but then Milton was the laureate of the other side, and his view was not that of the Scots.

Time passes on, and brings not merely the Restoration, but the Revolution; the Castle is true to the old cause under the Duke of Gordon, yet it gives in finally and becomes a hold for Jacobite prisoners, among whom was Lord Balcarres. On the night of the 27th of July 1689, a hand drew aside the curtains of the bed, and there was Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, gazing at his startled friend. Balcarres addressed the vision, but received no answer. The figure looked steadfastly upon the captive, moved towards the mantelpiece, and finally disappeared from the room, At that very hour, Dundee was lying dead at Killiecrankie, the most splendid and most useless of victories. The silver bullet had found its billet. The Covenanters were absolutely convinced that the persecutors were in direct league with Satan, who protected them to the utmost of his power. How else to explain their charmed lives, when so many hungered and thirsted after their death? How else to account for that reckless courage that provoked whilst it avoided the mortal stroke? What the object of those legends thought of them, we cannot tell, perhaps they were flattered. Dundee could turn his horse on the slope of a hill like a precipice, and his courage—but then courage was so cheap a commodity in old Scotland that only when it failed was there cause for wonder and contemptuous comment. However, the silver bullet was proof against enchantment, and Dundee ended as surely himself had wished. Legends gathered about a much grimmer figure, the very grimmest figure of all, Sir Thomas Dalzell of Binns. The long beard, the truculent, cruel visage, the martial figure, trained in the Muscovite service, well made up the man who never knew pity. Is it not told that he bent forward from his seat in the Privy Council, at a meeting in 1681, to strike with clenched fist the accused that was there for examination? “Is there none other hangman in the toun but yourself?” retorted the undaunted prisoner. Dalzell had the gift of devoted loyalty, no razor had touched his face since the death of Charles I. The legends about him are in character. At Rullion Green the Covenanters feeling their cause lost ere the battle was fought, noted with dismay that Dalzell was proof against all their shot. The bullets hopped back from his huge boots as hail from an iron wall. Ah, those terrible boots! if you filled them with water it seethed and boiled on the instant. Certain sceptics declare, by the way, he never wore boots at all! Did he spit on the ground, a hole was forthwith burnt in the earth. And yet, strange malice of fate, Sir Thomas died peaceably in his bed, even though his last hours were rumoured as anguished.

I pick up one or two memories of the supernatural from the closes and ways of old Edinburgh. The “sanctified bends” of the Bow are long vanished, and to-day nothing is more commonplace than the steps and the street that bears that memorable name. Its most famous inhabitant was no saint, except in appearance, for here abode Major Weir. From here he was hauled to prison in 1670, and thence to his doom at the Gallow Lee. “The warlock that was burned,” says “Wandering Willie” of him. The legend is too well known for detailed description. Here he lived long in the odour of sanctity, and finally, struck by conscience, revealed unmentionable crimes. This story had a peculiar fascination, both for Sir Walter Scott and R.L.S., both Edinburgh men, both masters of Scots romance, and they have dwelt lovingly on the strange details. The staff which used to run the Major’s errands, which acted as a link-boy to him o’ dark nights, which answered the door for him, on which he leaned when he prayed, and yet whereon were carved the grinning heads of Satyrs, only visible, however, on close inspection, and after the downfall of its master, was sure the strangest magic property ever wizard possessed. Its “rare turnings” in the fire wherein it was consumed, along with its master, were carefully noted. Long after strange sights were seen around his house. At midnight the Major would issue from the door, mount a fiery steed, which only wanted the head, and vanish in a whirlwind. His sister, Grizel Weir, who ended as a witch, span miraculous quantities of yarn. Perhaps this accounted for the sound as of a spinning-wheel that echoed through the deserted house for more than a century afterwards; but how to explain the sound as of dancing, and again as of wailing and howling, and that unearthly light wherewith the eerie place was flooded? How to explain, indeed! The populace had no difficulty, it was the Devil!

