The crest, arms, trade-mark or badge of Haddington is a goat. There is no doubt about that, for Billy (or is it a Nanny?) has his (or her) effigy on many of the old buildings. Only by comparison and by slow degrees is it that the stranger arrives at the conclusion that it is a goat, for the drawing of many of these representations leaves much to be desired. Some resemble an elephant, others a horse, others yet what “the mind’s eye, Horatio” might conceive a Boojum to be like; but in the open space where High Street and Market Street join, the modern Market Cross, surmounted by a more carefully executed carving, determines the species.
This is the centre of the town and neater than its entrance from the south. The steepled classic building close by is not a church but the Town House, masquerading in ecclesiastical disguise, very much as Berwick’s Town Hall does. From this point it is only seventeen miles into Edinburgh; but in 1750 and for long after the coach journey employed the best efforts of the local stage during the whole day. Musselburgh, little more than eleven miles away, was reached in time for dinner, and only when evening was come did the lumbering vehicle lurch into its destination in Auld Reekie, when every one went to bed, bruised and weary with the toils of the expedition. The road at that time must have resembled the specimen of roadway still adorning the south entrance to Haddington.
To-day, happily, it is in good condition as far as Levenhall, seven miles short of our journey’s end, whence it is bad beyond the credibility of those who have not seen it. Gladsmuir, Macmerry, and Tranent are interposed between; places that sink their memories of the battle of Prestonpans in iron-founding and coal-digging and suchlike, disregarding the futilities of the Stuarts. As for Macmerry, whose name prefigures orgies at the most of it, or sober revelry at the very least, it is odds against your finding as depressing a place within a hundred miles. If place-names were made to fit, why, then, Macdolour might suit it to a marvel. Why? Just because it stands at the crest of a barren knowe; an ugly row of cottages on either side, with cinders and dust, clinkers and mud in front of them, and some gaunt works within eyeshot. God knows who christened the place, or if the name signified merriment, but, if it did, either the scene has changed wholly since then, or else he was a humorist of the sardonic sort who so dubbed it. Tranent, too, a townlet subsisting upon collieries: how grimly commonplace! But it at least has this advantage, that from its elevated foothold it looks down upon the Firth of Forth, that noble firth which Victor Hugo blundered over so whimsically in rendering it as “la Premiére de la Quatrième.” Seen under the summer sun, how glorious that seaward view, with the villages of Preston and Cockenzie, half hidden by their woodlands, by the level shores. Half-way down from Tranent’s hillside you see a fine panorama: Arthur’s Seat in front, Calton Hill and its Nelson’s column, peering from behind, and the distant shores of Fife, with blowing smoke-clouds, many miles away. Between Arthur’s Seat and the Calton, Edinburgh is hid, nine miles from this point. Down in the levels in the mid-distance there are hints of Musselburgh in smoke-wreaths and peeping towers; and mayhap, while you gaze, the southward-bound train, with its white puff of steam, is seen setting forth on its long journey Londonwards. In these levels was fought the battle of Prestonpans, Sunday, September 21, 1745, around that village of Preston and those briny meads where the salt-pans used to be and are no longer.
Preston—formerly Priest’s Town—got its name at the time when it was part of the celebrated Abbey of Newbattle. The monks of that religious house were the first discoverers of coal in Scotland, and also, in the twelfth century, made this district the seat of a manufacture of salt. Prestonpans, indeed, at one time supplied the whole of the East Coast with salt, and it was only on the repeal of the Salt Duty that this old town fell into decay. Women, known as salt-wives, a class almost as picturesque as the fish-wives of Newhaven, used to carry the salt in creels on their backs, to sell in Edinburgh and other towns.
In an orchard stands what was once the ancient village cross, erected in 1617, in place of an earlier. Well-known as the “Chapmen’s Cross,” it was the meeting-place of the chapmen, packmen, or pedlars of the Lothians. They gathered early in July, transacted the business of their guild and elected their “King” and his “Lord Deputy” for the ensuing year. The “ink-bottle,” cut in stone, into which they dipped their pens, is still visible on the base of the cross. The Bannatyne Club saved it from utter destruction, and instituted a convivial guild, the “Society of Chapmen of the Lothians,” visiting the cross every year, with Sir Walter Scott as one of their members.
The world has vastly changed since “the Forty-five.” It has, as a small detail, ceased to produce its salt by evaporation of sea water; and, a larger and more significant matter, no longer wages war for sake of dynasties. The Highlanders who fought and gained this fleeting victory for Prince Charlie were the last who drew the sword for Romance and Right Divine. Prince Charlie had moved out of his loyal Edinburgh at the approach of the English under Sir John Cope, who, of course, in that fine foolish manner of British officers, which will survive as long as the officers themselves, wholly underrated his enemy. He was defeated easily, with every circumstance of indignity, his soldiers fleeing in abject terror before the impetuous charge of the ferocious hairy-legged Highlanders, emerging, figures of grotesque horror, out of the mists slowly dispersing off the swampy fields in the laggard September sunrise.
The English numbered 2100 against the 1400 under Prince Charlie; but only four minutes passed between the attack and the flight. In that short space of time the field was deserted and the clansmen, pursuing the terror-stricken rabble which just before had been a disciplined force, slew nearly four hundred of them. The total loss of the Highlanders in slain was thirty, nearly the whole of them falling in the first discharge of musketry. Almost incredible, but well-authenticated, stories are told of the cowardice of Cope’s regiments. Cope himself was swept away in the wild rush, vainly endeavouring to stem it, and it was not until they were two miles from the field, at St. Clement’s Wells, that he could bring them to a halt. Even then, the accidental discharge of a pistol scared them off again, and although no one pursued, they rode off with redoubled energy. This precipitate retreat of mounted troops over miles of country, from an unmounted enemy who were not pursuing them, is perhaps the most disgraceful incident in the military history of the country.
The flying infantry were in far worse case. In endeavouring to escape by climbing the park walls of Preston, they were cut down in great numbers by the terrible broadswords of the Highlanders. Colonel Gardiner and a brave few were cut down defending themselves on the field of battle. One story, of a piece with many others, relates how a Highlander, pursuing alone a party of ten soldiers, struck down the hindermost with his sword, and shouting, “Down with your arms!” called upon the others to surrender. They threw their weapons away without looking behind them, and the Highlander, his sword in one hand and a pistol in the other, drove them—nine of them!—prisoners into camp. Everywhere Cope, so helter-skelter was his flight, himself brought the first news of his defeat. He reached Coldstream that night, and did not rest until the next day he was within the sheltering fortifications of Berwick.
We will not further pursue the fortunes of the Young Pretender, but hurry on into Levenhall.