The smallest of all the notable lochs in Scotland, its circumference
being under a mile and a half, Duddingston is nevertheless famous as
the resort of curlers and skaters, and for very many years it has been
a favourite playground of the citizens of Edinburgh, whenever John
Frost holds reign, and the ice is pronounced safe by the police. The
water is deep, and the loch is fed by several springs far down in its
depths, so that it is not a mere touch of frost that will produce
practicable ice at that part of the loch just under the rocky knoll
overhanging the middle. But when the frost has lasted for two or three
days, and the word is passed round in the city that 'Duddingston is
bearing,' then as if by common consent the city is stirred to wend its
way to the loch. Everyone is there, from the arab who has perhaps at
no other time a shoe on his feet, and whose sport can only consist of
'keeping the pot boiling' down the long slides that speedily get
formed, to grave lawyers, councillors and magistrates, while crowds of
the fair sex also don their skates, and anon the surface of the loch
gets obscured by the multitudes of people disporting on the ice. There
have been times when Duddingston, like the Thames, has been so
strongly frozen that an ox has been roasted upon it, and 'Frost Fair'
is still a tradition amongst old people. But a thickness of five or
six inches of ice suffices to make the entire surface safe and solid,
and when by the continuance of frost the ice reaches to nigh two feet
thick--no uncommon event--then the frosty carnival is at its best.
The village of Duddingston reposes under the wing of Arthur's
Seat--the hill shewn in our view--and lies to the right. In the
village is the house in which Prince Charles Edward lodged before the
battle of Prestonpans. In former times, Duddingston was famous for
'sheep's head' dinners, and its fruit gardens were also a favourite
resort in summer. The parish church, seen amidst the bare trees, is of
architectural interest because of several portions of Norman work
still extant, and also from the fact that at the gate of the
churchyard are to be seen the 'jougs', an iron collar used as a
pillory, and also a curious relic, a 'loupin' on stane,' placed
considerately there so that persons attending church on horseback
should reach their saddle with the least trouble. In the comfortable
manse, which lies away to the right, there lived for a time the Rev.
John Thomson, one of Scotland's greatest landscape painters, who was
minister of the parish, and died there in 1840. The roadway running
between the rocky knoll and the main hill is called the 'Windy Gowl,'
and in certain directions of the wind is almost impassable. The
precipitous rocks standing to the left of the hill are known as
'Samson's Ribs,' and consist of basaltic columns of the same formation
as Fingal's Cave and the Giant's Causeway. Viewed as we see it from
the east end of Duddingston Loch, Arthur's Seat loses the fine leonine
form it presents in every other direction. It is a noble hill, and
although little more than eight hundred feet high, its position as a
solitary eminence gives it much grandeur of appearance, and the view
from its summit is nowhere surpassed. On a clear day, the eye may
wander from the Cheviot Hills on the Border, to the Grampians in the
north-west, and while the city of Edinburgh lies spread out below, the
varied landscape of the Lothians and the sparkling waters of the Firth
of Forth come in to make up a panorama of varied beauty, amply
repaying the slight toil of the ascent.