Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 20. July, 1877.

by Various

EDINBURGH JOTTINGS.

Whenever Scott's landau went up the Canongate, his coachman knew without special instructions that the pace must be a walk; and no funeral, says Lockhart, ever moved more slowly, for wherever the great enthusiast might turn his gaze there was recalled to his mind some tradition of blood and mystery at which his eye would sparkle and his cheek glow. How by the force of his genius he inoculated the world with his enthusiasm about the semi-savage Scotia of the past is a well-known story: thousands of tourists, more or less struck with the Scott madness, yearly wander through the streets of old Edinburgh; and although within the quarter of a century since Sir Walter's death many memorials of the past have been swept away under the pressure of utility or necessity, the Old Town still poses remarkably well, and, gathering her rags and tatters about her, contrives to keep up a strikingly picturesque appearance.

THE CASTLE AND ALLAN RAMSAY'S HOUSE.

The Old Town of Edinburgh is built upon a wedge-shaped hill, the Castle occupying the highest point, the head of the wedge, and the town extending along the crest, which slopes gradually down toward the east, to Holyrood Palace in the plain. Lawnmarket, High street and Canongate now form one continuous street, which, running along the crest of the hill, may be considered as the backbone of the town, with wynds and closes radiating on each side like the spines of the vertebræ. The closes are courts, culs-de-sac—the wynds, thoroughfares. These streets—courts where, in the past, lived the nobility and gentry of Edinburgh—are now, for the most part, given up to squalor and misery, and look like stage-scenes perpetually "set" for melodramatic horrors. The late Dr. Thomas Guthrie, whose parish included a large portion of this Egypt, used often to illustrate his eloquence with graphic word-pictures suggested by his experiences in these dark places. "The unfurnished floor," he writes, "the begrimed and naked walls, the stifling, sickening atmosphere, the patched and dusty window—through which a sunbeam, like hope, is faintly stealing—the ragged, hunger-bitten and sad-faced children, the ruffian man, the heap of straw where some wretched mother in muttering dreams sleeps off last night's debauch or lies unshrouded and uncoffined in the ghastliness of a hopeless death, are sad scenes. We have often looked on them, and they appear all the sadder for the restless play of fancy excited by some vestiges of a fresco-painting that still looks out from the foul and broken plaster, the massive marble rising over the cold and cracked hearthstone, an elaborately-carved cornice too high for shivering cold to pull it down for fuel, some stucco flowers or fruit yet pendent on the crumbling ceiling. Fancy, kindled by these, calls up the gay scenes and actors of other days, when beauty, elegance and fashion graced these lonely halls, and plenty smoked on groaning tables, and where these few cinders, gathered from the city dustheap, are feebly smouldering, hospitable fires roared up the chimney."

OLD EDINBURGH BY NIGHT.

These houses are built upon the "flat" system, some of the better ones having a court in the centre like French houses, and turrets at the corners for the circular staircases connecting the different flats. Fires and improvements are rapidly sweeping them away, and the traveler regrets or not their disappearance, according as his views may be sentimental or sanitarian. They are truly ill adapted to modern ideas of hygiene, or to those cunning modern devices which sometimes poison their very inventors. While we may smile at our ancestors' free and easy way of pitching things out of the window, we should at least remember that they knew nothing of the modern plague of sewer-gas stealing its insidious way into the apparently best-regulated households. But without entering upon the vexed question of hygiene, the fact is that where there is no reason for propping up a tottering roof except that it once sheltered some bloody, cattle-stealing chieftain of the Border, utilitarian sentiments carry the day; nor ought any enthusiast to deny that the heart-shaped figure on the High street pavement, marking the spot where the Heart of Mid Lothian once stood, is a more cheerful sight than would be presented by the foul walls of that romantic jail.

RIDDLE'S CLOSE, WHERE HUME COMMENCED HIS "HISTORY OF ENGLAND."

The modes of life in old Edinburgh have been amply illustrated by many writers. Among the novel-writers, Scott and Miss Ferrier have especially dwelt upon them. The tavern-haunting habits of the gentlemen are pleasantly depicted in the "high jinks" in Guy Mannering, and the depth of potations may be estimated by Burns's "Song of the Whistle." As to the ladies, we should not have found their assemblies very hilarious, where partners for the dance were obtained by drawing tickets, and the lucky or unlucky swain danced one solemn minuet with his lady, and was not expected to quit her side during the evening—

Through a long night to watch fair Delia's will,
The same dull swain was at her elbow still.

