DISTINGUISHED INHABITANTS IN FORMER TIMES—STORY OF A
BURNING—MOROCCO’S LAND—NEW STREET.
The Canongate, which takes its name from the Augustine canons of
Holyrood (who were permitted to build it by the charter of David I. in
1128, and afterwards ruled it as a burgh of regality), was formerly
the court end of the town. As the main avenue from the palace into
the city, it has borne upon its pavement the burden of all that was
beautiful, all that was gallant, all that has become historically
interesting in Scotland for the last six or seven hundred years. It
still presents an antique appearance, although many of the houses are
modernised. There is one with a date from Queen Mary’s reign,[234] and
many may be guessed, from their appearance, to be of even an earlier
era. Previously to the Union, when the palace ceased to be occasionally
inhabited, as it had formerly been, by at least the vicar of majesty in
the person of the Commissioner to the Parliament, the place was densely
inhabited by persons of distinction. Allan Ramsay, in lamenting the
death of Lucky Wood, says:
‘Oh, Canigate, puir elrich hole,
What loss, what crosses does thou thole!
London and death gars thee look droll,
And hing thy head;
Wow but thou has e’en a cauld coal
To blaw indeed;’
and mentions in a note that this place was ‘the greatest sufferer by
the loss of our members of parliament, which London now enjoys, many of
them having had their houses there;’ a fact which Maitland confirms.
Innumerable traces are to be found, in old songs and ballads, of the
elegant population of the Canongate in a former day. In the piteous
tale of Marie Hamilton—one of the Queen’s Maries—occurs this simple
but picturesque stanza:
‘As she cam’ doun the Cannogait,
The Cannogait sae free,
Mony a lady looked owre her window,
Weeping for this ladye.’
An old popular rhyme expresses the hauteur of these Canongate dames
towards their city neighbours of the male sex:
‘The lasses o’ the Canongate,
Oh they are wondrous nice;
They winna gi’e a single kiss
But for a double price.
Gar hang them, gar hang them,
Hich upon a tree;
For we’ll get better up the gate
For a bawbee!’
[Illustration: Weir’s Close, Canongate—wretchedly squalid.]
Even in times comparatively modern, this faubourg was inhabited by
persons of very great consideration.[235] Within the memory of a lady
living in 1830, it used to be a common thing to hear, among other
matters of gossip, ‘_that there was to be a braw flitting[236] in the
Canongate to-morrow_;’ and parties of young people were made up to go
and see the fine furniture brought out, sitting perhaps for hours in
the windows of some friend on the opposite side of the street, while
cart after cart was laden with magnificence.[237] Many of the houses
to this day are fit for the residence of a first-rate family in every
respect but _vicinage_ and _access_. The last grand blow was given to
the place by the opening of the road along the Calton Hill in 1817,
which rendered it no longer the avenue of approach to the city from
the east. Instead of profiting by the comparative retirement which it
acquired on that occasion, it seemed to become the more wretchedly
squalid from its being the less under notice—as a gentleman dresses
the least carefully when not expecting visitors. It is now a secluded
and, in general, meanly inhabited suburb, only accessible by ways
which, however lightly our fathers and grandfathers might regard them,
are hardly now pervious to a lady or gentleman without shocking more
of the senses than one, besides the difficulty of steering one’s way
through the herds of the idle and the wretched who encumber the street.