It would seem that Satan had an unaccountable and, one might say, a perverse fancy for the West Bow, abode of the righteous as it was. There are distinct traces of him there in the early part of November 1707. At that time a certain Mr. John Strahan, W.S., was owner of Craigcrook on Corstorphine Hill, the house that was to become a literary centre under Lord Jeffrey. He had left his town mansion under the care of a young servant-girl called Ellen Bell. On Halloween night, still a popular festival in Scotland, she had entertained two sweethearts of hers called Thomson and Robertson. She told them she was going to Craigcrook on the second morning thereafter, so they arranged to meet her and convoy her part of the way. At five o’clock on the Monday morning, behold the three together in the silent streets of the capital. The two youths politely relieved the girl of the key of the house and some other things she was carrying, and then, at the three steps at the foot of the Castle rock, they suddenly threw themselves upon her and beat the life out. They then returned to rob the house; probably they had gone further than they intended in committing murder. They were panic-stricken at what they had done, and each swore that if he informed against the other he was to be devoted, body and soul, to the Devil. It were better, quoth one, to put the matter in writing in a bond. “Surely,” echoed a suave voice, and by their side they found an agreeable smiling gentleman of most obliging disposition, who offered to write out the bond for them, and suggested as the most suitable fluid for signature their own blood. The story does not tell whether the two noticed anything remarkable about their courteous friend, something not quite normal about the foot, possibly a gentle hint of a tail. At any rate, they received the advances of the stranger in anything but an affable spirit, so presently found themselves alone. Mr. Strahan seems to have been a wealthy gentleman, for there was £1000 in his abode (sterling, be it observed, not Scots), with which the robbers made off. Robertson suggested the firing of the house, but this Thomson would not allow. Mr. Strahan advertised a substantial reward for the discovery of the criminals, but nothing was heard for a long time. If we are to believe Wodrow in his agreeable Analecta it required the supernatural intervention of Providence to unravel the mystery. Twelve months after, Lady Craigcrook (so Mrs. Strahan was known, by the courtesy of the time) had a strange dream. She saw Robertson, who had once been in her service, murder Ellen Bell, rob the house, and conceal the money in two old barrels under some rubbish. A search followed, unmistakable evidences of the robbery were found in Thomson’s possession. He confessed his guilt, and after the usual formalities made what might almost be called the conventional exit at the Grassmarket. We are not told whether he was favoured with another visit from his courteous old friend of the West Bow. The Scots criminal, like all his countrymen, had abundant courage; he was ready to “dree his weird,” or, in the popular language of our day, “face the music” with a certain stoical philosophy, but he almost invariably did so in a pious and orthodox frame of mind. Nothing could show more strongly the depth and strength of the popular belief than the frequency with which both persecutor and criminal turned at the end with whole-hearted conviction to the creed of the people. There is nothing in Scotland of those jovial exits which highwaymen like Duval and Sixteen-String Jack made at Tyburn tree, unless we count M‘Pherson an exception. He was hanged at Banff in 1700. For the last time he played the tune called M‘Pherson’s Rant on his fiddle, and we know how excellently Burns has written his epitaph; but he was only a wild Hielandman, so the contemporary Lowlander would have observed.

The West Bow runs off southward just where the Castle Hill joins the Lawnmarket. On the north side of the Lawnmarket a little way down there still stands Lady Stair’s Close and in it Lady Stair’s house, and about the same time, that is, the early years of the eighteenth century, there happened to Lady Stair, or Lady Primrose, as she then was, certain miraculous events which constitute the most romantic tradition of the Old Town. Scott has written a charming novelette, My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror, on the theme, and I can only present it here in the briefest possible fashion. Lord Primrose, the lady’s first husband, was, it would appear, mad, at any rate, he tried to kill his wife, in the which failing he left Auld Reekie and went abroad. As she wondered and speculated what had become of him, she heard a gossiping rumour of an Italian sorcerer possessed of strange power then in Edinburgh. He had a magic mirror wherein he could show what any absent person was doing at that precise moment. Lady Stair and her friend presently procured what we should call a séance. The magician dwelt in a dark recess of some obscure Canongate close, at least we must suppose so in order to get sufficient perspective, for all those localities in Edinburgh were so terribly near to one another. From Lady Stair’s Close to the Canongate is but a few minutes’ leisurely promenade. After certain preliminary rites the lady gazed in the magic mirror: it showed forth a bridal, and the bridegroom was her own husband; the service went on some way, and then it was interrupted by a person whom she recognised as her own brother. Presently the figures vanished, and the curtain fell. The lady took an exact note of the time and circumstances, and when her brother returned from abroad she eagerly questioned him. It was all true: the church was in Rotterdam, and her husband was about to commit the unromantic offence of bigamy with the daughter of a rich merchant when “the long arm of coincidence” led the brother to the church just in time. “Excursions and alarums” of an exciting nature at once ensued, but neither these nor the rest of the lady’s life, though that was remarkable enough, concern us here.

