1598.
‘... ane man, some callit him a juggler, playit sic supple tricks upon ane tow, whilk was fastenit betwixt the top of St Giles’s Kirk steeple and ane stair beneath the Cross, callit Josia’s Close head, the like was never seen in this country, as he rade down the tow and playit sae mony pavies on it.’—Bir.
Practitioners of such dangerous arts were not uncommon in those days. The death, in Edinburgh, of one Kirkaldy, ‘who had before danced at the cock of the steeple [St Giles’s],’ is noted in the history of the civil broils of 1571.[238]
Mr James Melville reports in 1600: ‘Being in Falkland, I saw a funambulus, a Frenchman, play strange and incredible proticks upon stented tackle in the palace close before the king, queen, and haill court.’ He adds the vulgar surmise of the day: ‘This was politickly done, to mitigate the queen and people for Gowrie’s slaughter.’
It appears that these diverting vagabonds were well rewarded. The juggler of 1598, called an ‘English sporter,’ had twenty pounds from the king for the steeple-trick. Two months after, six pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence was ordered to ‘David Weir, sporter,’ supposed to be the same person. To Peter Bramhill, the French pavier—that is, player of pavies—there is a precept from his majesty, ordering him no less a sum than £333, 6s. 8d.[239]—but of course Scottish money.
‘This year the wheat was blasted.’—Chron. Perth. ‘The ait meal sold for 6s. the peck.’—Bir.
There was, consequently, towards the end of the year, ‘ane extraordinar dearth of all kinds of pultrie and other vivres,’ throughout the realm, but particularly did this kind of scarcity prevail in Edinburgh, ‘where his hieness, his nobility and council, in sundry seasons of the year, make their chief residence.’ The king issued a proclamation, fixing a minimum of prices for the said articles, not to be exceeded under certain penalties. This, however, was now found ‘likely to become altogether ineffectual, partly through the avaritious greediness of some persons wha forestalls and buys the pultrie in grit, and keeps the same in secret houses, and there sells the same far above the prices exprest in the proclamation,’ and partly by the negligence of magistrates, who take no care to punish ‘the authors of this disorder.’ For these reasons, a more rigorous and menacing proclamation was now made.
1598.
A fortnight after, followed an edict of Council against twenty-four poultrymen of Edinburgh (surprising there should have then been so many in the business), who, it was said, had contravened the late proclamation by forestalling and secretly selling their poultry at high prices, representing the fowls as ‘his majesty’s awn kain fowls, or that they are bocht by them for his majesty’s awn mouth ... slanderand his majesty hereby, as if his majesty were the chief cause of the break of the said proclamation.’