REV. THOMAS SOMERVILLE
From a Photograph in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery
What pleases me more in this scenery is that it is so perfectly characteristic of the country, so purely Scottish . . . No man in Edinburgh can for a moment forget that he is in Scotland.” It is almost startling to look up from the grime of the Canongate to the solitary nooks of Arthur’s Seat, though the sea of houses spreads miles around. Whatever scenic effects remain, the historical effects of the landscape are vanished. With what various emotions the crowd from every point of vantage must have watched Dundee’s progress along the Lang Gate to his interview with the Duke of Gordon on the Castle rock! And the town was not much changed when, rather more than half a century afterwards, the citizens, some of them the same, watched, after the affair at Coltbridge, the dragoons gallop along the same north ridge in headlong flight, a sight which promptly disposed the townsfolk’s minds in the direction of surrender. One gloomy tragedy of the year 1717 affords a curious illustration of this command of prospect. A road called Gabriel’s Road once ran from the little hamlet of Silvermills on the Water of Leith southward to where the Register House now stands. Formerly you crossed the dam which bounded the east end of the Nor’ Loch, and by the port at the bottom of Halkerston’s Wynd you entered old Edinburgh just as you might enter it now by the North Bridge, though at a very different level. To-day Gabriel’s Road still appears in the street directory, but it is practically a short flight of steps and a back way to a collection of houses. In the year mentioned a certain Robert Irvine, a probationer of the church, on or near this road, cruelly murdered his two pupils, little boys, and sons of Mr. Gordon of Ellom, whose only offence was some childish gossip about their preceptor. The instrument was a penknife, and the second boy fled shrieking when he saw the fate of his brother, but was pursued and killed by Irvine, whom you might charitably suppose to be at least partially insane were not deeds of ferocious violence too common in old Scots life. The point of the story for us is that the tragedy was clearly seen by a great number from the Old Town, though they were powerless to prevent. The culprit was forthwith seized, and as he was taken red-handed, was executed two days after by the authorities of Broughton, within whose territory the crime had occurred. His hands were previously hacked off with the knife, the instrument of his crime. The reverend sinner made a specially edifying end, not unnaturally a mark of men of his cloth. In 1570, John Kelloe, minister of Spott, near Dunbar, had, for any or no reason, murdered his wife. So well had he managed the affair that no one suspected him, but after six weeks his conscience forced him to make a clean breast of the matter. He was strangled and burned at the Gallow Lee, between Edinburgh and Leith. His behaviour at the end was all that could be desired. It strikes you as overdone, but from the folk of the time it extorted a certain admiration. The authorities were as cruel as the criminals. A boy burns down a house and he is himself burned alive at the Cross as an example. In 1675 two striplings named Clarke and Ramsay, seventeen and fifteen years old, robbed and poisoned their master, an old man named Anderson. His nephew, Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, warned by a recurring dream, set off for Edinburgh, and instituted investigations which led to the discovery of the crime. The youthful culprits were hanged “both in regard to the theft clearly proven and for terror that the Italian trick of sending men to the other world in figs and possits might not come overseas to our Island.” Now and again there is a redeeming touch in the dark story. In 1528 there was an encounter between the Douglases and the Hamiltons at Holyrood Palace. A groom of the Earl of Lennox spied Sir James Hamilton of Finnart, who had slain his master, among the crowd. He presently attacked Sir James in a narrow gallery, and wounded him in six places, though none was mortal. The groom was discovered and dragged off to torture and mutilation. His right hand was hacked off; whereupon “he observed with a sarcastic smile that it was punished less than it deserved for having failed to revenge his beloved master.” I have mentioned the Gallow Lee between Edinburgh and Leith. It was the chosen spot for the execution of witches, and for the hanging in chains of great criminals. The hillock was composed of very excellent sand. When the New Town was built it had been long disused as a place of execution, and the owner of the soil had no difficulty in disposing of a long succession of cartloads to the builders. He insisted on immediate payment and immediately spent the money at an adjacent tavern, maintained if not instituted for his special benefit. He drank to the last grain as well as to the last drop and vanishes from history, the most extreme and consistent of countless Edinburgh topers!
