The eastern of the tenements, which has only been renovated by a
new front, formerly was the lodging of Adam Bothwell, Commendator
of Holyrood, who is remarkable for having performed the Protestant
marriage ceremony for Mary and the Earl of Bothwell. This ecclesiastic,
who belonged to an old Edinburgh family of note, and was the uncle
of the inventor of logarithms,[66] is celebrated in his epitaph
in Holyrood Chapel as a judge, and the son and father of judges.
His son was raised to the peerage in 1607, under the title of Lord
Holyroodhouse, the lands of that abbacy, with some others, being
erected into a temporal lordship in his favour. The title, however,
sunk in the second generation. The circumstance which now gives most
interest to the family is one which they themselves would probably have
regarded as its greatest disgrace. Among the old Scottish songs is one
which breaks upon the ear with the wail of wronged womanhood, mingled
with the breathings of its indestructible affections:
‘Baloo, my boy, lie still and sleep,
It grieves me sair to see thee weep.
If thou’lt be silent, I’ll be glad;
Thy mourning makes my heart full sad....
Baloo, my boy, weep not for me,
Whose greatest grief’s for wranging thee,
Nor pity her deserved smart,
Who can blame none but her fond heart.
Baloo, my boy, thy father’s fled,
When he the thriftless son hath played;
Of vows and oaths forgetful, he
Preferred the wars to thee and me:
But now perhaps thy curse and mine
Makes him eat acorns with the swine.
Nay, curse not him; perhaps now he,
Stung with remorse, is blessing thee;
Perhaps at death, for who can tell
But the great Judge of heaven and hell
By some proud foe has struck the blow,
And laid the dear deceiver low,’ &c.
Great doubt has long rested on the history of this piteous ditty; but
it is now ascertained to have been a contemporary effusion on the sad
love-tale of Anne Bothwell, a sister of the first Lord Holyroodhouse.
The only error in the setting down of the song was in calling it
_Lady_ Anne Bothwell’s Lament, as the heroine had no pretension to a
term implying noble rank. Her lover was a youth of uncommon elegance
of person, the Honourable Alexander Erskine, brother of the Earl of
Mar, of the first Earl of Buchan, and of Lord Cardross. A portrait of
him, which belonged to his mother (the countess mentioned a few pages
back), and which is now in the possession of James Erskine, Esq. of
Cambo, Lady Mar’s descendant, represents him as strikingly handsome,
with much vivacity of countenance, dark-blue eyes, a peaked beard,
and moustaches. The lovers were cousins. The song is an evidence of
the public interest excited by the affair: a fragment of it found its
way into an English play of the day, Broom’s comedy of _The Northern
Lass_ (1632). This is somewhat different from any of the stanzas in the
common versions of the ballad:
‘Peace, wayward bairn. Oh cease thy moan!
Thy far more wayward daddy’s gone,
And never will recallèd be,
By cries of either thee or me;
For should we cry,
Until we die,
We could not scant his cruelty.
Baloo, baloo, &c.
He needs might in himself foresee
What thou successively mightst be;
And could he then (though me forego)
His infant leave, ere he did know
How like the dad
Would prove the lad,
In time to make fond maidens glad.
Baloo, baloo,’ &c.
The fate of the deceiver proved a remarkable echo of some of the verses
of the ballad. Having carried his military experience and the influence
of his rank into the party of the Covenanters, he was stationed (1640)
with his brother-in-law, the Earl of Haddington, at Dunglass Castle,
on the way to Berwick, actively engaged in bringing up levies for the
army, then newly advanced across the Tweed; when, by the revenge of
an offended page, who applied a hot poker to the powder magazine, the
place was blown up. Erskine, with his brother-in-law and many other
persons, perished. A branch of the Mar family retained, till no remote
time, the awe-mingled feeling which had been produced by this event,
which they had been led to regard as a punishment inflicted for the
wrongs of Anne Bothwell.
[Illustration: Byres’s Close, Back of Commendator Bothwell’s House.]
At the back of the Commendator’s house there is a projection,[67] on
the top of which is a bartisan or flat roof, faced with three lettered
stones. There is a tradition that Oliver Cromwell lived in this
house,[68] and used to come out and sit here to view his navy on the
Forth, of which, together with the whole coast, it commands a view. As
this commander is said to have had his guard-house in the neighbouring
alley called Dunbar’s Close, there is some reason to give credit to the
story, though it is in no shape authenticated by historical record. The
same house was, for certain, the residence of Sir William Dick, the
hapless son of Crœsus spoken of in a preceding article.