The huge stack of buildings called James's Court is associated with the names of Boswell and of Hume. Half of it has been destroyed by fire, and precisely that half in which these two worthies once dwelt, but there is quite enough of it left to show what a grim monster it was, and, for that matter, still is. In Boswell's time it was a fine thing to have a flat in James's Court. Here Boswell was living when Dr. Johnson came to visit him. Boswell, having received a note from Johnson announcing his arrival, hastened to the inn, where he found the great man had just thrown his lemonade out of the window, and had nearly knocked down the waiter for sweetening the said lemonade without the aid of the sugar-tongs.

"Mr. Johnson and I walked arm-in-arm up the High street," says Boswell, "to my house in James's Court: it was a dusky night: I could not prevent his being assailed by the evening effluvia of Edinburgh. As we marched slowly along he grumbled in my ear, 'I smell you in the dark.'"

Mrs. Boswell had never seen Johnson before, and was by no means charmed with him, as Johnson was not slow to discover. In a matrimonial aside she whispered to her husband, "I have seen many a bear led by a man, but I never before saw a man led by a bear." No doubt her provocations were great, and she wins the compassionate sympathy of all good housekeepers when they read of Ursa Major brightening up the candles by turning the melted wax out on the carpet.

Many years after this, but while Boswell was still living in James's Court, a lad named Francis Jeffrey one night helped to carry the great biographer home—a circumstance in the life of a gentleman much more of an every-day or every-night affair at that time than at present. The next day Boswell patted the lad on the head, and kindly added, "If you go on as you have begun, you may live to be a Bozzy yourself yet."

The stranger who enters what is apparently the ground-floor of one of these houses on the north side of High street is often surprised to find himself, without having gone up stairs, looking from a fourth-story window in the rear. This is due to the steep slope on which the houses stand, and gives them the command of a beautiful view, including the New Town, and extending across the Firth of Forth to the varied shores of Fife. From his flat in James's Court we find David Hume, after his return from France, writing to Adam Smith, then busy at Kirkcaldy about the Wealth of Nations, "I am glad to have come within sight of you, and to have a view of Kirkcaldy from my windows."

Another feature of these houses is the little cells designed for oratories or praying-closets, to which the master of the house was supposed to retire for his devotions, in literal accordance with the gospel injunction. David Hume's flat had two of these, for the spiritual was relatively better cared for than the temporal in those days: plenty of praying-closets, but no drains! This difficulty was got over by making it lawful for householders, after ten o'clock at night, to throw superfluous material out of the window—a cheerful outlook for Boswell and others being "carried home"!

BUCCLEUGH PLACE, WHERE THE "EDINBURGH REVIEW" WAS PROJECTED.

COLLEGE WYND, WHERE SCOTT WAS BORN.

At the bottom of Byre's Close a house is pointed out where Oliver Cromwell stayed, and had the advantage of contemplating from its lofty roof the fleet which awaited his orders in the Forth. The same house was once occupied by Bothwell, bishop of Orkney, and is associated with the memory of Anne, the bishop's daughter, whose sorrows are enbalmed in plaintive beauty in the old cradle-song:

Baloo,[A] my boy, lie still and sleep,
It grieves me sair to see thee weep:
If thou'lt be silent, I'll be glad;
Thy mourning makes my heart full sad.
Baloo, my boy, thy mother's joy,
Thy father bred me great annoy.
Baloo, Baloo, etc.

Baloo, my boy, weep not for me,
Whose greatest grief's for wranging thee,
Nor pity her deservèd smart,
Who can blame none but her fond heart;
For too soon trusting latest finds
With fairest tongues are falsest minds.
Baloo, Baloo, etc.

When he began to court my love,
And with his sugared words to move,
His tempting face and flutt'ring cheer
In time to me did not appear;
But now I see that cruel he
Cares neither for his babe nor me.
Baloo, Baloo, etc.

Baloo, my boy, thy father's fled,
When he the thriftless son has played:
Of vows and oaths forgetful, he
Preferred the wars to thee and me;
But now perhaps thy curse and mine
Makes him eat acorns with the swine.
Baloo, Baloo, etc.