A little way farther down the street, as it nears the western wall of the Municipal Buildings, otherwise the Royal Exchange, there stood Mary King’s Close. I cannot, nor can anybody, it seems, tell who Mary King was. We have a picture of the close, or what remained of it in 1845; then the houses were vacant and roofless, the walls ruined, mere crumbling heaps of stones—weeds, wallflowers rankly flourishing in every crevice, for as yet the improver was only fitfully in the land. As far back as 1750 a fire had damaged the south or upper part of the close, which disappeared in the Royal Exchange. The place had been one of the spots peculiarly affected by the great plague of 1645; the houses were then shut up, and it was feared that if they were opened the pest would stalk forth again, but popular fancy soon peopled the close. If you lusted after a tremor of delicious horror you had but to step down its gloomy ways any night after dark and gaze through one of the windows. You saw a whole family dressed in the garb of a hundred years earlier and of undeniable ghost-like appearance quietly engaged in their ordinary avocations; then all of a sudden these vanished, and you spied a company “linking” it through the mazes of the dance, but not a mother’s son or daughter of them but wanted his or her head. In the close itself you might see in the air above you a raw head or an arm dripping blood. Such and other strange sights are preserved for us in Satan’s Invisible World Displayed which was published in 1685 by Professor George Sinclair of Glasgow, afterwards minister of Eastwood. He tells us wondrous tales of the adventures in this close of Thomas Coltheart and his spouse. After their entry on the premises there appeared a human head with a grey floating beard suspended in mid air, to this was added the phantom of a child, and then an arm, naked from the elbow and totally unattached, which made desperate but unsuccessful efforts to shake Mrs. Coltheart by the hand. Mr. Coltheart, in the most orthodox fashion, begged from the ghosts an account of their wrongs, that he might speedily procure justice for them; but in defiance of all precedent they were obstinately silent, yet they grew in number—there came a dog and a cat, and a number of strange and grotesque beings, for whom natural history has no names. The flesh-and-blood inhabitants of the room were driven to kneel on the bed as being the only place left unoccupied. Finally, with a heart-moving groan, the appearances vanished, and Mr. Coltheart was permitted to enjoy his house in peace till the day of his death, but then he must himself begin to play spectre. He appeared to a friend at Tranent, ten miles off, and when the trembling friend demanded, “Are you dead? and if so, why come you?” the ghost, who was unmistakably umquhile Coltheart, shook its head twice and vanished without remark. The friend proceeded at once to Edinburgh and (of course) discovered that Mr. Coltheart had just expired. The fact of the apparition was never doubted, but the why and the wherefore no man could discover, only the house was again left vacant. In truth, the ghost must have been rather a trouble to Edinburgh landlords; it was easy for a story to arise, and immediately it arose the house was deserted. An old soldier and his wife were persuaded to take up their abode there, but the very first night the candle burned blue, and the head, without the body, though with wicked, selfish eyes, was present, suspended in mid air, and the inmates fled and Mary King’s Close was given over as an entirely bad business. After all, the old soldier was not very venturesome, no more so than another veteran, William Patullo by name, who was induced to take Major Weir’s mansion. He was effectually frightened by a beast somewhat like a calf which came and looked at him and his spouse as they lay in bed and then vanished, as did the prospective tenants forthwith. It was not the age of insurance companies, else had there been a special clause against spooks!

