The saunter which I contemplate through the streets and stories, the
lanes and legends, of Old Edinburgh may properly commence at the
Castle-hill, as it is a marked extremity of the city as well as its
highest ground.
The Castle-hill is partly an esplanade, serving as a parade-ground for
the garrison of the Castle, and partly a street, the upper portion of
that vertebral line which, under the various names of Lawnmarket, High
Street, and Canongate, extends to Holyrood Palace. The open ground—a
scene of warfare during the sieges of the fortress, often a place of
execution in rude times—the place, too, where, by a curious legal
fiction, the Nova Scotia baronets were enfeoffed in their ideal estates
on the other side of the Atlantic—was all that Edinburgh possessed
as a readily accessible promenade before the extension of the city.
We find the severe acts for a strict observance of the Sabbath, which
appeared from time to time in the latter part of the seventeenth and
early part of the eighteenth century, denouncing the King’s Park, the
Pier of Leith, and the _Castle-hill_ as the places chiefly resorted
to for the profane sport of walking on ‘the Lord’s Day.’ Denounce as
they might, human nature could never, I believe, be altogether kept
off the Castle-hill; even the most respectable people walked there in
multitudes during the intervals between morning and evening service.
We have an allusion to the promenade character of the Castle-hill in
Ramsay’s city pastoral, as it may be called, of _The Young Laird and
Edinburgh Katy_—
‘Wat ye wha I met yestreen,
Coming down the street, my jo?
My mistress in her tartan screen,
Fu’ bonny, braw, and sweet, my jo.
“My dear,” quoth I, “thanks to the night,
That never wished a lover ill,
Since ye’re out o’ your mother’s sight,
Let’s tak’ a walk up to _the hill_.”’
A memory of these Sunday promenadings here calls me to introduce what I
have to say regarding a man of whom there used to be a strong popular
remembrance in Edinburgh.