Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 21

WITH A GLOSSARY.
One of the Original Editors and Contributors.
VOL. XXI. LONDON: WALTER SCOTT, 14 PATERNOSTER SQUARE, AND NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE.
1884.


Some reference has been made by Mr. Chambers, in his Traditions of Edinburgh , to a story which looks very like fiction, but the foundation of which, I dare to say, is the following, derived at most third-hand, from George Gourlay, a blacksmith, whose shop was in the Luckenbooths, his dwelling-house in Bell's Wynd, and who was himself an actor in the drama.
It is not saying much for the topography of an Edinburgh wynd, to tell that it contained a flat such as that occupied by this blacksmith; but he who would describe one of these peculiar features of the Old Town, would be qualified to come after him who gave a graphic account of the Dædalian Labyrinth, or pictured Menander. Such a wynd has been likened to the vestibule to a certain place, more hot than cozy—at another time, to two long tiers of catacombs with living mummies piled row over row; but, resigning such extravagances, we may be within the bounds of moderation, and not beyond the attributes of fair similitude, when we say that one of these wynds is like a perpendicular town where the long, narrow, dark streets, in place of extending themselves, as they ought, on the earth's surface, proceed upwards to the sky. And which sky is scarcely visible—not that, if the perpendicular line were maintained, the empyrean would be so very much obscured, but that the inhabitants, in proportion as they rise away from mother earth and society, make amends by jutting out their dwellings in the form of Dutch gables, so as to be able to converse with their neighbours opposite on the affairs of the world below—that world above, to which they are so much nearer, being despised, on the principle of familiarity producing contempt. Then the sky-line would so much delight a Gothic architect, composed as it is of a long multiplicity on either side of pointed gables, lum-tops venting reek and smoke, dried women's heads venting something of the same kind. Next, the dark boles of openings to these perpendicular passages—so like entries to coal cellars,—yet where myriads of human beings pass and repass up to and down from these skyward streets, which have no name; being the only streets in the wide world without a nomenclature.