CHAPTER V
SOME NOTABLE INHABITANTS, AND THEIR DWELLINGS
I ken a toon, wa’d roond, and biggit weel,
Where the women’s a’ weel-faured, and the men’s brave and leal,
And ye ca’ ilka ane by a weel-kent name;
And when I gang to yon toon,—I’m gangin’ to my hame!
I ken a toon: it’s gey grim and auld;
It’s biggit o’ grey stane, and some finds it cauld;
It’s biggit up and doon on heichts beside the sea;
But gif I get to yon toon—I’se bide there till I dee!
THE cosmopolitan view is nowadays the fashionable one, and no man stoops to own to a national prejudice, a national accent, or even a national pride. It may be as well. Trafalgar might have been won had Nelson never advised his men to hate a Frenchman as they would the devil. Perhaps, and perhaps not. It sounds a trifle harsh that King Robert the Bruce, on the mere suspicion that Sir Piers de Lombard had “ane English hart,” “made him to be hangit and drawen.” Perhaps, and perhaps not. At any rate, our stay-at-home ancestors bore the stamp of their nationality on character, thought, physiognomy, and speech. There were strong feelings in those days, that often found strong expression, and there were racy eccentricities and unsuppressed play of individuality; and all this gave colour and zest to local society. Before centralisation robbed Edinburgh of so many of her best citizens, her society was full of intellectual chiefs, of notabilities, and of “characters.” After all that has been said and sung of the beauty and romance of the grey metropolis, it is in great part due to the number and variety of remarkable persons who have been citizens of Edinburgh, or are in some way associated with it, that it wields so great a fascination and inspires so deep an interest.
The history of Edinburgh to the end of the eighteenth century is the history of the Old Town; and all the inhabitants till then were Old Town citizens. Few cities can enumerate so varied and brilliant a series. In the first place, of the unbroken line of Stuart sovereigns of Scotland, all, from the poet King James I. to Queen Mary, are famed alike for their beauty and their intellect. Their Edinburgh dwellings were the Castle and Holyrood. Then there is a long train of great Scottish nobles and clergy who lived in Edinburgh and helped to rule Scotland. There is a goodly company of learned men—prose writers, politicians, historians, “humanists,” mathematicians. In the earlier centuries they were mostly Catholic Churchmen; but, after the Reformation, they were Catholics, Presbyterian divines, or Episcopalians, or they were clustered about the University in unsectarian pasturages. There is a splendid procession
