It is now called the Bore-stone, or Hare-stane, and is preserved from injury by being securely fastened on the top of the wall, while its history is inscribed on a bronze tablet beneath.
After this brief divergence, we turn to the left, and find ourselves in a few minutes back on Bruntisfield Links, where our pilgrimage to-day began. Before ending this chapter, it might be worth while to give the true ghost-story of the Wryteshouses, as so many different versions have been told of it.
Towards the middle of the last century, the Wryteshouses was rented for a year by General Robertson of Lawers, while his own house in Perthshire was undergoing some alterations. He had at the time a black servant, who was given a room near his master's. The first morning, the man came scared and trembling to General Robertson, and said he could not stay another night in the house, for that, after he had fallen asleep, he had been roused by a noise, and saw a headless lady, with a child in her arms, walking up and down the room. General Robertson treated the story with ridicule, and the man was persuaded to sleep in the same room the following night. Next morning he again came, entreating to be allowed to go away altogether, rather than to suffer such terrors. The General would not listen to him, and would neither let him go away, nor even change his room. The man got thinner and more miserable-looking every day, and was quite out of health when, by the end of the year, they returned to Lawers.
Many years passed. General Robertson died, and was succeeded by his niece, Mrs. Williamson (whose husband, Lord Balgray, was a Lord of Session). She was one day visited at Lawers by a friend, to whose family the Wryteshouses belonged. This lady asked her if, during the twelvemonth they had spent there, any of the family had heard or seen anything extraordinary. Mrs. Williamson, in answer, told her the story of the black servant. The lady was much interested, and asked whether he was still alive, and if it would be possible to hear him tell the story himself. Mrs. Williamson replied, that was quite easy, as, though now an old man, he was living close by, in a cottage that had been given him. She sent for him, and he repeated his story, and said the year he had spent at the Wryteshouses had been one of terror and misery, as, to the very last night of his stay, the lady had walked backwards and forwards in his room, with the child in her arms. Mrs. Williamson's visitor made him describe exactly the room he had inhabited, and then told him that, in making some alterations in that very room, they had lately discovered a large closet, which they had broken open. Inside they found a box containing the skeletons of a woman and a little child. The box was too short, so the woman's head had been cut off, and placed beside her. In the same closet was also found a chest full of MS. papers. One of these papers appeared to be a sort of confession, written by an ancestor of the family; who said that his elder brother (the owner of the property) had been ordered abroad to the wars, leaving his wife and child to the care and guardianship of the younger brother. He never returned, and the writer owned to having murdered both mother and child, setting about a report that they had died, and by these means possessed himself of the inheritance.[17]
The Wryteshouses,—Wrychtishousis,—or Wrightshouses, as it is variously spelt, was pulled down in 1800 to make room for Gillespie's Hospital, a very ugly edifice built in accordance with the will of James Gillespie, who had amassed a large fortune as a tobacconist. The ancient family of Napier of the Wryteshouses has long been extinct. They were in no way related to the Napiers of Merchiston, but probably were a branch of Kilmahew, whose estates lay in the Lennox. The arms of the two families indicate this connection, both having a bend azure; on which Kilmahew bore three crescents, and Wryteshouses a crescent between two mullets. The Napiers of Merchiston bear arms quite distinct from either, a saltier engrailed, cantonned with four roses.[18]
WALK II.
St. Roque—The Grange—Blackford—Liberton—St. Catherine's Well—Gilmerton—The Burnt Grange—The Drum—Moredun—The Inch.