Nay, curse not him: perhaps now he,
Stung with remorse, is blessing thee;
Perhaps at death, for who can tell
But the great Judge of heaven and hell,
By some proud foe has struck the blow,
And laid the dear deceiver[B] low.
Baloo, Baloo, etc.

I wish I were into the bounds
Where he lies smother'd in his wounds,
Repeating, as he pants for air,
My name, whom once he call'd his fair.
No woman's yet so fiercely set
But she'll forgive, though not forget.
Baloo, Baloo, etc.

ANCHOR CLOSE.

The tourist finds much to read, as he runs through old Edinburgh, in the mottoes on the house-fronts. These are mostly of a scriptural and devout character, such as: "Blissit.Be.God.In.Al.His.Giftis;" or, "Blissit.Be.The.Lord.In.His.Giftis.For.Nov.And.Ever." If he peeps into Anchor Close, where once was a famous tavern, he will find it entirely occupied by the buildings of the Scotsman newspaper, but the mottoes have been carefully preserved and built into the walls. The first is, "The.Lord. Is.Only.My.Svport;" a little farther on, "O.Lord.In.The.Is.Al.My.Traist;" and over the door, "Lord.Be.Merciful.To.Me." On other houses he may read, "Feare.The.Lord.And.Depart.From.Evill;" "Faith.In.Chryst.Onlie.Savit;" "My.Hoip.Is.Chryst;" "What.Ever.Me.Befall.I.Thank.The.Lord.Of.All." There are also many in the Latin tongue, such as, "Lavs Vbique Deo;" "Nisi Dominvs Frvstra" (the City motto);

"Pax Intrantibvs,
Salvs Exevntibvs."

Here is one in the vernacular: "Gif.Ve.Died.As.Ve.Sovld.Ve.Mycht.Haif.As.Ve.Vald;" which is translated, "If we did as we should, we might have as we would."

JOHN KNOX'S STUDY.

Near the end of the High street, on the way to the Canongate, stands John Knox's house, which has been put in order and made a show-place. The exterior, from its exceedingly picturesque character, is more attractive than the interior. The house had originally belonged to the abbot of Dunfermline, and when taken by Knox a very snug little study was added, built of wood and projecting from the front, in accordance with an order from the magistrates, directing "with al diligence to make ane warm studye of dailles to the minister John Knox, within his hous, aboue the hall of the same, with light and wyndokis thereunto, and al uther necessaris." The motto of this house is "Lvfe.God.Abvfe.Al.And.Yi.Nychtbovr.As.Yi.Self." A curious image at one corner was long thought to represent Knox preaching, and probably still does so in the popular belief; but others now think it represents Moses. It is an old man kneeling, with one hand resting on a tablet, and with the other pointing up to a stone above him carved to resemble the sun, and having on its disk the name of the Deity in three languages: "ΘΕΟΣ.Deus.God."

Of the style of Knox's preaching, even when he was enfeebled by ill-health, one gets a good idea from the following passage in James Melville's diary: "And by the said Rickart and an other servant, lifted up to the pulpit whar he behovit to lean, at his first entrie; bot or he had done with his sermon, he was sa active and vigorous, that he was lyk to ding that pulpit in blads and flie out of it."

ROOM IN WHICH KNOX DIED.

Passing on down Canongate, once the court suburb, we come to Moray House, the former residence of the earls of Moray, and at one time occupied by Cromwell. It is now used for a school, and is in much better preservation than many of its neighbors. At the very bottom of the Canongate, not far from Holyrood House, stands the White Horse Inn. The house has not been an inn for many years, but was chosen by Scott as the quarters of Captain Waverley: its builders probably thought little of beauty when they built it, yet squalor, dilapidation and decay have given it the elements of the picturesque, and the fact that Scott has mentioned it is sufficient to nerve the tourist to hold his nose and admire.

A black, gaunt, forbidding-looking structure near at hand was once the residence of the dukes of Queensberry. Charles, the third duke, was born in it: it is his duchess, Lady Catherine Hyde, whose pranks are so frequently recorded in Horace Walpole's letters—"very clever, very whimsical, and just not mad." Their Graces did not often occupy their Scottish residences, but in 1729, the lord chamberlain having refused his license to Gay's play, Polly, a continuation of the Beggar's Opera, the duke and duchess took Gay's part so warmly as to leave the court and retire to Queensberry House, bringing the poet with them.

