“Oh, Edinboro’, is it?” answered his companion, letting down the window. “Oh, I s’y, this ain’t town,—I can smell the ’y!”
“That is the fimous Castle of Edinburg,” said the first, and both gazed out at the Calton jail.
A little old woman, shrivelled with age, and neat and clean as a russet apple in her white mutch and her shawl, gave a restless movement, but said nothing. No one noticed her.
“Wasn’t it at Edinboro’ that Janie Gedds lived?” asked the second youth, drawing in his head.
“Janie Gedds?—’oo was she?”
“W’y, Janie Gedds, that threw a stool at a dean’s ’ead and stopt a Church service.”
“Threw a stool at a dean’s ’ead and stopt a Church service? W’y, w’atever did she do that for? W’at imperence!”
And then suddenly the little old woman whom no one had noticed leant forward, a flash of fire in the deep-set eyes under the white mutch, and a brown wrinkled fist thrust out from the folds of the shawl. “Indeed, an’ she was verra richt, sirs! Verra richt, she was!—An’ I’d dae the same mysel’!”
The two Cockney youths collapsed as completely as ever did the dean.
When the deep-laid schemes of Charles I. “went agee,” the Presbyterians held undisputed possession of the Church of St. Giles. It was during this time that Sir John Gordon of Haddo, a Royalist, was imprisoned in the “Priest’s Chamber,” afterwards known as “Haddo’s Hole.” But, when Cromwell entered Edinburgh after the battle of Dunbar, the town was flooded with English Independents,—all manner of sects,—who preached in St. Giles’s Church and harassed the Presbyterians more than ever either Roman Catholics or Episcopalians had done, until even the General Assembly itself was prohibited by them from meeting in the church, and “It must have been a curious spectacle to see these gentlemen marched out of St. Giles’s by a band of fanatics more fanatical than themselves.”[31] So, when there came the Restoration of 1660, and Charles II. promised all that the Presbyterians asked, there was general rejoicing, and feasting at the City Cross, and after the Lord Provost and magistrates had “turned up their spiritual thanks to Heaven for so blessed an occasion,” they “in a most magnificent manner regaled themselves with those human lawful refreshment which is allowable for the grandeur of so eminent a blessing.”[32] And even Jenny Geddes, it is told, contributed her creels and her creepies to help form a bonfire.