A younger son of Tam o’ the Cowgate was a person of much ingenuity, and was popularly known, for what reason I cannot tell, by the nickname of ‘Dear Sandie Hamilton.’ He had a foundry in the Potterrow, where he fabricated the cannon employed in the first Covenanting war in 1639. This artillery, be it remarked, was not formed exclusively of metal. The greater part of the composition was leather; and yet, we are informed, they did some considerable execution at the battle of Newburnford, above Newcastle (August 28, 1640), where the Scots drove a large advanced party of Charles I.’s troops before them, thereby causing the king to enter into a new treaty. The cannon, which were commonly called ‘Dear Sandie’s Stoups,’ were carried in swivel fashion between two horses.
The Excise-office had been removed, about 1730, from the Parliament Square to the house occupied many years before by Tam o’ the Cowgate. It afforded excellent accommodations for this important public office. The principal room on the second floor, towards the Cowgate, was a very superb one, having a stucco ceiling divided into square compartments, each of which contained some elegant device. To the rear of the house was a bowling-green, which the Commissioners of Excise let on lease to a person of the name of Thomson. In those days bowling was a much more prevalent amusement than now, being chiefly a favourite with the graver order of the citizens. There were then no fewer than three bowling-greens in the grounds around Heriot’s Hospital; one in the Canongate, near the Tolbooth; another on the opposite side of the street; another immediately behind the palace of Holyrood House, where the Duke of York used to play when in Scotland; and perhaps several others scattered about the outskirts of the town. The arena behind the Excise-office was called Thomson’s Green, from the name of the man who kept it; and it may be worth while to remind the reader that it is alluded to in that pleasant-spirited poem by Allan Ramsay, in imitation of the Vides ut alta of Horace:
‘Driving their ba’s frae whins or tee,
There’s no ae gouffer to be seen,
Nor doucer folk wysing a-jee
The byas bowls on Tamson’s green.’
The green was latterly occupied by the relict of this Thomson; and among the bad debts on the Excise books, all of which are yearly brought forward and enumerated, there still stands a sum of something more than six pounds against Widow Thomson, being the last half-year’s rent of the green, which the poor woman had been unable to pay. The north side of Brown’s Square was built upon part of this space of ground; the rest remained a vacant area for the recreation of the people dwelling in Merchant Street, until the erection of the bridge, which has overrun that, as well as every other part of the scene of this article.[211]