WHITE HORSE INN.

The duchess was much sung by the poets of her day, among them Prior, who is now so little read that we may recall a few of his once well-known verses:

"Shall I thumb holy books, confined
With Abigails forsaken?
Kitty's for other things designed,
Or I am much mistaken.
Must Lady Jenny frisk about,
And visit with her cousins?
At balls must she make all the rout,
And bring home hearts by dozens?

"What has she better, pray, than I?
What hidden charms to boast,
That all mankind for her should die,
Whilst I am scarce a toast?
Dearest mamma, for once let me,
Unchained, my fortune try:
I'll have my earl as well as she,
Or know the reason why.

"I'll soon with Jenny's pride quit score,
Make all her lovers fall:
They'll grieve I was not loosed before—
She, I was loosed at all."
Fondness prevailed, mamma gave way:
Kitty, at heart's desire,
Obtained the chariot for a day,
And set the world on fire!

On the death of Duke Charles, Queensberry House came into the possession of his cousin, the earl of March, a singular man-about-town in London, known as "Old Q.:" he stripped it of all its ornaments, without and within, and sold it to the government for a barracks. It is now used as a house of refuge. On its gate are the following notices: "White-seam sewing neatly executed." "Applications for admission by the destitute any lawful day from 10 to 12." "Bread and soup supplied from 1 to 3, afternoon. Porridge supplied from 8 to 9, morning, 6 to 7, evening." "Night Refuge open at 7 P.M. No admission on Sundays." "No person allowed more than three nights' shelter in one month." Such are the mottoes that now adorn the house which sheltered Prior's Kitty.

A striking object in the same vicinity is the Canongate Tolbooth, with pepper-box turrets and a clock projecting from the front on iron brackets, which have taken the place of the original curiously-carved oaken beams. Executions sometimes took place in front of this building, which led wags to find a grim joke in its motto: "Sic.Itvr.Ad.Astra." A more frequent place of execution was the Girth Cross, near the foot of the Canongate, which marked the limit of the right of sanctuary belonging to the abbey of Holyrood. At the Girth Cross, Lady Warriston was executed for the murder of her husband, which has been made the subject of many ballads:

My mother was an ill woman:
In fifteen years she married me.
I hadna wit to guide a man:
Alas! ill counsel guided me.

O Warriston! O Warriston!
I wish that ye may sink fire in:
I was but bare fifteen years auld
When first I entered your gates within.

I hadna been a month married,
Till my gude lord went to the sea:
I bare a bairn ere he came hame,
And set it on the nourice knee.

But it fell ance upon a day
That my gude lord return'd from sea:
Then I did dress in the best array,
As blythe as ony bird on tree.

I took my young son in my arms,
Likewise my nourice me forebye,
And I went down to yon shore-side,
My gude lord's vessel I might spy.

My lord he stood upon the deck,
I wyte he hail'd me courteouslie:
"Ye are thrice welcome, my lady gay:
Wha'se aught that bairn on your knee?"

She turn'd her right and roundabout,
Says, "Why take ye sic dreads o' me?
Alas! I was too young married
To love another man but thee."

"Now hold your tongue, my lady gay:
Nae mair falsehoods ye'll tell to me;
This bonny bairn is not mine;
You've loved another while I was on sea."

In discontent then hame she went,
And aye the tear did blin' her e'e:
Says, "Of this wretch I'll be revenged
For these harsh words he said to me."

She's counsel'd wi' her father's steward,
What way she cou'd revenged be:
Bad was the counsel then he gave:
It was to gar her gude lord dee.

The nourice took the deed in hand:
I wat she was well paid her fee:
She keist the knot, and the loop she ran
Which soon did gar this young lord dee.

HOLYROOD AND BURNS'S MONUMENT.

Another version has:

The nurice she knet the knot,
And oh, she knet it sicker:
The ladie did gie it a twig,
Till it began to wicker.

