incorrigible Harry Erskine suggested as a
motto:
“Wha wad hae thocht it
That noses had bocht it?”
Harry was usually more good-humoured. A working man complained to him of
the low value of a dollar, which he showed him. Now, from the scarcity
of silver at the time, a number of Spanish dollars were in circulation,
on which the head of George III. had been stamped over the neck of the
Spanish King; the real was some sixpence less than the nominal value.
Erskine gravely regretted that two such mighty persons had laid their
heads together to do a poor man out of a sixpence. Not that the lawyers
always had the best of it. Crosby, the original Counsellor Pleydell in
_Guy Mannering_, was building a spacious mansion in St. Andrew Square.
His home in the country was a thatched cottage. “Ah, Crosby,” said
Principal Robertson to him one day at dinner, “were your town and
country house to meet, how they would stare at one another.”
[Illustration: ANDREW CROSBIE, “PLEYDELL”,
From a Painting in the Advocates’ Library,
by permission of the Faculty of Advocates]
Nor did the people always get the laugh. Walter Ross, an Edinburgh
character of the eighteenth century, had built a square tower in his
property on the north side of the New Town; in this were all the curious
old stones he could procure. The people called it Ross’s Folly, and
notwithstanding his prominently displayed threats of man-traps and
spring guns they roamed at will over his domain. Somehow or other he
procured a human leg from the dissecting room, dressed it up with
stocking, shoe, and buckle and sent the town-crier with it, announcing
that “it had been found that night in Walter Ross’s policy at
Stockbridge,” and offering to restore it to the owner!
A more innocent pleasantry is ascribed to Burns. A lady of title, with
whom he had the slightest acquaintance, asked him to a party in what was
no doubt a very patronising manner. Burns never lost his head or his
independence in Edinburgh. He replied that he would come if the Learned
Pig was invited also. The animal in question was then one of the
attractions of the Grassmarket. To balance this is a story of a snub by
a lady. Dougal Geddie, a successful silversmith, had donned with much
pride the red coat of a Town Guard officer. He observed with concern a
lady at the door of the Assembly Rooms without an attendant beau. He
courteously suggested himself “if the arm of an old soldier could be of
any use to her.” “Hoot awa’, Dougal, an auld tinkler you mean,” said the
lady.
One constantly recurring street scene in old Edinburgh was the execution
of criminals. Not a mere case of decorous hanging, but a man, as like as
not, dismembered in sight of the gaping crowd, and that man was often
one who had been within the memory of all a great personage in the
State, to whom every knee had been bowed, and every cap doffed. Great
executions were famous events, and were distinguished by impressive and
remarkable incidents; but I shall not attempt to record these. Some
little remembered events must serve for illustration. In 1661 Archibald
Cornwall, town officer, was hanged at the Cross. He had “poinded” an
honest man’s house, wherein was a picture of the King and Queen. These,
from carelessness or malice or misplaced sense of humour, he had stuck
on the gallows at the Cross from which as noted he presently dangled. In
1667 Patrick Roy Macgregor and some of his following were condemned at
Edinburgh for sorning, fire-raising, and murder. Those caterans were
almost outside the law, and they were duly hanged, the right hand being
previously cut off—a favourite old-time addition to capital punishment.
Macgregor was a thick-set, strongly-built man of fierce face, in which
gleamed his hawk-like eye, a human wolf the crowd must have thought him.
He was “perfectly undaunted” though the hangman bungled the amputation
business so badly that he was turned out of office the next day.
Executions were at different periods carried out on the Castle Hill, at
the Cross, the Gallow Lee, on the road to Leith, and at various places
throughout the city, but the ordinary spot was, from about 1660 till
1785, in the Grassmarket, at the foot of the West Bow, after that at the
west end of the Tolbooth, till its destruction in 1817, then at the head
of Libberton’s Wynd, near where George IV. Bridge now is, till 1868,
when such public spectacles were abolished. An old Edinburgh rhyme
commemorates the old-time progress of the criminal.
“Up the Lawnmarket, And doun the West Bow,
Up the big ladder, And doun the wee tow.”
As the clock struck the hour after noon, the City Guard knocked at the
door of the Tolbooth. It was flung open and the condemned man marched
forth. The correct costume was a waistcoat and breeches of white, edged
with black ribbon, wherewith the nightcap on his head was also trimmed.
His hands were tied behind him, and a rope was round his neck. On each
side was a parson, behind shuffled the hangman, disguised in an
overcoat, round were the City Guard, with their arms ready. Among the
fierce folk of that violent town a rescue was always a possibility, and
so the gruesome figure went to his doom. One other case and I leave the
subject. It was a popular belief in Edinburgh that a man could not be
hanged later than four o’clock afternoon. A certain John Young had been
convicted of forgery, and condemned to death. The time appointed for his
execution was the 17th December 1750, between two and four in the
afternoon. Under the pretence of private devotion he locked himself in
the inner room of the prison, and nothing would persuade him to come
out. He was only got at by breaking the floor of the room overhead, and
even then there was difficulty. A gun was presented at his head; it
happened to be unloaded. On a calculation of probabilities he even then
refused to surrender; he was finally seized and dragged headlong
downstairs. He anxiously inquired if it were not yet four o’clock, and
was assured he would be hanged, however late the hour. As a matter of
fact, it was already after four, though not by the clock, which had been
stopped by the authorities. He refused to move, declined, as he said, to
be accessory to his own murder, but was hanged all the same about
half-past four. His pranks had only given him another half-hour of life.
