The _fourth floor_, constituting the Byres mansion, after being
occupied by such persons as Lord Coupar, Lord Lindores, and Sir James
Johnston of Westerhall, fell into the possession of Mr Brown of
Coalstoun, a judge under the designation of Lord Coalstoun, and the
father of the late Countess of Dalhousie. His lordship lived here in
1757, but then removed to a more spacious mansion on the Castle-hill.
A strange accident one morning befell Lord Coalstoun while residing
in this house. It was at that time the custom for advocates, and no
less for judges, to dress themselves in gown, wig, and cravat at their
own houses, and to walk in a sort of state, thus rigged out, with
their cocked hats in their hands, to the Parliament House.[65] They
usually breakfasted early, and when dressed would occasionally lean
over their parlour windows, for a few minutes before St Giles’s bell
sounded the starting peal of a quarter to nine, enjoying the morning
air, such as it was, and perhaps discussing the news of the day, or
the convivialities of the preceding evening, with a neighbouring
advocate on the opposite side of the alley. It so happened that one
morning, while Lord Coalstoun was preparing to enjoy his matutinal
treat, two girls, who lived in the second floor above, were amusing
themselves with a kitten, which, in thoughtless sport, they had swung
over the window by a cord tied round its middle, and hoisted for some
time up and down, till the creature was getting rather desperate with
its exertions. In this crisis his lordship popped his head out of
the window directly below that from which the kitten swung, little
suspecting, good easy man, what a danger impended, like the sword of
Damocles, over his head, hung, too, by a single—not _hair_, ’tis true,
but scarcely more responsible material—_garter_, when down came the
exasperated animal at full career directly upon his senatorial wig.
No sooner did the girls perceive what sort of a landing-place their
kitten had found than, in terror and surprise, they began to draw it
up; but this measure was now too late, for along with the animal
up also came the judge’s wig, fixed full in its determined talons.
His lordship’s surprise on finding his wig lifted off his head was
much increased when, on looking up, he perceived it dangling its way
upwards, without any means visible to him by which its motions might
be accounted for. The astonishment, the dread, the almost _awe_ of the
senator below—the half mirth, half terror of the girls above—together
with the fierce and relentless energy of retention on the part of Puss
between—altogether formed a scene to which language could not easily
do justice. It was a joke soon explained and pardoned; but assuredly
the perpetrators of it did afterwards get many lengthened injunctions
from their parents never again to fish over the window, with such a
bait, for honest men’s wigs.