One is able to smile at some of those stories because there is a distinctly comic touch about them. No one was the better or the worse for those quaint visions of the other world, except the landlords who mourned for the empty houses, against the which we must put the delight of the “groundlings” whose ears were delicately “tickled”; but the witches are quite another matter. Old Scots life was ugly in many respects, in none more so than in the hideous cruelties practised on hundreds of helpless old women, and sometimes on men, but to a much less extent. Some half-century ago the scientific world looked on tales of witchcraft as mere delusion, even though then the chief facts of mesmerism were known and noted. But phenomena which we now call “hypnotism” and “suggestion” are accepted to-day as facts of life, they are thought worthy of scientific treatment, and we now see that they explain many phenomena of witchcraft. Three hundred years ago everything was ascribed to Satan, and fiendish tortures were considered the due of his supposed children. A detailed examination is undesirable. What are we to learn, for instance, from the story of the Broughton witches who were burned alive, who, in the extremity of torture, renounced their Maker and cursed their fellow-men? Some escaped half burned from the flames and rushed away screaming in their agony, but they were pursued, seized, and thrown back into the fire, which, more merciful than their kind, at length terminated their life and suffering together. The leading case in Scotland was that of the North Berwick witches; it properly comes within our province, insomuch as James VI. personally investigated the whole matter at Holyrood. James was the author of a treatise on witchcraft, and was vastly proud of his gift as a witch-finder. The story begins with a certain Jeillie Duncan, a servant-girl at Tranent; she made so many cures that she was presently suspected of witchcraft. She was treated to orthodox modes of torture; her fingers were pinched with the pilliwinks, her forehead was wrenched with a rope, but she would say nothing until the Devil’s mark was found on her throat, when she gave in and confessed herself a servant of Satan. Presently there was no end to her confessions! She accused all the old women in the neighbourhood, especially Agnes Sampson “the eldest witch of them all resident in Haddington,” and one man, “Dr. Fian alias John Cunningham, Master of the Schoole at Saltpans in Lowthian.” Agnes Sampson was taken to Holyrood for personal examination by the King. At first she was obdurate, but after the usual tortures she developed a story of the most extraordinary description. She told how she was one of two hundred witches who sailed over the sea in riddles or sieves, with flagons of wine, to the old kirk of North Berwick. Jeillie Duncan preceded them to the kirk dancing and playing on the jews’ harp, chanting the while a mad rhyme. Nothing would serve the King but to have Jeillie brought before him. She played a solo accompaniment the while Agnes Sampson went on with her story. She described how the Devil appeared in the kirk, and preached a wretched sermon, mixed with obscene rites and loaded with much abuse of the King of Scotland, “at which time the witches demanded of the Devill why he did beare such hatred to the King?” who answered, “by reason the King is the greatest enemie hee hath in the world.” Solomon listened with mouth and ears agape, and eyes sticking out of his head in delighted horror, yet even for him the flattery was a little too gross or the wonders were too astounding. “They were all extreame lyears,” he roundly declared. But Agnes was equal to the occasion. She took His Highness aside, and told him the “verie wordes which passed betweene the Kinges majestie and his queene at Upslo in Norway, the first night of mariage, with there answere ech to other, wherat the Kinges majestie wondered greatly and swore by the living God that he believed that all the devils in hell could not have discovered the same, acknowledging her words to be most true, and therefore gave the more credit to the rest that is before declared.”

Thus encouraged she proceeded to stuff James with a choice assortment of ridiculous details; sometimes fear had the better of her and she flattered him, then possibly rage filled her heart and she terrorised him. For her and her “kommers” there was presently the same end. The King then moved on to Dr. Fian’s case, and he, after a certain amount of torture, began his extraordinary confessions, which, like his sisters in misfortune, he embroidered with fantastic details. Here is one incident. The doctor was enamoured of a young lady, a sister of a pupil. To obtain her affection he persuaded the boy to bring him three of his sister’s hairs. The boy’s mother was herself a witch, and thus trumped his cards. She “went to a young heyfer which never had borne calfe,” took three hairs from it, and sent them to Fian. He practised his incantations with surprising result. “The heyfer presently appeared leaping and dancing,” following the doctor about and lavishing upon him the most grotesque marks of affection.