There were numerous lesser punishments: flogging, mutilation, branding,
all done in public, to the disgust or entertainment of the populace. I
tell one story, farce rather than tragedy. On the 6th of November 1728,
Margaret Gibson, for the crime of theft, was drummed through the town;
over her neck was fixed a board provided with bells which chimed at each
step she made, a little from her face there was attached a false face
adorned with a fox’s tail, “In short she was a very odd spectacle.” No
doubt; but where did the edification come in? I ought to mention that
the officials who attended an execution were wont thereafter to regale
themselves at what was called the Deid Chack. The cheerful Deacon
Brodie, just before his violent exit from life, took leave of a town
official in this fashion, “Fare ye weel, Bailie! Ye need na be surprised
if ye see me amang ye yet, to tak’ my share o’ the Deid Chack.” Perhaps
he meant his ghost would be there, or—but it is not worth speculating.
This gruesome feast was abolished through the influence of Provost
Creech, who did much for the city.
“Auld Reekie aye he keepit tight
And trig an’ braw.”
The crook in Creech’s lot was an old soldier, Lauchlin M‘Bain, who
pretended to sell roasting-jacks. He had a street call of
“R-r-r-roasting toasting-jacks,” which was found perfectly unbearable,
even by the not too nice ears of the citizens. He blackmailed various
parties, and then attached himself like a burr to Creech. He bellowed
before his door with such fell intent that the civic dignitary was
frantic. He had Lauchlin up before the local courts, but the old
soldier, who had fought on the government side at Culloden, produced his
discharge which clearly gave him a right to practise his business in
Edinburgh. Creech had to submit and buy the intruder off. Creech himself
played pranks just as mischievous on a certain drunken Writer to the
Signet called William Macpherson, a noted character of the day. He lived
in the West Bow with his two sisters, whom he, with quaint barbarity,
nicknamed Sodom and Gomorrah. He was not above taking fees in kind. Once
he thus procured an armful of turnips, with which he proceeded
homewards; but he was tipsy, and the West Bow was near the
perpendicular, and ere long he was flat on his face, and the turnips
flying in every direction. He staggered after them and recovered most.
The Governor of the Castle had asked Creech to procure him a cook; he
became so insistent in his demands that the bookseller got angry, and
happening to meet Macpherson, he coolly told him that the Governor
wished to see him on important business. Macpherson could not understand
why everybody treated him in such a cavalier manner, and a comical
conversation took place, which was brought to a head by the Governor
demanding his character. At last he blurted out in rage that he was a
Writer to the Signet. “Why, I wanted a cook,” said the Governor.
Macpherson retired in wrath to comfort himself with that unfailing
remedy, the bottle.
These were not the days of care for the insane, the “natural” was
allowed to run about the streets untouched. Jamie Duff was one of the
most famous of those. In old Scotland a funeral was a very pompous and
very solemn function. Duff made it a point to be present at as many as
possible, with cape, cravat, and weepers of the most orthodox pattern,
however shabby the material, even paper not being disdained. He commonly
marched at the head of the procession—a hideous burlesque of the whole
affair. His pranks met with strange and unexpected tolerance; instead of
being driven away, he was fed and encouraged. He appears at the funeral
of Miss Bertram in _Guy Mannering_. Scott has gathered many such
memories into his works. One adventure of Duff’s was not a success. He
had got together, or aped the cast-off suit of a bailie, and assumed the
title of that mighty functionary. The authorities interfered and
stripped him, thus making themselves the butt of many a local witticism.
He subsisted on stray gifts of all kinds, but he refused silver money.
He thought it was a trick to enlist him. Another feature of the street
was the Highland gentleman. The memory of one, Francis M‘Nab, Esq. of
M‘Nab, still lingers. Once a Lowland friend inquired if Mr. M‘Nab was at
home. “No,” was the answer, and the door was shut in his face, not
before he had heard the tones of the chieftain in the background.
Apprised of his error, he called next day, and asked for “The M‘Nab,”
and was received with open arms. It happened on the way to Leith races
that the chieftain’s horse dropped down dead under him. “M‘Nab, is that
the same horse you had last year?” said an acquaintance at the next
race-meeting. “No, py Cot,” replied the Laird; “but this is the same
whip”—the other made off at full speed. When in command of the
Breadalbane Fencibles, he allowed his men to smuggle a huge quantity of
whisky from the Highlands. A party of excisemen laid hands on the
baggage of the corps. M‘Nab pretended to believe they were robbers. He
was a big man, with a powerful voice; he thundered out to his men
“Prime, load”—the gaugers took to their heels, and the whisky was
saved.
