The North Loch was the place in which our pious ancestors used to dip and drown offenders against morality, especially of the female sex. The Reformers, therefore, conceived that they had not only done a very proper, but also a very witty thing, when they threw into this lake, in 1558, the statue of St Giles, which formerly adorned their High Church, and which they had contrived to abstract.
It was also the frequent scene of suicide, and on this point one or two droll anecdotes are related. A man was deliberately proceeding to drown himself in the North Loch, when a crowd of the townspeople rushed down to the water-side, venting cries of horror and alarm at the spectacle, yet without actually venturing into the water to prevent him from accomplishing the rash act. Hearing the tumult, the father of the late Lord Henderland threw up his window in James’s Court, and leaning out, cried down the brae to the people: ‘What’s all the noise about? Can’t ye e’en let the honest man gang to the de’il his ain gate?’ Whereupon the honest man quietly walked out of the loch, to the no small amusement of his lately appalled neighbours. It is also said that a poor woman, having resolved to put an end to her existence, waded a considerable way into the water, designing to take the fatal plunge when she should reach a place where the lake was sufficiently deep. Before she could satisfy herself on that point, her hoop caught the water, and lifted her off her feet. At the same time the wind caught her figure, and blew her, whether she would or not, into the centre of the pool, as if she had been sailing upon an inverted tub. She now became alarmed, screamed for help, and waved her arms distractedly; all of which signs brought a crowd to the shore she had just left, who were unable, however, to render her any assistance, before she had landed on the other side—fairly cured, it appeared, of all desire of quitting the uneasy coil of mortal life.
[THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE.]
Old Arrangements of the House—Justice in Bygone Times—Court of Session Garland—Parliament House Worthies.
The Parliament House, a spacious hall with an oaken arched roof, finished in 1639 for the meetings of the Estates or native parliament, and used for that purpose till the Union, has since then, as is well known, served exclusively as a material portion of the suite of buildings required for the supreme civil judicatory—the Court of Session. This hall, usually styled the Outer House, is now a nearly empty space, but it was in a very different state within the recollection of aged practitioners. So lately as 1779, it retained the divisions, furnishings, and other features which it had borne in the days when we had a national legislature—excepting only that the portraits of sovereigns which then adorned the walls had been removed by the Earl of Mar, to whom Queen Anne had given them as a present when the Union was accomplished.
The divisions and furniture, it may be remarked, were understood to be precisely those which had been used for the Court of Session from an early time; but it appears that such changes were made when the parliament was to sit as left the room one free vacant space. The southern portion, separated from the rest by a screen, accommodated the Court of Session. The northern portion, comprising a sub-section used for the Sheriff-court, was chiefly a kind of lobby of irregular form, surrounded by little booths, which were occupied as taverns, booksellers’ shops, and toy-shops, all of very flimsy materials.[90] These krames, or boxes, seem to have been established at an early period, the idea being no doubt taken from the former condition of Westminster Hall. John Spottiswoode of Spottiswoode, who, in 1718, published the Forms of Process before the Court of Session, mentions that there were ‘two keepers of the session-house, who had small salaries to do all the menial offices in the house, and that no small part of their annual perquisites came from the kramers in the outer hall.’