The High School, a venerable civic institution dating from the sixteenth century, still occupied the site of the Blackfriars’ Monastery, at the east end of the ridge from which the ruined Kirk-of-Field was displaced by the newly-founded university in Queen Mary’s time. The modern policeman had not yet superseded the old city watch. The High School Wynd, a singularly picturesque alley of timber-fronted lands, at the foot of which stood the palace of Cardinal Beaton, gave access to the Cowgate, a plebeian haunt, the young roughs of which maintained a hereditary feud against the “puppies” of the High School. A stray High School boy, especially if he was a “guite” or freshman, venturing into that Alsatia, incurred all the risks of a wanderer into an enemy’s lines; and from time to time a bicker, or pitched battle with sticks and stones, between the “puppies” of the High School and the “blackguards” of the Cowgate, came off by mutual understanding on a Saturday in the Hunter’s Bog or on the Links. The school numbered upwards of seven hundred boys. The Yards, as the playground was called, presented the busy scene characteristic of similar juvenile gatherings. But there was then less of restraint either by masters or police than under the new régime of school boards and “peelers.” Out of school boys settled their own affairs, and righted their own wrongs, with results that seem to me on the whole to have tended to develop manliness and self-restraint. In the general sports, as well as in organized bickers or raids into the enemy’s quarters, after some Cowgate encroachment upon the amenities of the school, all were one; but the acquaintance even with the boys of our own class was partial. They naturally formed into little groups of kindred spirits, the beginnings in some cases of life-long friendships.
Dr. Philip Maclagan, referring to those early school-days, says: “I was one of the original members of the Juvenile Society for the Advancement of Knowledge. The society met on Friday evening; papers were read by the members in rotation, and questions previously started were debated. I remember some of them—‘Whether the whale or the herring afforded the more useful and profitable employment to mankind?’ ‘Whether the camel was more useful to the Arab or the reindeer to the Laplander?’ and similar puzzles for youthful ingenuity.” As yet political and social questions were unheeded; and the Saturday rambles, for which Edinburgh offers such rare advantages, furnished materials for subsequent discussion in diverse geological, botanical, and antiquarian subjects of interest. Those excursions extended to Cramond; to Royston Castle, picturesquely crowning a rock near the sea-shore; to Newhaven, Leith, or Portobello; or landward, to Craigmillar Castle, Corstorphine, Colinton, the Esk; and to the Braid or Blackford Hill: a stolen pleasure, since we were at that time liable to pursuit and ejection as trespassers. The Arthur’s Seat as well as the Blackford Hill of those days, if less adapted for the proprieties of a city park, were more to the taste of youthful explorers while still in a state of nature. It was the Blackford of young Walter Scott—
“On whose uncultured breast,
Among the broom, and thorn, and whin,
A truant boy, I sought the nest;
Or listened, as I lay at rest,
While rose on breezes thin
The murmur of the city crowd.”
Already, when Scott penned his “Marmion,” the agriculturist and the builder were working havoc on the scene. How much more may survivors of that younger circle now say,—
“O’er the landscape, as I look,
Nought do I see unchanged remain,
Save the rude cliffs and chiming brook.
To me they make a heavy moan
Of early friendships past and gone.”
But such feelings found no place in the thoughts of the eager truants. Close at hand were the never-failing Calton Hill, or Arthur’s Seat and Duddingston, with charm enough for a pleasant ramble, but also utilized, along with more extended excursions, for collecting specimens to furnish material for subsequent discussion in their Juvenile Society, as well as contributions to the museum which was already in course of formation.
The sea-shore had then, as in later years, a peculiar charm for William Nelson. To the very close of his life an excursion in company with some favourite companion to Newhaven, or to North Berwick, and off in one of the fishermen’s boats to fish for haddock or whitings, furnished one of his most prized recreations. But it was at Kinghorn, his mother’s birthplace, on the opposite shore of the Firth of Forth, that his choicest holidays were spent. In a letter written in long subsequent years to his old schoolmate and friend, the Rev. Dr. Simpson of Derby, when an event, hereafter referred to, brought him anew into intimate relations with the place, he thus recalls the memories of his early boyhood:—“My connection with Kinghorn has been very close; and my love for it, as my mother’s birthplace, and the place where I spent many very happy days in my earliest years, and during my school holidays afterwards, is very great. I was exceedingly fond of fishing, both from the rocks on the sea-shore and at Kinghorn Loch; and happier days were never spent by any youngster than were those days of mine at Kinghorn. I knew every rock on the coast from Pettycur onwards to Seafield Tower on East the Braes, which is not far from the ‘lang toon of Kirkcaldy;’ and a finer sea-coast for grand rocks there is not anywhere on the northern coast of the Firth of Forth. I was as happy as I could be from morning till night. I remember the talks, too, in those early days by the old folks, which were principally about Paul Jones’s visit to the Firth, my grandmother having seen his ship from the little hamlet of Glassmount, about two miles from Kinghorn, where she was born, and where her parents stayed at that time.
“Another favourite subject of talk was the ‘windy Saturday,’ a tremendous day of wind, when only one vessel, it was said, out in the Firth of Forth, was able to face the stormy blasts without coming to grief. A third subject of talk with the old folks was the mischief that steam-boats had done to the town, as, before they began to run, there were big boats to carry passengers; and as they started only at particular times of the tide, and did not go during the night, passengers had generally to stay some time in the town till the boats were ready to start—that is, for Leith, as there was no Newhaven in those days. ‘What a good this did to the town!’ and, ‘What a mistake it was to upset the quiet, easy way of taking things, as they were in those good old days, by the introduction of steam-boats!’ My mother’s uncle, John Macallum, was the captain of the first steam-boat, or, at all events, one of the first, that sailed on the Firth of Forth, its name being the Sir William Wallace. It unfortunately was wrecked on some rocks near Burntisland.
“I could enlarge upon such themes to a great extent, and upon my companions of those early days; but, alas! those companions have all passed away, with two exceptions—namely, Henry Darney, a worthy citizen of Kinghorn, and Major Greig, now of Toronto, Canada. My connection with Kinghorn came to a close about 1836, when my grandmother died; but such a liking have I for the place, that I have paid it a short visit almost every year since that time.”
His more intimate relations with Kinghorn, as he states, terminated with the death of his grandmother; but his fondness for it remained through life. In 1885 his eldest sister, Mrs. George Brown, returned from Canada, and I am indebted to her for some interesting early reminiscences recalled by more than one visit made in his company to their mother’s birthplace. “It was there,” she writes, “he spent all his holidays as a boy; and so eager was he to get to the place that the very afternoon of the breaking up of school often saw him on board the ferry-boat on his way across the Forth, fishing-rod in hand and fishing-basket on back. For fishing he had a perfect passion. At Newhaven, Kinghorn, Crail, North Berwick, and Oban, he was well known and greatly liked by all the fishermen, although frequently their patience must have been pretty well put to the test when they were taken out in rough weather by William, and they knew there were no fish to be had.