Smuggling might almost be called the first of Highland virtues.
Archibald Campbell, the city officer, had the misfortune to lose his
mother. He procured a hearse, and reverently carried away the body to
the Highlands for burial. He brought the hearse back again, not empty,
but full of smuggled whisky. This fondness for a trick or practical joke
was a feature of old Edinburgh. It lived on to later times. In 1803 or
1804, Playfair, Thomas Thomson, and Sydney Smith instigated by Brougham,
proceeded one night to George Street, with the intention of filching the
Galen’s Head, which stood over the door of Gardiner, the apothecary. By
one climbing on the top of the others their object was all but attained,
when, by the dim light of the oil-lamps, Brougham was descried leading
the city watch to the spot, his design being to play a trick within a
trick. There was a hasty scramble, and all got off. None save Brougham
was very young, and even he was twenty-six, and to-day the people are
decorous and the place is decorous. Who can now recall what the Mound
was like, when it was the chosen locus of the menageries of the day?
Fergusson, Lord Hermand, was proceeding along it just having heard of
the fall of the “ministry of all the talents”; he could not contain
himself. “They are out—by the Lord, they are all out, every mother’s
son of them!” A passing lady heard him with absolute horror. “Good Lord,
then we shall all be devoured!” she screamed, not doubting but that the
wild beasts had broken loose.
A word as to weather. The east coast of Scotland is exposed to the
chilling fog or mist called haar, and to bitter blasts of east wind, as
well as to the ordinary rain and cloud. Edinburgh, being built on hills,
is peculiarly affected by those forces, and the broad streets and open
spaces of the New Town worst of all. The peculiar build of the old part
was partly, at least, meant as a defence from weather. Fergusson boldly
says so.
“Not Boreas that sae snelly blows
Dare here pap in his angry nose,
Thanks to our dads, whase biggin stands
A shelter to surrounding lands.”
But there is no shelter in Princes Street. On the 24th of January 1868 a
great storm raged. Chimney-pots and portions of chimney-stacks came down
in all directions. Fifty police carts were filled with the rubbish. Cabs
were blown over, an instance of the force of the east wind which
impressed James Payn the novelist exceedingly. A gentleman had opened
Professor Syme’s carriage door to get out. The door was completely blown
away; a man brought it up presently, with the panel not even scratched
and the glass unbroken. Another eminent doctor, Sir Robert Christison,
was hurled along Princes Street at such a rate, that when, to prevent an
accident, he seized hold of a lamp-post he was dashed violently into the
gutter and seriously hurt his knee. The street was deserted, people were
afraid to venture out of doors. Even on a moderately gusty night the
noise of the wind amidst the tall lands and narrow closes of the Old
Town, as heard from Princes Street, is a sound never to be forgotten; it
has a tragic mournful dignity in its infinite wail, the voice of old
Edinburgh touched with pity and terror! Some one has said what a
charming place Edinburgh would be if you could only put up a screen
against the east wind. As that is impossible it may be held to excuse
everything from flight to dissipation!
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE CITY
I continue the subjects of my last chapter, though this deals rather
with things under cover and folk of a better position than the common
objects of the street. I pass as briefly as may be the more elaborate
legends of Edinburgh, they are rather story than anecdote. I have
already dealt with Lady Stair and her close. It is on the north side of
the Lawnmarket. If you go down that same street till it becomes the
Canongate, on the same side, you have Morocco Land with its romantic
legend of young Gray, who showed a clean pair of heels to the hangman,
only to turn up a few years after as a bold bad corsair. But he came to
bless and not to rob, for by his eastern charms or what not he cured the
Provost’s daughter, sick well-nigh to death of the plague, and then
married her. They lived very happily together in Morocco Land, outside
the Netherbow be it noted, and so outside old Edinburgh, for Gray had
vowed he would never again enter the city. If you find a difficulty in
realising this tale of eastern romance amid the grimy surroundings of
the Canongate of to-day, lift up your eyes to Morocco Land, and there is
the figure of the Moor carved on it, and how can you doubt the story
after that? On the opposite side is Queensberry House, which bears many
a legend of the splendour and wicked deeds of more than one Duke of
Queensberry. Chief of them was that High Commissioner who presided over
the Union debates, he whom the Edinburgh mob hated with all the bitter
hatred of their ferocious souls. They loved to tell how when he was
strangling the liberties of his country in the Parliament House, his
idiot son and heir was strangling the poor boy that turned the spit in
Queensberry House, and was roasting him upon his own fire so that when
the family returned to their mansion a cannibal orgie was already in
progress. You are glad that history enables you to doubt the story just
as you are sorry you must doubt the others.
