That grated and fortified edifice which occupies the centre of the main street is the Prætorium of Edinburgh—a rallying point for the citizens in time of war and tumult; and on its vaults shall arise the grim Tolbooth of future ages.
The bare-headed and bare-legged children that nestle on the steps of the cross are stringing necklaces and rosaries of the red rowan berries (that whilom grew in St. Giles's churchyard), to save them from fairies and elves; and now they all rise in reverence to yonder cowled friar, who hastens down to see the train of Douglas pass from the abbot's house.
That green slope on the south of the great church is the burial-ground of St. Giles's:—
"There lie
Those who in ancient days the kingdom ruled,
The councillors of favourites of kings;
High lords, and courtly dames, and valiant chiefs,
Mingling their dust with those of lowest rank
And basest deeds, and now unknown as they."
There sleep the great, the good, the peaceful and the turbulent, the faithful and the false, all bent together in their quaint old coffins and flannel shrouds, with money in their dead hands, and crosses or chalices on their breasts. Old citizens, who remembered the long-haired King David, passing forth with barking hound and twanging horn, in that Rood-day in harvest, which so nearly cost him his life; and how the fair Queen Margaret daily fed the poor at the castle-gate, "with the tenderness of a mother;" those who had seen Randolph's patriots scale "the steep, the iron-belted rock,"—Count Guy of Namur's Flemish lances routed on the Burgh-muir, and wight Wallace mustering his bearded warriors at midnight by the Figgate-burn, ere he marched to storm Dunbar.
That white spot above the gate of the Portsburgh is the bleached skull of Sir Robert Graham, who was the first to plunge his dagger in the heart of James I. It has been there since 1436, when those awful tortures took place before the Roman legate, and filled even him with horror.
The lofty old mansion on the south side of the long street down which we look from the ramparts, is the residence of the princely abbot of Cambus Kenneth; the gilt vanes in the distance are those of a similar edifice where dwells John Fogo, abbot of Melrose, author of a work against the heresy of Paul Crawer, who, in 1432, was sent hither from Bohemia, by John Huss, to preach the gospel, undeterred by the flames to which Fogo had consigned Resby, the Englishman, thirty-two years before.
In the centre of the street are wooden booths, where the country folks, in their canvas gaberdines and hoods of hodden grey, or the burgesses in their pourpoints of good Flemish cloth, may "cheapen" ale at sixteenpence per gallon; otherwise, the brewster or tapster shall have a hole punched in their measures at the market-cross, where now the women of the adjacent villages and farms are arranging their baskets of butter and poultry for sale; and see! there, at this moment, come the town officers, with their halberts and helmets, and the common headsman, in the provost's livery, with a cresset full of blazing coals. Now a crowd gathers: the halberts flash as they are swayed to and fro by the pressure of the people. Then a shriek rises!
They are publicly branding on the cheek a poor woman, a leper, who has rashly ventured within the burgh; though yesterday, by sound of trumpet, at this same old market-cross, the people of the city, and the villages called Leith and Broughton, were forbidden to attend the fairs of Anster and St. Monance, under pain of pit and gallows, as the plague called the het-sickness,—the same disease of which Archibald earl of Douglas died at Restalrig,—rages in Fife.
If the reader, in fancy, can realize all this, he will see the quaint old Edinburgh of 1440 clustering on the steep ridge,—