[65] Up to the year 1830, when George IV. Bridge gave easy access to
Parliament House, this quaint custom was followed by Lord Glenlee, who
walked from his house in Brown Square, down Crombie’s Close, across the
Cowgate, and up the Back Stairs.
[66] Napier of Merchiston.
[67] This projection is still a notable architectural feature in the
open space at the back of the tenement referred to. The original
windows have been built up. One of the lettered stones bearing the
words, ‘Blessit be God for all his giftis’—a favourite motto with old
Edinburgh builders—was removed to Easter Coates house, where it may
still be seen in that now old building adjoining St Mary’s Cathedral.
[68] From this tradition it was known as ‘The Cromwell Bartizan.’
Dunbar’s Close did not get its name from its supposed association with
Cromwell’s soldiers, but from a family that lived in it. At an earlier
period it was known as Ireland’s Close.
[69] Edinburgh was not in this respect worse than other European
cities. Paris, at least, was equally disgusting. Rigord, who wrote
in the twelfth century, tells us that the king, standing one day at
the window of his palace near the Seine, and observing that the dirt
thrown up by the carriages produced a most offensive stench, resolved
to remedy this intolerable nuisance by causing the streets to be paved.
For a long time swine were permitted to wallow in them; till the young
Philip being killed by a fall from his horse, from a sow running
between its legs, an order was issued that no swine should in future
run about the street. The monks of the Abbey of St Anthony remonstrated
fiercely against this order, alleging that the prevention of the
saint’s swine from enjoying the liberty of going where they pleased was
a want of respect to their patron. It was therefore found necessary to
grant them the privilege of wallowing in the dirt without molestation,
requiring the monks only to turn them out with bells about their necks.
[70]
‘To recreat hir hie renoun,
Of curious things thair wes all sort,
The stairs and houses of the toun
With tapestries were spread athort:
Quhair histories men micht behould,
With images and anticks auld.
THE DESCRIPTION OF THE QVEEN’S MAIESTIES MAIST
HONORABLE ENTRY INTO THE TOWN OF EDINBVRGH, VPON THE
19. DAY OF MAII, 1590. BY JOHN BVREL.’—_Watson’s
Collection of Scots Poems_ (1709).
[71] In the early times these privileged beggars were called
‘Bedesmen,’ from telling their beads as they walked from Holyrood to St
Giles’. From the erection of the Canongate Church in 1690 the ceremony
took place there, until it was discontinued in the first years of Queen
Victoria’s reign. A well-known worthy of this community was reputed in
1837 to possess property which yielded an annual income of £120.