Edinburgh has had a Provost for centuries (since 1667 he has been
entitled by Royal command to the designation of Lord Provost), Bailies,
Dean of Guild, Town Council, and so forth, but you must not believe for
a moment that these were ever quite the same offices. The old municipal
constitution of Edinburgh was curious and complicated. I shall not
attempt to explain it, or how the various deacons of the trades formed
part of it. When it was reformed and the system of self-election
abolished, the city officer, Archibald Campbell, is said to have died
out of sheer grief, it seemed to him defiling the very Ark of God. The
old-time magistrates were puffed up with a sense of their own
importance, that of itself invited a “taking down.” It was the habit of
those dignitaries to pay their respects to every new President of the
Court of Session. President Dundas, who died in 1752, was thus honoured.
He was walking with his guests in the park at Arniston, when the
attention of Bailie M‘Ilroy, one of their number, was attracted by a
fine ash tree lately blown to the ground. He was a wood merchant, and
thought the occasion too good to be lost. He there and then proposed to
buy it, and not accepting the curt refusals of the President, finally
offered to pay a half-penny a foot above the ordinary price. “Sir,” said
Dundas in a burst of rage, “rather than cut up that tree, I would see
you and all the magistrates of Edinburgh hanging on it.” But the roll of
civic dignitaries contains more illustrious names.
Provost Drummond, who may be called the founder of the New Town, had
long cherished and developed the scheme in his mind. Dr. Jardine, his
son-in-law, lived in part of a house in the north corner of the Royal
Exchange from which there was a wide prospect away over the Nor’ Loch to
the fields beyond. It was plain countryside in those days. The swans
used to issue from under the Castle rock, swim across the Nor’ Loch,
cross the Lang Gate and Bearford’s Park, and make sad havoc of the
cornfields of Wood’s farm. Bearford’s Park was called after Bearford in
East Lothian, which had the same owner. Perhaps you remember the wish of
Richard Moniplies in _The Fortunes of Nigel_, that he had his opponent
in Bearford’s Park. But to return to Provost Drummond. He was once with
Dr. Thomas Somerville, then a young man, in Dr. Jardine’s house, above
mentioned. They were looking at the prospect, perhaps watching the
vagaries of the audacious swans. “You, Mr. Somerville,” said the
Provost, “are a young man and may probably live, though I will not, to
see all these fields covered with houses, forming a splendid and
magnificent city,” all which in due time was to come about. Dr.
Somerville tells us this story in his _My Own Life and Times_, a work
still important for the history of the period. All this building has not
destroyed the peculiar characteristic of Edinburgh scenery. It is still
true that “From the crowded city we behold the undisturbed dwellings of
the Hare and the Heath fowl; from amidst the busy hum of men we look on
recesses where the sound of the human voice has but rarely penetrated,
on mountains surrounding a great metropolis, which rear their mighty
heads in solitude and silence.
[Illustration: REV. THOMAS SOMERVILLE,
From a Photograph in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery]
What pleases me more in this scenery is that it is so perfectly
characteristic of the country, so purely Scottish . . . No man in
Edinburgh can for a moment forget that he is in Scotland.” It is almost
startling to look up from the grime of the Canongate to the solitary
nooks of Arthur’s Seat, though the sea of houses spreads miles around.
Whatever scenic effects remain, the historical effects of the landscape
are vanished. With what various emotions the crowd from every point of
vantage must have watched Dundee’s progress along the Lang Gate to his
interview with the Duke of Gordon on the Castle rock! And the town was
not much changed when, rather more than half a century afterwards, the
citizens, some of them the same, watched, after the affair at
Coltbridge, the dragoons gallop along the same north ridge in headlong
flight, a sight which promptly disposed the townsfolk’s minds in the
direction of surrender. One gloomy tragedy of the year 1717 affords a
curious illustration of this command of prospect. A road called
Gabriel’s Road once ran from the little hamlet of Silvermills on the
Water of Leith southward to where the Register House now stands.
Formerly you crossed the dam which bounded the east end of the Nor’
Loch, and by the port at the bottom of Halkerston’s Wynd you entered old
Edinburgh just as you might enter it now by the North Bridge, though at
a very different level. To-day Gabriel’s Road still appears in the
street directory, but it is practically a short flight of steps and a
back way to a collection of houses. In the year mentioned a certain
Robert Irvine, a probationer of the church, on or near this road,
cruelly murdered his two pupils, little boys, and sons of Mr. Gordon of
Ellom, whose only offence was some childish gossip about their
preceptor. The instrument was a penknife, and the second boy fled
shrieking when he saw the fate of his brother, but was pursued and
killed by Irvine, whom you might charitably suppose to be at least
partially insane were not deeds of ferocious violence too common in old
Scots life. The point of the story for us is that the tragedy was
clearly seen by a great number from the Old Town, though they were
powerless to prevent. The culprit was forthwith seized, and as he was
taken red-handed, was executed two days after by the authorities of
Broughton, within whose territory the crime had occurred. His hands were
previously hacked off with the knife, the instrument of his crime. The
reverend sinner made a specially edifying end, not unnaturally a mark of
men of his cloth. In 1570, John Kelloe, minister of Spott, near Dunbar,
had, for any or no reason, murdered his wife. So well had he managed the
affair that no one suspected him, but after six weeks his conscience
forced him to make a clean breast of the matter. He was strangled and
burned at the Gallow Lee, between Edinburgh and Leith. His behaviour at
the end was all that could be desired. It strikes you as overdone, but
from the folk of the time it extorted a certain admiration. The
authorities were as cruel as the criminals. A boy burns down a house and
he is himself burned alive at the Cross as an example. In 1675 two
striplings named Clarke and Ramsay, seventeen and fifteen years old,
robbed and poisoned their master, an old man named Anderson. His nephew,
Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, warned by a recurring dream, set off for
Edinburgh, and instituted investigations which led to the discovery of
the crime. The youthful culprits were hanged “both in regard to the
theft clearly proven and for terror that the Italian trick of sending
men to the other world in figs and possits might not come overseas to
our Island.” Now and again there is a redeeming touch in the dark story.