The murder was committed on the 2d of July, 1600, and with the speedy justice of that time the punishment followed on the 5th. The lady was sentenced to be "wooried at the stake and brint," but her relatives had influence enough to secure a modification of the sentence, so that she was beheaded by the "maiden," a form of guillotine introduced by the Regent Morton. The original sentence was executed upon the nurse, who had no powerful relatives.

STONE ON WHICH THE COVENANT WAS SIGNED.

Directly opposite the Canongate Tolbooth is a very antiquated dwelling, with three gables to the street, which converses with the passer-by on envy and backbiting. It begins: "Hodie.Mihi.Cras.Tibi.Cur.Igitur.Curas" ("To-day, mine; to-morrow, thine; why then care?"). As if premising an unsatisfactory answer, it continues: "Ut Tu Linguae Tuae, Sic Ego Mear. Aurium, Dominus Sum." ("As thou of thy tongue, so I of my ears, am lord"), and finally takes refuge in "Constanti Pectori Res Mortalium Umbra" ("To the steadfast heart the affairs of mortals are but shadows").

In the plain at the foot of the Canongate stands Holyrood Abbey and Palace, which, with the exception of one wing containing Queen Mary's apartments, has been rebuilt within comparatively modern times. The abbey church is a crumbling ruin, although a power amid its decay, for it possesses still the right of sanctuary. This refuge offered by the Church was a softening and humanizing influence when private feuds were settled by the sword and the Far-West principle of death at sight generally prevailed: later on, it became an abuse, and gradually disappeared. The Holyrood sanctuary is the only one now existing in Great Britain, but is available for insolvent debtors only: it includes the precincts of the palace and the Queen's Park (five miles in circumference), but it contains no buildings except in that portion of the precincts extending from the palace to the foot of Canongate, about one hundred and thirty yards in a direct line. Within this limited district the debtor seeks his lodging, has the Queen's Park for his recreation, and on Sundays is free to go where he likes, as on that day he cannot be molested. It was a curious relic of old customs to read in Edinburgh newspapers in the year 1876 the following extract from a debtor's letter, in which he makes his terms with the sheriff: "However desirous I am to obey the order of the sheriff to attend my examination, I am sorry to be obliged to intimate that in consequence of the vindictive and oppressive proceedings of some of my creditors I cannot present myself in court at the diet fixed unless protection from personal diligence be granted. I will have much pleasure, however, in attending the court in the event of the sheriff granting a special warrant to bring me from the sanctuary, which warrant shall protect me against arrest for debt and other civil obligations while under examination, and on the way to and from the place of examination." The sheriff granted the warrant.

From Holyrood we fancy the traveler next remounting the hill into the Old Town, and seeking out the churchyard of Greyfriars, whose monuments, full of interest to the student and the antiquary, are in themselves an epitome of Scottish history. The church has been ravaged by fire and rebuilt, so that it retains but little antiquity: the churchyard, on the other hand, has seen few changes except in the increase of its monuments as time has passed on.

Here the Solemn League and Covenant was entered into. It was first read in the church, and agreed to by all there, and then handed to the crowd without, who signed it on the flat tombstones.

Among the most conspicuous monuments in this churchyard are, on the one hand, that to those who died for their fidelity to this Covenant, and on the other the tomb of Sir George Mackenzie, king's advocate and public prosecutor of the Covenanters.

On the Martyrs' Monument, as it is called, one reads: "From May 27th, 1661, that the most noble marquis of Argyle was beheaded, until Feb. 18th, 1688, there were executed in Edinburgh about one hundred noblemen, gentlemen, ministers and others: the most of them lie here.

"But as for them no cause was to be found
Worthy of death, but only they were sound,
Constant, and steadfast, zealous, witnessing
For the prerogatives of Christ their King,
Which truths were sealed by famous Guthrie's head."

And so on.

Dr. Thomas Guthrie, who, as we have seen, found much inspiration in the scenes of his daily walks, sought to trace his origin back to this Guthrie of the Martyrs' Monument. "I failed," he wrote, "yet am conscious that the idea and probability of this has had a happy influence on my public life, in determining me to contend and suffer, if need be, for the rights of Christ's crown and the liberties of His Church."

