I am indebted to a privately printed memoir on the Anchor Close for
the following anecdote of Crochallan: ‘A comical gentleman, one of the
members of the corps [old Williamson of Cardrona, in Peeblesshire], got
rather tipsy one evening after a severe _field-day_. When he came to
the head of the Anchor Close, it occurred to him that it was necessary
that he should take possession of the Castle. He accordingly set off
for this purpose. When he got to the outer gate, he demanded immediate
possession of the garrison, to which he said he was entitled. The
sentinel, for a considerable time, laughed at him; he, however, became
so extremely clamorous that the man found it necessary to apprise the
commanding officer, who immediately came down to inquire into the
meaning of such impertinent conduct. He at once recognised his friend
Cardrona, whom he had left at the festive board of the Crochallan Corps
only a few hours before. Accordingly, humouring him in the conceit,
he said: ‘Certainly you have every right to the command of this
garrison; if you please, I will conduct you to your proper apartment.’
He accordingly conveyed him to a bedroom in his house. Cardrona took
formal possession of the place, and immediately afterwards went to
bed. His feelings were indescribable when he looked out of his bedroom
window next morning, and found himself surrounded with soldiers and
great guns. Some time afterwards this story came to the ears of the
Crochallans; and Cardrona said he never afterwards had the life of a
dog, so much did they tease and harass him about his strange adventure.’
There is a story connected with the air and song of Crochallan which
will tell strangely after these anecdotes. The title is properly _Cro
Chalien_—that is, ‘Colin’s Cattle.’ According to Highland tradition,
Colin’s wife, dying at an early age, _came back_, some months after she
had been buried, and was seen occasionally in the evenings milking her
cow as formerly, and singing this plaintive air. It is curious thus to
find Highland superstition associated with a snug tavern in the Anchor
Close and the convivialities of such men as Burns and Smellie.
[Illustration: Dowie’s Tavern.]
_John Dowie’s_, in Liberton’s Wynd, a still more perfect specimen of
those taverns which Pitcairn eulogises—
‘Antraque Cocyto penè propinqua’—
enjoyed the highest celebrity during the latter years of the past and
early years of the present century. A great portion of this house was
literally without light, consisting of a series of windowless chambers,
decreasing in size till the last was a mere box, of irregular oblong
figure, jocularly, but not inappropriately, designated _the Coffin_.
Besides these, there were but two rooms possessing light, and as that
came from a deep, narrow alley, it was light little more than in name.
Hither, nevertheless, did many of the Parliament House men come daily
for their meridian. Here nightly assembled companies of cits, as
well as of men of wit and of fashion, to spend hours in what may, by
comparison, be described as gentle conviviality. The place is said to
have been a howff of Fergusson and Burns in succession. Christopher
North somewhere alludes to meetings of his own with Tom Campbell in
that couthy mansion. David Herd, the editor of the Scottish songs, Mr
Cumming of the Lyon Office, and George Paton the antiquary were regular
customers, each seldom allowing a night to pass without a symposium
at Johnie Dowie’s. Now, these men are all gone; their very habits
are becoming matters of history; while, as for their evening haunt,
the place which knew it once knows it no more, the new access to the
Lawnmarket, by George IV. Bridge, passing over the area where it stood.
_Johnie Dowie’s_ was chiefly celebrated for ale—_Younger’s Edinburgh
ale_—a potent fluid which almost glued the lips of the drinker
together, and of which few, therefore, could despatch more than a
bottle. John, a sleek, quiet-looking man, in a last-century style of
attire, always brought in the liquor himself, decanted it carefully,
drank a glass to the health of the company, and then retired. His neat,
careful management of the bottle must have entirely met the views of
old William Coke, the Leith bookseller, of whom it is told that if he
saw a greenhorn of a waiter acting in a different manner, he would
rush indignantly up to him, take the ale out of his hands, caress it
tenderly, as if to soothe and put it to rights again, and then proceed
to the business of decanting it himself, saying: ‘You rascal, is that
the way you attend to your business? Sirrah, you ought to handle a
bottle of ale as you would do a new-born babe!’
_Dowie’s_ was also famed for its _petits soupers_, as one of its
customers has recorded:
‘’Deed, gif ye please,
Ye may get a bit toasted cheese,
A crumb o’ tripe, ham, dish o’ peas,
The season fitting;
An egg, or, cauler frae the seas,
A fleuk or whiting.’
When the reckoning came to be paid, John’s duty usually consisted
simply in counting the empty bottles which stood on a little shelf
where he had placed them above the heads of his customers, and
multiplying these by the price of the liquor—usually threepence.
Studious of decency, he was rigorous as to hours, and, when pressed
for additional supplies of liquor at a particular time, would say: ‘No,
no, gentlemen; it’s past twelve o’clock, and time to go home.’
