Previous to 1811, there remained unchanged in this place two tall massive houses, about two centuries old, one of which contained the town mansion of Sir John Byres of Coates, a gentleman of figure in Edinburgh in the reign of James VI., and whose faded tombstone may yet be deciphered in the west wall of the Greyfriars Churchyard. The Byreses of the Coates died out towards the end of the last century, and their estate has since become a site for streets, as our city spread westwards. The name alone survives in connection with an alley beneath their town mansion—Byres’s Close.
LORD COALSTOUN AND HIS WIG.
The fourth floor, constituting the Byres mansion, after being occupied by such persons as Lord Coupar, Lord Lindores, and Sir James Johnston of Westerhall, fell into the possession of Mr Brown of Coalstoun, a judge under the designation of Lord Coalstoun, and the father of the late Countess of Dalhousie. His lordship lived here in 1757, but then removed to a more spacious mansion on the Castle-hill.
A strange accident one morning befell Lord Coalstoun while residing in this house. It was at that time the custom for advocates, and no less for judges, to dress themselves in gown, wig, and cravat at their own houses, and to walk in a sort of state, thus rigged out, with their cocked hats in their hands, to the Parliament House.[65] They usually breakfasted early, and when dressed would occasionally lean over their parlour windows, for a few minutes before St Giles’s bell sounded the starting peal of a quarter to nine, enjoying the morning air, such as it was, and perhaps discussing the news of the day, or the convivialities of the preceding evening, with a neighbouring advocate on the opposite side of the alley. It so happened that one morning, while Lord Coalstoun was preparing to enjoy his matutinal treat, two girls, who lived in the second floor above, were amusing themselves with a kitten, which, in thoughtless sport, they had swung over the window by a cord tied round its middle, and hoisted for some time up and down, till the creature was getting rather desperate with its exertions. In this crisis his lordship popped his head out of the window directly below that from which the kitten swung, little suspecting, good easy man, what a danger impended, like the sword of Damocles, over his head, hung, too, by a single—not hair, ’tis true, but scarcely more responsible material—garter, when down came the exasperated animal at full career directly upon his senatorial wig. No sooner did the girls perceive what sort of a landing-place their kitten had found than, in terror and surprise, they began to draw it up; but this measure was now too late, for along with the animal up also came the judge’s wig, fixed full in its determined talons. His lordship’s surprise on finding his wig lifted off his head was much increased when, on looking up, he perceived it dangling its way upwards, without any means visible to him by which its motions might be accounted for. The astonishment, the dread, the almost awe of the senator below—the half mirth, half terror of the girls above—together with the fierce and relentless energy of retention on the part of Puss between—altogether formed a scene to which language could not easily do justice. It was a joke soon explained and pardoned; but assuredly the perpetrators of it did afterwards get many lengthened injunctions from their parents never again to fish over the window, with such a bait, for honest men’s wigs.
COMMENDATOR BOTHWELL’S HOUSE.
The eastern of the tenements, which has only been renovated by a new front, formerly was the lodging of Adam Bothwell, Commendator of Holyrood, who is remarkable for having performed the Protestant marriage ceremony for Mary and the Earl of Bothwell. This ecclesiastic, who belonged to an old Edinburgh family of note, and was the uncle of the inventor of logarithms,[66] is celebrated in his epitaph in Holyrood Chapel as a judge, and the son and father of judges. His son was raised to the peerage in 1607, under the title of Lord Holyroodhouse, the lands of that abbacy, with some others, being erected into a temporal lordship in his favour. The title, however, sunk in the second generation. The circumstance which now gives most interest to the family is one which they themselves would probably have regarded as its greatest disgrace. Among the old Scottish songs is one which breaks upon the ear with the wail of wronged womanhood, mingled with the breathings of its indestructible affections:
‘Baloo, my boy, lie still and sleep,
It grieves me sair to see thee weep.
If thou’lt be silent, I’ll be glad;
Thy mourning makes my heart full sad....