In 1528 there was an encounter between the Douglases and the Hamiltons
at Holyrood Palace. A groom of the Earl of Lennox spied Sir James
Hamilton of Finnart, who had slain his master, among the crowd. He
presently attacked Sir James in a narrow gallery, and wounded him in six
places, though none was mortal. The groom was discovered and dragged off
to torture and mutilation. His right hand was hacked off; whereupon “he
observed with a sarcastic smile that it was punished less than it
deserved for having failed to revenge his beloved master.” I have
mentioned the Gallow Lee between Edinburgh and Leith. It was the chosen
spot for the execution of witches, and for the hanging in chains of
great criminals. The hillock was composed of very excellent sand. When
the New Town was built it had been long disused as a place of execution,
and the owner of the soil had no difficulty in disposing of a long
succession of cartloads to the builders. He insisted on immediate
payment and immediately spent the money at an adjacent tavern,
maintained if not instituted for his special benefit. He drank to the
last grain as well as to the last drop and vanishes from history, the
most extreme and consistent of countless Edinburgh topers!
I have still something illustrative to say of prisoners. When Deacon
Brodie was executed, 1st October 1788, his abnormal fortitude was
supposed to ground itself on an expectation that he would only be half
hanged, would be resuscitated, and conveyed away a free man. He seems to
have devised some plan to this end, but “the best laid schemes o’ mice
an’ men,” we are told on good authority, “aft gang agley,” and so it was
here. Edinburgh has one or two instances of revival. On the 18th
February 1594-95, Hercules Stewart was hanged at the Cross for his
concern in the crimes of his relative the Earl of Bothwell. He was an
object of popular sympathy, as believed to be “ane simple gentleman and
not ane enterpriser.” The body, after being cut down, was carried to the
Tolbooth to be laid out, “but within a little space he began to recover,
and moved somewhat, and might by appearance have lived. The ministers
being advertised hereof went to the King to procure for his life, but
they had already given a new command to strangle him with all speed, so
that no man durst speak in the contrary.” There was not much
encouragement to be got from this story. Yet a woman some generations
afterwards had better fortune—the very name of “half-hangit Maggie
Dixon” of itself explains the legend. She was strung up for child-murder
in the Grassmarket, and her body had a narrow escape from being carried
off by a party of medical students to the dissecting room, as it was put
in a cart and jolted off landward. Those in charge stopped before a
little change-house for refreshment, however, and when they came forth,
Maggie sat upright in the cart, very much alive and kicking. Apparently
she lived happy ever after. She was married, had children, and, no
doubt, looked upon herself as a public character. Was it only popular
imagination that perceived a certain twist in the neck of the good lady?
Many famous men perished on Edinburgh scaffolds, and many more filled
the Edinburgh prisons, were they Castle or Tolbooths, namely, the Heart
of Midlothian cheek by jowl with St. Giles’, or the quaint smaller one,
which still stands in the Canongate. The anecdotes of prisoners are
numerous. Here is one lighter and less grimy than the bulk. When
Principal Carstares was warded in the Castle in 1685, a charming youth
of twelve years, son of Erskine of Cambo, came to his prison daily, and
brought him fruit to relieve the monotony of the fare, and what to a
scholar was just as essential, pen, ink, and paper. He ran his errands
and sat by the open grating for hours. After the revolution “the
Cardinal” was all-powerful in Scots matters; he did not forget his young
friend, and procured him the post of Lord Lyon King at Arms, but the
family were out in the ’15, and the dignity was forfeit. You gather from
this pleasing story that prison life in Edinburgh had its alleviations,
also escapes were numerous. In 1607, Lord Maxwell was shut up in the
Castle, and there also was Sir James Macdonald from the Hebrides. They
made the keepers drunk, got their swords from them by a trick, and
locked them safely away. The porter made a show of resistance. “False
knave,” cried Maxwell, “open the yett, or I shall hew thee in bladds”
(pieces), and he would have done it you believe! They got out of the
Castle, climbed over the town wall at the West Port, and hid in the
suburbs. Macdonald could not get rid of his fetters, and was
ignominiously taken in a dung-hill where he was lurking; Maxwell made
for the Border on a swift horse, and remained at large, in spite of the
angry proclamations of the King. James Grant of Carron had committed so
many outrages on Speyside that the authorities, little as they recked of
what went on “benorth the mont,” determined to “gar ane devil ding
another.” Certain men, probably of the same reputation as himself, had
undertaken to bring him in dead or alive. He and his fellows were in
fact captured. The latter were speedily executed, but he was kept for
two years in the Castle, and you cannot now guess wherefor. One day he
observed from his prison window a former neighbour, Grant of
Tomnavoulen, passing by. “What news from Speyside?” asked the captive.