I have still something illustrative to say of prisoners. When Deacon Brodie was executed, 1st October 1788, his abnormal fortitude was supposed to ground itself on an expectation that he would only be half hanged, would be resuscitated, and conveyed away a free man. He seems to have devised some plan to this end, but “the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men,” we are told on good authority, “aft gang agley,” and so it was here. Edinburgh has one or two instances of revival. On the 18th February 1594-95, Hercules Stewart was hanged at the Cross for his concern in the crimes of his relative the Earl of Bothwell. He was an object of popular sympathy, as believed to be “ane simple gentleman and not ane enterpriser.” The body, after being cut down, was carried to the Tolbooth to be laid out, “but within a little space he began to recover, and moved somewhat, and might by appearance have lived. The ministers being advertised hereof went to the King to procure for his life, but they had already given a new command to strangle him with all speed, so that no man durst speak in the contrary.” There was not much encouragement to be got from this story. Yet a woman some generations afterwards had better fortune—the very name of “half-hangit Maggie Dixon” of itself explains the legend. She was strung up for child-murder in the Grassmarket, and her body had a narrow escape from being carried off by a party of medical students to the dissecting room, as it was put in a cart and jolted off landward. Those in charge stopped before a little change-house for refreshment, however, and when they came forth, Maggie sat upright in the cart, very much alive and kicking. Apparently she lived happy ever after. She was married, had children, and, no doubt, looked upon herself as a public character. Was it only popular imagination that perceived a certain twist in the neck of the good lady? Many famous men perished on Edinburgh scaffolds, and many more filled the Edinburgh prisons, were they Castle or Tolbooths, namely, the Heart of Midlothian cheek by jowl with St. Giles’, or the quaint smaller one, which still stands in the Canongate. The anecdotes of prisoners are numerous. Here is one lighter and less grimy than the bulk. When Principal Carstares was warded in the Castle in 1685, a charming youth of twelve years, son of Erskine of Cambo, came to his prison daily, and brought him fruit to relieve the monotony of the fare, and what to a scholar was just as essential, pen, ink, and paper. He ran his errands and sat by the open grating for hours. After the revolution “the Cardinal” was all-powerful in Scots matters; he did not forget his young friend, and procured him the post of Lord Lyon King at Arms, but the family were out in the ’15, and the dignity was forfeit. You gather from this pleasing story that prison life in Edinburgh had its alleviations, also escapes were numerous. In 1607, Lord Maxwell was shut up in the Castle, and there also was Sir James Macdonald from the Hebrides. They made the keepers drunk, got their swords from them by a trick, and locked them safely away. The porter made a show of resistance. “False knave,” cried Maxwell, “open the yett, or I shall hew thee in bladds” (pieces), and he would have done it you believe! They got out of the Castle, climbed over the town wall at the West Port, and hid in the suburbs. Macdonald could not get rid of his fetters, and was ignominiously taken in a dung-hill where he was lurking; Maxwell made for the Border on a swift horse, and remained at large, in spite of the angry proclamations of the King. James Grant of Carron had committed so many outrages on Speyside that the authorities, little as they recked of what went on “benorth the mont,” determined to “gar ane devil ding another.” Certain men, probably of the same reputation as himself, had undertaken to bring him in dead or alive. He and his fellows were in fact captured. The latter were speedily executed, but he was kept for two years in the Castle, and you cannot now guess wherefor. One day he observed from his prison window a former neighbour, Grant of Tomnavoulen, passing by. “What news from Speyside?” asked the captive. “None very particular,” was the reply; “the best is that the country is rid of you.” “Perhaps we shall meet again,” quoth James cheerfully. Presently his wife conveyed to him what purported to be a cask of butter, in fact it held some very serviceable rope, and so in the night of the 15th October 1632 the prisoner lowered himself over the Castle wall, and was soon again perambulating Speyside, where, you guess, his reception was of a mixed description.
Among the escapes of the eighteenth century I pick out two, both from the Heart of Midlothian. One was that of Catherine Nairn in 1766. She had poisoned her husband, and was the mistress of his brother. She was brought to Leith from the north in an open boat, and shut up in the Tolbooth. The brother, who had been an officer in the army, was executed in the Grassmarket, but judgment was respited in the case of the lady on the plea of pregnancy. She escaped by changing clothes with the midwife, who was supposed to be suffering from severe toothache. She howled so loudly as she went out, that she almost overdid the part. The keeper cursed her for a howling old Jezebel, and wished he might never see her again. Possibly he was in the business himself. The lady had various exciting adventures before she reached a safe hiding-place, almost blundered, in fact, into the house of her enemies. She finally left the town in a postchaise, whose driver had orders, if he were pursued, to drive into the sea and drown his fare as if by accident, and thus make a summary end of one whose high-placed relatives were only assisting her for the sake of the family name. The levity of her conduct all through excited the indignation and alarm of those who had charge of her; perhaps she was hysterical. She got well off to France, where she married a gentleman of good position, and ended “virtuous and fortunate.” This seems the usual fate of the lady criminal; either her experience enables her to capture easily the male victim, or her adventures give her an unholy attraction in the eyes of the multitude. She is rarely an inveterate law-breaker, as she learns from bitter experience that honesty and virtue are the more agreeable policies. Other than wealthy and well-connected criminals escaped. In 1783 James Hay lay in the condemned hold for burglary. Hay and his father filled the keeper drunk. Old Hay, by imitating the drawl of the keeper uttering the stereotyped formula of ‘turn your hand,’ procured the opening of the outer door, and the lad was off like a hare into the night. With a fine instinct of the romantic he hid himself in “Bluidy Mackenzie’s” tomb, held as haunted by all Edinburgh. He was an “auld callant” of Heriot’s Hospital, which rises just by old Greyfriars’, and the boys supplied him with food in the night-time. When the hue and cry had quieted down, he crawled out, escaped, and in due time, it was whispered, began a new life under other skies. Probably the ghostly reputation of that stately mausoleum in Greyfriars’ Churchyard was more firmly established than ever. What could be the cause of those audible midnight mutterings, if not the restless ghost of the persecuting Lord Advocate?