The learning and accomplishments of Sir George Mackenzie were forgotten amid the religious animosities of his day, and he came down to posterity as the terror of nursery-maids and a portentous bugaboo under the name of Bloody Mackenzie. It is related that the boys of the town were in the habit of gathering at nightfall about his tomb and shouting in at the keyhole,

Bluidy Mackenzie, come out if ye daur:
Lift the sneck and draw the bar!

after which they would scatter, as if they feared the tenant might take them at their word. The tomb is a handsome circular Roman temple, now much dilapidated by weather and soot, and so dark and sombre as to make it very uncanny in the gloaming, especially to one approaching it with the view of shouting "Bluidy Mackenzie" through the keyhole. This popular superstition was once turned to account by a youth under sentence of death for burglary. His friends aided him in escaping from prison, and provided him with a key to this mausoleum, where he passed six weeks in the tomb with the Bluidy Mackenzie—a situation of horror made tolerable only as a means of escape from death. Food was brought to him at night, and when the heat of pursuit was over he got to a vessel and out of the country.

MACKENZIE'S TOMB.

The New Town of Edinburgh is separated from the Old Town by the ravine of the North Loch, over which are thrown the bridges by which the two towns are connected. The loch has been drained and is now occupied by the Public Gardens and by the railway. The New Town is substantially the work of the last half of the past century and the first half of the present one—a period which sought everywhere except at home for its architectural models. In some of the recent improvements in the Old Town very pretty effects have been produced by copying the better features of the ancient dwellings all around them, but the grandiloquent ideas of the Georgian era could not have been content with anything so simple and homespun as this. Its ideal was the cold and pompous, and it succeeded in giving to the New-Town streets that distant and repellent air of supreme self-satisfaction which makes the houses appear to say to the curious looker-on, "Seek no farther, for in us you find the perfectly correct thing." The embodiment of this spirit may be seen in the bronze statue of George IV. by Chantrey, in George street: the artist has caught the pert strut so familiar in the portraits, at sight of which one involuntarily exclaims, "Behold the royal swell!"

THE NORTH BRIDGE.

But the New Town has two superb features, about whose merits all are agreed: we need hardly say these are Princes street and the Calton Hill. Princes street extends along the brow of the hill over-hanging the ravine which separates the two towns, and which is now occupied by public gardens: along their grassy slopes the eye wanders over trees and flowers to the great rock which o'ertops the greenery, bearing aloft the Castle as its crown, while from the Castle the Old Town, clustering along the height, streams away like a dark and deeply-colored train. The Calton Hill offers to the view a wide-spreading panorama. At our feet are the smoking chimneys of Auld Reekie, from which we gladly turn our eyes to the blue water and the shores of Fife, or seek out in the shadow of Salisbury Crags and Arthur's Seat the tottering arch of Holyrood Abbey. The hill is well dotted over,

All up and down and here and there,
With Lord-knows-what's of round and square;

which on examination prove to be monuments to the great departed. A great change has taken place in the prevalent taste since they were erected, and they are not now pointed out to the stranger with fond pride, as in the past generation. The best one is that to Dugald Stewart, an adaptation, the guide-books say, of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates. The all-pervading photograph has made it so familiar that it comes upon one as an old friend.

The Burns Monument is a circular edifice with columns and a cupola. It has all the outward semblance of a tomb, so that one is rather startled to find it tenanted by a canny Scot—a live one—who presides with becomingly sepulchral gravity over a twopenny show of miscellaneous trumpery connected with Robert Burns. Everywhere in old Edinburgh we have seen going on the inevitable struggle between utility and sentiment: at Burns's Monument it ceases, and we conclude our ramble at this point, where the sentimentalist and the utilitarian shake hands, the former deeply sympathizing with the sentiment which led to the building of the monument, while the latter fondly admires the ingenuity which can turn even a cenotaph to account.

Alfred S. Gibbs.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Baloo is a lullaby, supposed to be from the French Bas, là le loup—"Lie still, the wolf is coming."

[B] The "dear deceiver" was said to have been her cousin, the Hon. Alexander Erskine, brother to the earl of Mar. He came to a violent death, although not in the manner suggested in the ballad. While stationed at Dunglass Castle, engaged in collecting levies for the army of the Covenanters, an angry page thrust a red-hot poker into the powder-magazine, and blew him up with a number of others, so that there was "never bone nor hyre seen of them again."

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