Of John’s conscientiousness as to money matters there is some
illustration in the following otherwise trivial anecdote: David Herd,
being one night prevented by slight indisposition from joining in the
malt potations of his friends, called for first one and then another
glass of spirits, which he dissolved, _more Scotico_, in warm water and
sugar. When the reckoning came to be paid, the antiquary was surprised
to find the second glass charged a fraction higher than the first—as
if John had been resolved to impose a tax upon excess. On inquiring the
reason, however, honest John explained it thus: ‘Whe, sir, ye see, the
first glass was out o’ the auld barrel, and the second was out o’ the
new; and as the whisky in the new barrel cost me mair than the other,
whe, sir, I’ve just charged a wee mair for ’t.’ An ordinary host would
have doubtless equalised the price by raising that of the first glass
to a level with the second. It is gratifying, but, after this anecdote,
not surprising, that John eventually retired with a fortune said to
have amounted to six thousand pounds. He had a son in the army, who
attained the rank of major, and was a respectable officer.
We get an idea of a class of taverns, humbler in their appointments,
but equally comfortable perhaps in their entertainments, from the
description which has been preserved of _Mrs Flockhart’s_—otherwise
_Lucky Fykie’s_—in the Potterrow. This was a remarkably small, as well
as obscure mansion, bearing externally the appearance of a huckstry
shop. The lady was a neat, little, thin, elderly woman, usually habited
in a plain striped blue gown, and apron of the same stuff, with a
black ribbon round her head and lappets tied under her chin. She was
far from being poor in circumstances, as her husband, the umquhile
John Flucker, or Flockhart, had left her some ready money, together
with his whole stock-in-trade, consisting of a multifarious variety of
articles—as ropes, tea, sugar, whip-shafts, porter, ale, beer, yellow
sand, _calm-stane_, herrings, nails, cotton-wicks, stationery, thread,
needles, tapes, potatoes, lollipops, onions, matches, &c., constituting
her a very respectable _merchant_, as the phrase was understood in
Scotland. On Sundays, too, Mrs Flockhart’s little visage might have
been seen in a front-gallery seat in Mr Pattieson’s chapel in the
Potterrow. Her abode, situated opposite to Chalmers’s Entry in that
suburban thoroughfare, was a square of about fifteen feet each way,
divided agreeably to the following diagram:
[Illustration: Potterrow.]
Each forenoon was this place, or at least all in front of the screen,
put into the neatest order; at the same time three bottles, severally
containing brandy, rum, and whisky, were placed on a bunker-seat in
the window of the ‘hotel,’ flanked by a few glasses and a salver of
gingerbread biscuits. About noon any one watching the place from an
opposite window would have observed an elderly gentleman entering the
humble shop, where he saluted the lady with a ‘Hoo d’ye do, mem?’
and then passed into the side space to indulge himself with a glass
from one or other of the bottles. After him came another, who went
through the same ceremonial; after him another again; and so on.
Strange to say, these were men of importance in society—some of them
lawyers in good employment, some bankers, and so forth, and all of
them inhabitants of good houses in George Square. It was in passing to
or from forenoon business in town that they thus regaled themselves.
On special occasions Lucky could furnish forth a _soss_—that is,
stew—which the votary might partake of upon a clean napkin in the
closet, a place which only admitted of one chair being placed in it.
Such were amongst the habits of the fathers of some of our present
(1824) most distinguished citizens!
This may be the proper place for introducing the few notices which I
have collected respecting Edinburgh inns of a past date.
The oldest house known to have been used in the character of an inn is
one situated in what is called Davidson’s or the White Horse Close, at
the bottom of the Canongate. A sort of _porte-cochère_ gives access to
a court having mean buildings on either hand, but facing us a goodly
structure of antique fashion, having two outside stairs curiously
arranged, and the whole reminding us much of certain houses still
numerous in the Netherlands. A date, deficient in the decimal figure
(16-3), gives us assurance of the seventeenth century, and, judging
from the style of the building, I would say the house belongs to an
early portion of that age. The whole of the ground-floor, accessible
from the street called North Back of Canongate, has been used as
stables, thus reminding us of the absence of nicety in a former age,
when human beings were content to sit with only a wooden floor between
themselves and their horses.
This house, supposed to have been styled _The White Horse Inn_ or
_White Horse Stables_ (for the latter was the more common word),
would be conveniently situated for persons travelling to or arriving
from London, as it is close to the ancient exit of the town in that
direction. The adjacent Water-gate took its name from a horse-pond,
which probably was an appendage of this mansion. The manner of
procedure for a gentleman going to London in the days of the _White
Horse_ was to come booted to this house with saddle-bags, and here
engage and mount a suitable roadster, which was to serve all the way.
In 1639, when Charles I. had made his first pacification with the
Covenanters, and had come temporarily to Berwick, he sent messages to
the chief lords of that party, desiring some conversation with them.
They were unsuspectingly mounting their horses at this inn, in order to
ride to Berwick, when a mob, taught by the clergy to suspect that the
king wished only to wile over the nobles to his side, came and forcibly
prevented them from commencing their designed journey. Montrose alone
broke through this restraint; and assuredly the result in his instance
was such as to give some countenance to the suspicion, as thenceforward
he was a royalist in his heart.
[Illustration: WHITE HORSE INN.