This house could also boast of that distinguished feature in all ancient wooden structures, a fore-stair, an antiquated convenience, or inconvenience, now almost extinct, consisting of a flight of steps, ascending from the pavement to the first floor of the mansion, and protruding a considerable way into the street. Nuisances as they still are, they were once infinitely worse. What will my readers think when they are informed that under these projections our ancestors kept their swine? Yes; outside stairs was formerly but a term of outward respect for what were as frequently denominated swine’s cruives; and the rude inhabitants of these narrow mansions were permitted, through the day, to stroll about the ‘High Gait,’ seeking what they might devour among the heaps of filth which then encumbered the street,[69] as barn-door fowls are at the present day suffered to go abroad in country towns; and, like them (or like the town-geese of Musselburgh, which to this day are privileged to feed upon the race-ground), the sullen porkers were regularly called home in the evening by their respective proprietors.
These circumstances will be held as sufficient evidence, notwithstanding all the enactments for the ‘policy of bigginis’ and ‘decoring the tounes,’ that the stranger’s constant reproach of the Scots for want of cleanliness was not unmerited. Yet, to show that our countrymen did not lack a taste for decent appearances, let it be recollected that on every occasion of a public procession, entry of a sovereign, or other ceremonial, these fore-stairs were hung with carpets, tapestry, or arras, and were the principal places for the display of rank and fashion; while the windows, like the galleries of a theatre compared with the boxes, were chiefly occupied by spectators of a lower degree.[70] The strictest proclamations were always issued, before any such occasion, ordaining the ‘middinis’ and the ‘swine’ to be removed, and the stairs to be decorated in the manner mentioned.
Beneath the stair of the house now under review there abode in later times an old man named Bryce, in whose life and circumstances there was something characteristic of a pent-up city like Edinburgh, where every foot of space was valuable. A stock of small hardwares and trinkets was piled up around him, leaving scarcely sufficient room for the accommodation of his own person, which completely filled the vacant space, as a hermit-crab fills its shell. There was not room for the admission of a customer; but he had a half-door, over which he sold any article that was demanded; and there he sat from morning till night, with his face turned to this door, looking up the eternal Lawnmarket. The place was so confined that he could not stand upright in it; nor could he stretch out his legs. Even while he sat, there was an uneasy obliquity of the stair, which compelled him to shrink a little aside; and by accustoming himself to this posture for a long series of years, he had insensibly acquired a twist in his shoulders, nearly approaching to a humpback, and his head swung a little to one side. This was l’air boutiquier in a most distressing sense.
In the description of this old tenement given in the title-deeds, it is called ‘All and haill that Lodging or Timber Land lying in the burgh of Edinburgh, on the north side of the High Street thereof, forgainst the place of the Tolbooth, commonly called the Poor Folks’ Purses.’ The latter place was a part of the northern wall of the prison, deriving its name from a curious circumstance. It was formerly the custom for the privileged beggars, called Blue-gowns, to assemble in the palace yard, where a small donation from the king, consisting of as many pennies as he was years old, was conferred on each of them; after which they moved in procession up the High Street, till they came to this spot, where the magistrates gave each a leathern purse and a small sum of money; the ceremony concluding by their proceeding to the High Church to hear a sermon from one of the king’s chaplains.[71]
THE KRAMES.
The central row of buildings—the Luckenbooths proper—was not wholly taken away till 1817. The narrow passage left between it and the church will ever be memorable to all who knew Edinburgh in those days, on account of the strange scene of traffic which it presented—each recess, angle, and coign of vantage in the wall of the church being occupied by little shops, of the nature of Bryce’s, devoted to the sale of gloves, toys, lollipops, &c. These were the Krames, so famous at Edinburgh firesides. Singular places of business they assuredly were; often not presenting more space than a good church-pew, yet supporting by their commerce respectable citizenly families, from which would occasionally come men of some consequence in society. At the same spot the constable (Earl of Errol) was wont to sit upon a chair at the ridings of the parliament, when ceremonially receiving the members as they alighted.
I am told that one such place, not more than seven feet by three, had been occupied by a glover named Kennedy, who with his gentle dame stood there retailing their wares for a time sufficient to witness the rise and fall of dynasties, never enjoying all that time the comfort of a fire, even in the coldest weather! This was a specimen of the life led by these patient creatures; many of whom, upon the demolition of their lath and plaster tenements, retired from business with little competencies. Their rents were from £3 to £6 per annum; and it appears that, huddled as the town then was around them, they had no inconsiderable custom. At the end of the row, under the angle of the church, was a brief stair, called The Lady’s Steps, thought to be a corruption of Our Lady’s Steps, with reference to a statue of the Virgin, the niche for which was seen in the east wall of the church till the renovation of the building in 1830. Sir George Mackenzie, however, in his Observations on the Statutes, states that the Lady’s Steps were so called from the infamous Lady March (wife of the Earl of Arran, James VI.’s profligate chancellor), from whom also the nine o’clock evening-bell, being ordered by her to an hour later, came to be called The Lady’s Bell. When men made bargains at the Cross, it was customary for them to go up to the Lady’s Steps, and there consummate the negotiation by wetting thumbs or paying arles.
CREECH’S SHOP.
The building at the east end of the Luckenbooths proper had a front facing down the High Street, and commanding not only a view of the busy scene there presented, but a prospect of Aberlady Bay, Gosford House, and other objects in Haddingtonshire. The shop in the east front was that of Mr Creech, a bookseller of facete memory, who had published many books by the principal literary men of his day, to all of whom he was known as a friend and equal. From this place had issued works by Kames, Smith, Hume, Mackenzie, and finally the poems of Burns. It might have been called the Lounger’s Observatory, for seldom was the doorway free of some group of idlers, engaged in surveying and commenting on the crowd in front; Creech himself, with his black silk breeches and powdered head, being ever a conspicuous member of the corps. The flat above had been the shop of Allan Ramsay, and the place where, in 1725, he set up the first example of a circulating library known in Scotland.