“None very particular,” was the reply; “the best is that the country is
rid of you.” “Perhaps we shall meet again,” quoth James cheerfully.
Presently his wife conveyed to him what purported to be a cask of
butter, in fact it held some very serviceable rope, and so in the night
of the 15th October 1632 the prisoner lowered himself over the Castle
wall, and was soon again perambulating Speyside, where, you guess, his
reception was of a mixed description.
Among the escapes of the eighteenth century I pick out two, both from
the Heart of Midlothian. One was that of Catherine Nairn in 1766. She
had poisoned her husband, and was the mistress of his brother. She was
brought to Leith from the north in an open boat, and shut up in the
Tolbooth. The brother, who had been an officer in the army, was executed
in the Grassmarket, but judgment was respited in the case of the lady on
the plea of pregnancy. She escaped by changing clothes with the midwife,
who was supposed to be suffering from severe toothache. She howled so
loudly as she went out, that she almost overdid the part. The keeper
cursed her for a howling old Jezebel, and wished he might never see her
again. Possibly he was in the business himself. The lady had various
exciting adventures before she reached a safe hiding-place, almost
blundered, in fact, into the house of her enemies. She finally left the
town in a postchaise, whose driver had orders, if he were pursued, to
drive into the sea and drown his fare as if by accident, and thus make a
summary end of one whose high-placed relatives were only assisting her
for the sake of the family name. The levity of her conduct all through
excited the indignation and alarm of those who had charge of her;
perhaps she was hysterical. She got well off to France, where she
married a gentleman of good position, and ended “virtuous and
fortunate.” This seems the usual fate of the lady criminal; either her
experience enables her to capture easily the male victim, or her
adventures give her an unholy attraction in the eyes of the multitude.
She is rarely an inveterate law-breaker, as she learns from bitter
experience that honesty and virtue are the more agreeable policies.
Other than wealthy and well-connected criminals escaped. In 1783 James
Hay lay in the condemned hold for burglary. Hay and his father filled
the keeper drunk. Old Hay, by imitating the drawl of the keeper uttering
the stereotyped formula of ‘turn your hand,’ procured the opening of the
outer door, and the lad was off like a hare into the night. With a fine
instinct of the romantic he hid himself in “Bluidy Mackenzie’s” tomb,
held as haunted by all Edinburgh. He was an “auld callant” of Heriot’s
Hospital, which rises just by old Greyfriars’, and the boys supplied him
with food in the night-time. When the hue and cry had quieted down, he
crawled out, escaped, and in due time, it was whispered, began a new
life under other skies. Probably the ghostly reputation of that stately
mausoleum in Greyfriars’ Churchyard was more firmly established than
ever. What could be the cause of those audible midnight mutterings, if
not the restless ghost of the persecuting Lord Advocate?
As drinking was _the_ staple amusement of old Edinburgh, “the Ladies”
was naturally the most popular toast: a stock one was, “All absent
friends, all ships at sea, and the auld pier at Leith.” This last was
not so ridiculous as might be supposed, for it was famous in Scott’s
song, _teste_ the only Robin, to name but him, and Scots law, for it was
one of the stock places at which fugitives were cited, as witness godly
Mr. Alexander Peden himself. The toastmakers were hard put to it
sometimes for sentiments. A well-known story relates how one unfortunate
gentleman could think of nothing better than “the reflection of the mune
on the calm bosom o’ the lake.” As absurd is the story of the antiquary
who sat at his potations in a tavern in the old Post Office Close on the
night of 8th February 1787. Suddenly he burst into tears; he had just
remembered on that very day “twa hunner year syne Queen Mary was
beheaded.” His plight was scarce so bad as that of the shadow or
hanger-on of Driver clerk to the famous Andrew Crosbie, otherwise
Counsellor Pleydell. The name of this satellite was Patrick Nimmo. He
was once mistaken, when found dead drunk in the morning after the King’s
birthday, for the effigy of Johnnie Wilkes which had been so loyally and
thoroughly kicked about by the mob on the previous evening. One of his
cronies wrote or rather spoke his epitaph in this fashion: “Lord, is he
dead at last! Weel, that’s strange indeed. I drank sax half mutchkins
wi’ him doun at the Hens only three nichts syn! Bring us a biscuit wi’
the next gill, mistress. Rab was aye fond o’ bakes.” Of course the scene
was a tavern, and the memory of poor Rob was at least an excuse for
another dram.