One of the houses near the head of the Canongate, on the north side
of the street, was indicated to me by an old lady a few years ago as
that which tradition in her young days pointed to in connection with a
wild story related in the notes to _Rokeby_. She had often heard the
tale told, nearly in the same manner as it has been given by Scott, and
the site of the house concerned in the tragedy was pointed out to her
by her seniors. Perhaps the reader will again excuse a quotation from
the writings of our late gifted fellow-townsman: if to be related at
all—and surely in a work devoted to Edinburgh popular legends it could
not rightly be overlooked—it may as well be given in the language of
the prince of modern _conteurs_:
‘About the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the large castles
of the Scottish nobles, and even the secluded hotels, like those
of the French _noblesse_, which they possessed in Edinburgh, were
sometimes the scenes of strange and mysterious transactions, a divine
of singular sanctity was called up at midnight to pray with a person
at the point of death. This was no unusual summons; but what followed
was alarming. He was put into a sedan-chair, and after he had been
transported to a remote part of the town, the bearers insisted upon
his being blindfolded. The request was enforced by a cocked pistol,
and submitted to; but in the course of the discussion, he conjectured,
from the phrases employed by the chairmen, and from some part of their
dress, not completely concealed by their cloaks, that they were greatly
above the menial station they assumed. After many turns and windings,
the chair was carried upstairs into a lodging, where his eyes were
uncovered, and he was introduced into a bedroom, where he found a
lady, newly delivered of an infant. He was commanded by his attendants
to say such prayers by her bedside as were fitting for a person not
expected to survive a mortal disorder. He ventured to remonstrate,
and observe that her safe delivery warranted better hopes. But he was
sternly commanded to obey the orders first given, and with difficulty
recollected himself sufficiently to acquit himself of the task imposed
on him. He was then again hurried into the chair; but as they conducted
him downstairs he heard the report of a pistol. He was safely conducted
home; a purse of gold was forced upon him; but he was warned, at the
same time, that the least allusion to this dark transaction would cost
him his life. He betook himself to rest, and after long and broken
musing, fell into a deep sleep. From this he was awakened by his
servant, with the dismal news that a fire of uncommon fury had broken
out in the house of ——, near the head of the Canongate, and that it
was totally consumed; with the shocking addition that the daughter of
the proprietor, a young lady eminent for beauty and accomplishments,
had perished in the flames. The clergyman had his suspicions, but to
have made them public would have availed nothing. He was timid; the
family was of the first distinction; above all, the deed was done,
and could not be amended. Time wore away, however, and with it his
terrors. He became unhappy at being the solitary depositary of this
fearful mystery, and mentioned it to some of his brethren, through
whom the anecdote acquired a sort of publicity. The divine, however,
had been long dead, and the story in some degree forgotten, when a
fire broke out again on the very same spot where the house of —— had
formerly stood, and which was now occupied by buildings of an inferior
description. When the flames were at their height, the tumult which
usually attends such a scene was suddenly suspended by an unexpected
apparition. A beautiful female, in a nightdress extremely rich, but at
least half a century old, appeared in the very midst of the fire, and
uttered these tremendous words in her vernacular idiom: “_Anes_ burned,
_twice_ burned; the _third_ time I’ll scare you all!” The belief in
this story was formerly so strong that on a fire breaking out, and
seeming to approach the fatal spot, there was a good deal of anxiety
testified, lest the apparition should make good her denunciation.’
A little way farther down the Canongate, on the same side, is an
old-fashioned house called _Morocco’s Land_, having an alley passing
under it, over which is this inscription[238]—a strange cry of the
spirit of man to be heard in a street:
MISERERE MEI, DOMINE: A PECCATO, PROBRO,
DEBITO, ET MORTE SUBITA, LIBERA ME.
From whom this exclamation proceeded I have never learned; but the
house, which is of more modern date than the legend, has a story
connected with it. It is said that a young woman belonging to
Edinburgh, having been taken upon a voyage by an African rover, was
sold to the harem of the Emperor of Morocco, with whom she became a
favourite. Mindful, like her countrymen in general, of her native land
and her relations, she held such a correspondence with home as led to
a brother of hers entering into merchandise, and conducting commercial
transactions with Morocco. He was successful, and realised a little
fortune, out of which he built this stately mansion. From gratitude,
or out of a feeling of vanity regarding his imperial brother-in-law,
he erected a statue of that personage in front of his house—a black,
naked figure, with a turban and a necklace of beads; such being the
notion which a Scottish artist of those days entertained of the
personal aspect of the chief of one of the Mohammedan states of Africa.
And this figure, perched in a little stone pulpit, still exists. As to
the name bestowed upon the house, it would most probably arise from the
man being in the first place called _Morocco_ by way of sobriquet, as
is common when any one becomes possessed by a particular subject, and
often speaks of it.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Morocco’s Land.]
A little farther along is the opening of New Street, a modern offshoot
of the ancient city, dating from a time immediately before the rise
of the New Town. Many persons of consequence lived here: Lord Kames,
in a neat house at the top, on the east side—an edifice once thought
so fine that people used to bring their country cousins to see it;
Lord Hailes, in a house more than half-way down, afterwards occupied
by Mr Ruthven, mechanist; Sir Philip Ainslie, in another house in
the same row. The passers-by were often arrested by the sight of Sir
Philip’s preparations for a dinner-party through the open windows,
the show of plate being particularly great. Now all these mansions
are left to become workshops. _Sic transit._[239] Opposite to Kames’s
house is a small circular arrangement of causeway, indicating where St
John’s Cross formerly stood. Charles I., at his ceremonial entry into
Edinburgh in 1633, knighted the provost at St John’s Cross.[240]