He who now sees the wide hollow space between the Old and New Towns,
occupied by beautiful gardens, having their continuity only somewhat
curiously broken up by a transverse earthen mound and a line of
railway, must be at a loss to realise the idea of the same space
presenting in former times a lake, which was regarded as a portion of
the physical defences of the city. Yet many, in common with myself,
must remember the by no means distant time when the remains of this
sheet of water, consisting of a few pools, served as excellent sliding
and skating ground in winter, while their neglected grass-green
precincts too frequently formed an arena whereon the high and mighty
quarrels of Old and New Town _cowlies_[88] [etymology of the word
unknown] were brought to a lapidarian arbitration.
The lake, it after all appears, was artificial, being fed by
springs under the Castle Rock, and retained by a dam at the foot of
Halkerston’s Wynd;[89] which dam was a passable way from the city to
the fields on the north. Bower, the continuator of Fordun, speaks of
a tournament held on the ground, _ubi nunc est lacus_, in 1396, by
order of the queen [of Robert III.], at which her eldest son, Prince
David, then in his twentieth year, presided. At the beginning of the
sixteenth century a ford upon the North Loch is mentioned. Archbishop
Beatoun escaped across that ford in 1517, when flying from the unlucky
street-skirmish called _Cleanse the Causeway_. In those early times
the town corporation kept ducks and swans upon the loch for ornament’s
sake, and various acts occur in their register for preserving those
birds. An act, passed in council between the years 1589 and 1594,
ordained ‘a boll of oats to be bought for feeding the swans in the
North Loch;’ and a person was unlawed at the same time for shooting a
swan in the said loch, and obliged to find another in its place. The
lake seems to have been a favourite scene for boating. Various houses
in the neighbourhood had servitudes of the use of a boat upon it; and
these, in later times, used to be employed to no little purpose in
smuggling whisky into the town.
The North Loch was the place in which our pious ancestors used to dip
and drown offenders against morality, especially of the female sex.
The Reformers, therefore, conceived that they had not only done a very
proper, but also a very witty thing, when they threw into this lake, in
1558, the statue of St Giles, which formerly adorned their High Church,
and which they had contrived to abstract.
It was also the frequent scene of suicide, and on this point one or
two droll anecdotes are related. A man was deliberately proceeding
to drown himself in the North Loch, when a crowd of the townspeople
rushed down to the water-side, venting cries of horror and alarm at the
spectacle, yet without actually venturing into the water to prevent him
from accomplishing the rash act. Hearing the tumult, the father of the
late Lord Henderland threw up his window in James’s Court, and leaning
out, cried down the brae to the people: ‘What’s all the noise about?
Can’t ye e’en let the honest man gang to the de’il his ain gate?’
Whereupon the honest man quietly walked out of the loch, to the no
small amusement of his lately appalled neighbours. It is also said that
a poor woman, having resolved to put an end to her existence, waded a
considerable way into the water, designing to take the fatal plunge
when she should reach a place where the lake was sufficiently deep.
Before she could satisfy herself on that point, her hoop caught the
water, and lifted her off her feet. At the same time the wind caught
her figure, and blew her, whether she would or not, into the centre
of the pool, as if she had been sailing upon an inverted tub. She now
became _alarmed_, screamed for help, and waved her arms distractedly;
all of which signs brought a crowd to the shore she had just left, who
were unable, however, to render her any assistance, before she had
landed on the other side—fairly cured, it appeared, of all desire of
quitting the uneasy coil of mortal life.