This is not very genial merry-making, but geniality is never the
characteristic note of Scots humour from the earliest times. In 1575 the
Regent Morton kept a fool named Patrick Bonney, who, seeing his master
pestered by a crowd of beggars, advised him to throw them all into one
fire. Even Morton was horrified. “Oh,” said the jester coolly, “if all
these poor people were burned you would soon make more poor people out
of the rich.” No wonder the old-time fools were frequently whipped. The
precentor and the beadle were in some ways successors of the old-time
fool.
[Illustration: WILLIAM SMELLIE,
From an Engraving after George Watson]
Thomas Neil fulfilled the first office in old Greyfriars’ in the time of
Erskine and Robertson. He could turn out a very passable coffin, and did
some small business that way which made him look forward to the decease
of friends with a not unmixed sorrow. “Hech, man, but ye smell sair o’
earth,” was his cheerful greeting to a sick friend. One forenoon the
then Nisbet of Dirleton met him in the High Street rather tipsy. Even
the dissipation of old Edinburgh had its laws, and the country gentleman
pointed out that the precentor’s position made such conduct improper. “I
just tak’ it when I can get it,” said Neil, with a leer.
All the wits of old Edinburgh hit hard. Alexander Douglas, W.S., was
known as “dirty Douglas.” He spoke about going to a ball, but he did not
wish it reported that he attended such assemblies. “Why, Douglas,” said
Patrick Robertson, “put on a well-brushed coat and a clean shirt and
nobody will know you.” Andrew Johnson, a teacher of Greek and Hebrew,
combined in himself many of the characteristics of Dominie Sampson. He
averred that Job never was a schoolmaster, otherwise we should not have
heard so much about his patience. He was on principle against the
sweeping of rooms. “Cannot you let the dust lie quietly?” he would say.
“Why wear out the boards rubbing them so?” He wished to marry the
daughter of rich parents though he had no money himself. The father
objected his want of means. “Oh dear, that is nothing,” was the
confident answer. “You have plenty.”
The stage occupied a very small place in the history of old Edinburgh.
We know that a company from London were there in the time of James VI.
It is just possible that Shakespeare may have been one of its members,
and again when the Duke of York, afterwards James VII. and II., was in
Edinburgh a company of English actors were at his court. Dryden has
various satiric lines on their performances, in which he has some more
or less passable gibes at that ancient theme, so sadly out of date in
our own day, the poverty of the Scots nation. It is but scraps of stage
anecdotes that you pick up. Once when a barber was shaving Henry Erskine
he received the news that his wife had presented him with a son. He
forthwith decreed that the child should be called Henry Erskine Johnson.
The boy afterwards became an actor, and was known as the Scottish
Roscius; his favourite part was young Norval—of course from _Douglas_.
The audience beheld with sympathy or derision the venerable author
blubbering in the boxes, and declaring that only now had his conception
of the character been realised.
At the time of the French Revolution one or two of the Edinburgh
sympathisers attempted a poor imitation of French methods. A decent
shopkeeper rejoicing to be known as “Citizen M.” had put up at “The
Black Bull.” He told the servant girl to call him in time for the Lauder
coach. “But mind ye,” says he, “when ye chap at the door, at no hand
maun ye say ‘Mr. M., its time to rise,’ but ye maun say, ‘Ceetizan,
equal rise’.” The girl had forgotten the name by the morning, and could
only call out, “Equal rise.” Of one like him it was reported, according
to the story of an old lady, that he “erekit a gulliteen in his back
court and gulliteen’d a’ his hens on’t.”
The silly conceited fool is not rare anywhere, but only occasionally are
his sayings or doings amusing. Harry Erskine’s elder brother the Earl of
Buchan was as well known in Edinburgh as himself. He certainly had
brains, but was very pompous and puffed up. When Sir David Brewster was
a young man and only beginning to make his name a paper of his on optics
was highly spoken of. “You see, I revised it,” said the Earl with
sublime conceit. Asked if he had been at the church of St. George’s in
the forenoon, “No,” he said, “but my mits are left on the front pew of
the gallery. When the congregation see them they are pleased to think
that the Earl of Buchan is there.” He believed himself irresistible with
the other sex. He thus addressed a handsome young lady: “Good-bye, my
dear, but pray remember that Margaret, Countess of Buchan, is not
immortal.” An article in the _Edinburgh Review_ once incurred his
displeasure, so he laid the offending number down in the hall, ordered
his footmen to open the front door of his house in George Street, and
then solemnly kicked out the offending journal. When Scott was ill,
Lockhart tells us the Earl composed a discourse to be read at his
funeral and brought it down to read to the sick man, but he was denied
admittance.
The Scots have always been noted for taking themselves seriously. _Nemo
me impune lacessit_ is no empty boast. In Charles the Second’s time the
Bishop of St. Asaph had written a treatise to show that the antiquity of
the royal race was but a devout imagination; that the century and more
of monarchs of the royal line of Fergus were for the most part mere myth
and shadow. Sir George Mackenzie grimly hinted that had my Lord been a
Scots subject, it might have been his unpleasant duty to indict him for
high treason.