As drinking was the staple amusement of old Edinburgh, “the Ladies” was naturally the most popular toast: a stock one was, “All absent friends, all ships at sea, and the auld pier at Leith.” This last was not so ridiculous as might be supposed, for it was famous in Scott’s song, teste the only Robin, to name but him, and Scots law, for it was one of the stock places at which fugitives were cited, as witness godly Mr. Alexander Peden himself. The toastmakers were hard put to it sometimes for sentiments. A well-known story relates how one unfortunate gentleman could think of nothing better than “the reflection of the mune on the calm bosom o’ the lake.” As absurd is the story of the antiquary who sat at his potations in a tavern in the old Post Office Close on the night of 8th February 1787. Suddenly he burst into tears; he had just remembered on that very day “twa hunner year syne Queen Mary was beheaded.” His plight was scarce so bad as that of the shadow or hanger-on of Driver clerk to the famous Andrew Crosbie, otherwise Counsellor Pleydell. The name of this satellite was Patrick Nimmo. He was once mistaken, when found dead drunk in the morning after the King’s birthday, for the effigy of Johnnie Wilkes which had been so loyally and thoroughly kicked about by the mob on the previous evening. One of his cronies wrote or rather spoke his epitaph in this fashion: “Lord, is he dead at last! Weel, that’s strange indeed. I drank sax half mutchkins wi’ him doun at the Hens only three nichts syn! Bring us a biscuit wi’ the next gill, mistress. Rab was aye fond o’ bakes.” Of course the scene was a tavern, and the memory of poor Rob was at least an excuse for another dram.
This is not very genial merry-making, but geniality is never the characteristic note of Scots humour from the earliest times. In 1575 the Regent Morton kept a fool named Patrick Bonney, who, seeing his master pestered by a crowd of beggars, advised him to throw them all into one fire. Even Morton was horrified. “Oh,” said the jester coolly, “if all these poor people were burned you would soon make more poor people out of the rich.” No wonder the old-time fools were frequently whipped. The precentor and the beadle were in some ways successors of the old-time fool.
WILLIAM SMELLIE
From an Engraving after George Watson
Thomas Neil fulfilled the first office in old Greyfriars’ in the time of Erskine and Robertson. He could turn out a very passable coffin, and did some small business that way which made him look forward to the decease of friends with a not unmixed sorrow. “Hech, man, but ye smell sair o’ earth,” was his cheerful greeting to a sick friend. One forenoon the then Nisbet of Dirleton met him in the High Street rather tipsy. Even the dissipation of old Edinburgh had its laws, and the country gentleman pointed out that the precentor’s position made such conduct improper. “I just tak’ it when I can get it,” said Neil, with a leer.
All the wits of old Edinburgh hit hard. Alexander Douglas, W.S., was known as “dirty Douglas.” He spoke about going to a ball, but he did not wish it reported that he attended such assemblies. “Why, Douglas,” said Patrick Robertson, “put on a well-brushed coat and a clean shirt and nobody will know you.” Andrew Johnson, a teacher of Greek and Hebrew, combined in himself many of the characteristics of Dominie Sampson. He averred that Job never was a schoolmaster, otherwise we should not have heard so much about his patience. He was on principle against the sweeping of rooms. “Cannot you let the dust lie quietly?” he would say. “Why wear out the boards rubbing them so?” He wished to marry the daughter of rich parents though he had no money himself. The father objected his want of means. “Oh dear, that is nothing,” was the confident answer. “You have plenty.”