These houses preserved, until their recent renovation, all the
characteristics of that ancient mode of architecture which has procured
for the edifices constructed upon it the dignified appellative of
_Mahogany Lands_. Below were the booths or piazzas, once prevalent
throughout the whole town, in which the merchants of the laigh shops,
or cellars, were permitted to exhibit their goods to the passengers.
The merchant himself took his seat at the head of the stair to attend
to the wants of passing customers. By the ancient laws of the burgh,
it was required that each should be provided with ‘lang wappinis, sick
as a spear or a Jeddart staff,’ with which he was to sally forth and
assist the magistrates in time of need; for example, when a _tulzie_
took place between the retainers of rival noblemen meeting in the
street.
[Illustration]
This house could also boast of that distinguished feature in all
ancient wooden structures, a _fore-stair_, an antiquated convenience,
or inconvenience, now almost extinct, consisting of a flight of steps,
ascending from the pavement to the first floor of the mansion, and
protruding a considerable way into the street. Nuisances as they still
are, they were once infinitely worse. What will my readers think when
they are informed that under these projections our ancestors kept their
swine? Yes; _outside stairs_ was formerly but a term of outward respect
for what were as frequently denominated _swine’s cruives_; and the rude
inhabitants of these narrow mansions were permitted, through the day,
to stroll about the ‘High Gait,’ seeking what they might devour among
the heaps of filth which then encumbered the street,[69] as barn-door
fowls are at the present day suffered to go abroad in country towns;
and, like them (or like the town-geese of Musselburgh, which to
this day are privileged to feed upon the race-ground), the sullen
porkers were regularly called home in the evening by their respective
proprietors.
These circumstances will be held as sufficient evidence,
notwithstanding all the enactments for the ‘policy of bigginis’ and
‘decoring the tounes,’ that the stranger’s constant reproach of the
Scots for want of cleanliness was not unmerited. Yet, to show that
our countrymen did not lack a taste for decent appearances, let it be
recollected that on every occasion of a public procession, entry of
a sovereign, or other ceremonial, these fore-stairs were hung with
carpets, tapestry, or arras, and were the principal places for the
display of rank and fashion; while the windows, like the galleries of
a theatre compared with the boxes, were chiefly occupied by spectators
of a lower degree.[70] The strictest proclamations were always issued,
before any such occasion, ordaining the ‘middinis’ and the ‘swine’ to
be removed, and the stairs to be decorated in the manner mentioned.
Beneath the stair of the house now under review there abode in later
times an old man named Bryce, in whose life and circumstances there
was something characteristic of a pent-up city like Edinburgh, where
every foot of space was valuable. A stock of small hardwares and
trinkets was piled up around him, leaving scarcely sufficient room
for the accommodation of his own person, which completely filled the
vacant space, as a hermit-crab fills its shell. There was not room
for the admission of a customer; but he had a _half-door_, over which
he sold any article that was demanded; and there he sat from morning
till night, with his face turned to this door, looking up the eternal
Lawnmarket. The place was so confined that he could not stand upright
in it; nor could he stretch out his legs. Even while he sat, there
was an uneasy obliquity of the stair, which compelled him to shrink a
little aside; and by accustoming himself to this posture for a long
series of years, he had insensibly acquired a twist in his shoulders,
nearly approaching to a humpback, and his head swung a little to one
side. This was _l’air boutiquier_ in a most distressing sense.
In the description of this old tenement given in the title-deeds, it is
called ‘All and haill that Lodging or Timber Land lying in the burgh
of Edinburgh, on the north side of the High Street thereof, forgainst
the place of the Tolbooth, commonly called the Poor Folks’ Purses.’ The
latter place was a part of the northern wall of the prison, deriving
its name from a curious circumstance. It was formerly the custom for
the privileged beggars, called _Blue-gowns_, to assemble in the palace
yard, where a small donation from the king, consisting of as many
pennies as he was years old, was conferred on each of them; after which
they moved in procession up the High Street, till they came to this
spot, where the magistrates gave each a _leathern purse_ and a small
sum of money; the ceremony concluding by their proceeding to the High
Church to hear a sermon from one of the king’s chaplains.[71]