An earlier offender felt the full rigour of the law. In 1618 Thomas Ross
had gone from the north to study at Oxford. He wrote a libel on the
Scots nation and pinned it to the door of St. Mary’s Church. He was good
enough to except the King and a few others, but the remaining
Caledonians were roundly, not to say scurrilously, rated. Possibly the
thing was popular with those about him, but the King presently
discovered in it a deep design to stir up the English to massacre the
Scots. Ross was seized and packed off to Edinburgh for trial. Too late
the unfortunate man saw his error or his danger. His plea of partial
temporary insanity availed him not, his right hand was struck off and
then he was beheaded and quartered, his head was stuck on the Netherbow
Port and his hand at the West Port. To learn him for his tricks, no
doubt!
A great feature of old Edinburgh from the days of Allan Ramsay to those
of Sir Walter Scott was the Clubs. These, you will understand, were not
at all like the clubs of to-day, of which the modern city possesses a
good number, political and social—institutions that inhabit large and
stately premises with all the usual properties. The old Edinburgh club
was a much simpler affair. It was a more or less formal set who met in a
favourite tavern, ate, drank, and talked for some hours and then went
their respective ways. Various writers have preserved the quaint names
of many of these clubs, and given us a good deal of information on the
subject. When you think of the famous men that were members, the talk,
you believe, was worth hearing, but the memory of it has well-nigh
perished, even as the speakers themselves, and bottle wit is as
evanescent as that which produced it. The extant jokes seem to us of the
thinnest. The Cape Club was named, it is said, from the difficulty one
of its members found in reaching home. When he got out at the Netherbow
Port he had to make a sharp turn to the left, and so along Leith Wynd.
He was confused with talk and liquor, and he found some difficulty in
“doubling the cape,” as it was called. Perhaps the obstacle lay on the
other side of the Netherbow. The keeper had a keen eye for small
profits, and was none too hasty in making the way plain either out of or
into the city. Allan Ramsay felt the difficulty when he and his fellows
lingered too long at Luckie Wood’s—
“Which aften cost us mony a gill
To Aikenhead.”
Of this club Fergusson the poet was a member. Is it not commemorated in
his verse? Fergusson was catholic in his tastes. Johnnie Dowie’s in
Libberton’s Wynd has been already mentioned in these pages. Here was to
be met Paton the antiquary, and here in later days came Robert Burns,
but indeed who did not at some time or other frequent this famous
tavern? noted for its Nor’ Loch trout and its ale—that justly lauded
Edinburgh ale of Archibald Younger, whose brewery was in Croft-an-righ,
hard by Holyrood. The Crochallan Fencibles which met in the house of
Dawney Douglas in the Anchor Close is chiefly known for its memories of
Burns. Here he had his famous wit contest with Smellie, his printer,
whose printing office was in the same close, so that neither Burns nor
he had far to go after the compounding or correcting of proofs. We
picture Smellie to ourselves as a rough old Scot, unshaven and unshorn,
with rough old clothes—his “caustic wit was biting rude,” and Burns
confessed its power. The poet praises the warmth and benevolence of his
heart, and we need not rake in the ashes to discover his long-forgotten
failings. William Smellie was another William Nicol. There was a touch
of romance about the name of the club. It meant in Gaelic Colin’s
cattle; there was a mournful Gaelic air and song and tradition attached
to it. Colin’s wife had died young, but returned from the spirit world,
and was seen on summer evenings, a scarce mortal shape, tending his
cattle. Perhaps some antiquarian Scot or learned German will some day
delight the curious with a monograph on the word Crochallan, but as yet
the legend awaits investigation. Some of the clubs were “going strong”
in the early years of the nineteenth century. There was a Friday Club
founded in June 1803 which met at various places in the New Town.
Brougham made the punch, and it was fearfully and wonderfully made. Lord
Cockburn is its historian. He has some caustic sentences, as when he
talks of Abercrombie’s “contemptible stomach,” and says George
Cranstoun, Lord Corehouse, “is one of the very few persons who have not
been made stupid by being made a Judge.” This Friday Club was imitated
in the Bonally Friday Club, which met twice a year at Bonally House,
where Lord Cockburn lived. It was in its prime about 1842. Candidates
for admission were locked up in a dark room well provided with stools
and chairs—not to sit on, but to tumble over! The members dressed
themselves up in skins of tigers and leopards and what not, and each had
a penny trumpet. Among these the candidate was brought in blindfold, had
first to listen to a solemn, pompous address, “then the bandage was
removed and a spongeful of water dashed in his face. In a moment the
wild beasts capered about, the masked actors danced around him, and the
penny trumpets were lustily blown. The whole scene was calculated to
strike awe and amazement into the mind of the new member.” It would
require a good deal of witty talk to make up for such things. I shall
not pursue this tempting but disappointing subject further. I have
touched sufficiently on the proceedings of the Edinburgh clubs.
Here let fall the curtain.