Sir George Mackenzie’s Mausoleum.
So ends our gossip respecting a building which has witnessed and contained the meetings of the Scottish parliament in the romantic days of the Jameses—which held the first fixed court of law established in the country—which was looked to by the citizens in a rude age as a fortified place for defence against external danger to their lives and goods—which has immured in its gloomy walls persons of all kinds liable to law, from the gallant Montrose and the faithful Guthrie and Argyll down to the humblest malefactor in the modern style of crime—and which, finally, has been embalmed in the imperishable pages of the greatest writer of fiction our country has produced.
[SOME MEMORIES OF THE LUCKENBOOTHS.]
Lord Coalstoun and his Wig—Commendator Bothwell’s House—Lady Anne Bothwell—Mahogany Lands and Fore-stairs—The Krames—Creech’s Shop.
A portion of the High Street facing St Giles’s Church was called the Luckenbooths, and the appellation was shared with a middle row of buildings which once burdened the street at that spot. The name is supposed to have been conferred on the shops in that situation as being close shops, to distinguish them from the open booths which then lined our great street on both sides; lucken signifying closed. This would seem to imply a certain superiority in the ancient merchants of the Luckenbooths; and it is somewhat remarkable that amidst all the changes of the Old Town there is still in this limited locality an unusual proportion of mercers and clothiers of old standing and reputed substantiality.
Tolbooth and Luckenbooths—looking East.