There is a curious little story of Balzac’s Une passion dans le desert which recalls in an odd way this strange Scots episode, whereof it is highly improbable Balzac ever heard. Fian, it seems, had acted as registrar to the Devil in the North Berwick kirk proceedings. With it all he might possibly have escaped, but having stolen the key of his prison he fled away by night to the Saltpans. The King felt himself defrauded, and he soon had the doctor again in safe keeping. He felt himself still more defrauded when Fian not merely refused to continue his revelations, but denied those he had already made, and then “a most straunge torment” was ordered him. All his nails were torn off, one after another, with a pair of pincers, then under every nail there was thrust in, two needles up to the heads. He remained obdurate. He was then subjected to the torture of the “bootes,” “wherein hee continued a long time and did abide so many blowes in them that his legges were crusht and beaten together as small as might bee, and the bones and flesh so bruised that the blood and marrow spouted forth in great abundance, whereby they were made unserviceable forever.” He still continued stubborn, and finally was put into a cart, taken to the Castle Hill, strangled and thrown into a great fire. This was in January 1591. In trying to bring up the past before us it is necessary to face such facts, and to remember that James VI. was, with it all, not a cruel or unkindly man.

I gladly turn to a lighter page. The grimy ways of Leith do not suggest Fairy land, but two quaint legends of other days are associated therewith. In front of the old battery, where are now the new docks, there stood a half-submerged rock which was removed in the course of harbour operations. This was the abode of a demon named Shellycoat, from the make of his garments, which you gather were of the most approved Persian attire. He was a malevolent spirit of great power, a terror to the urchins of old Leith, and perhaps even to their elders, but like “the dreaded name of Demogorgon” his reputation was the worst of him. If he wrought any definite evil, time has obliterated the memory. When his rock was blasted, poor Shellycoat was routed out, and fled to return no more.

The other legend is of the fairy boy of Leith who o’ Thursday nights beat the drum to the fairies in the Calton Hill. Admission thereto was obtained by a pair of great gates, which opened to them, though they were invisible to others. The fairies, said the boy, “are entertained with many sorts of music besides my drum; they have besides plenty of variety of meats and wine, and many times we are carried into France or Holland in a night and return again, and whilst we are there we enjoy all the pleasures the country doth afford.” The fairy boy must at least be credited with a very vivid imagination. His questioner trysted him for next Thursday night: the youth duly turned up, apparently got what money he could, but towards midnight unaccountably disappeared and was seen no more. When people were so eager to discover the supernatural, one cannot wonder that they succeeded. In 1702, Mr. David Williamson was preaching in his own church in Edinburgh when a “rottan” (rat) appeared and sat down on his Bible. This made him stop, and after a little pause he told the congregation that this was a message of God to him. He broke off his sermon and took a formal farewell of his people and went home and continued sick. This was the time of the Union of the Kingdoms, and two years later, that is, in 1707, a mighty shoal of whales invaded the Firth of Forth, “roaring, plunging, and threshing upon one another to the great terror of all who heard the same.” Thirty-five of them foundered on the sands of Kirkcaldy, where they made a yet “more dreadful roaring and tossing, when they found themselves aground so much that the earth trembled. What the unusual appearance of so great a number of them at this juncture may portend, shall not be our business to inquire.” The chronicler is convinced that there must be some deep connection between such portentous events as the Union of the Crowns and the appearance of the whales, though with true scientific caution he does not think it proper to further riddle out the matter!

I collect here a few anecdotes of life on the streets, and among the people of old Edinburgh. The ancient Scots lived very sparely, yet sumptuary laws were passed, not to enable them to fare better, but to keep them down to a low standard. The English were judged mere gluttons; “pock puddings” the frugal Caledonian deemed them. It was thought the Southern gentlemen whom James I. and his Queen brought into Scotland introduced a sumptuous mode of living. In 1533, the Bishop of St. Andrews raged in the pulpit against the wasteful luxury of later years. A law was presently passed, fixing how each order should live, and prohibiting the use of pies and other baked meats to all below the rank of baron. In fashionable circles there were four meals a day, breakfast, dinner, supper, and livery, which last was a kind of collation taken in the bedchamber, before retiring to rest. A century ago it was usual to furnish the bedroom with liquor, which, perhaps, was a reminiscence of this old-world meal. The time for breakfast was seven, then came dinner at ten, supper at four, and livery between eight and nine. This detail is only of the well-off minority. Legislators need not have alarmed themselves, grinding poverty was the predominant note of old Scots life. Pestilence swept the land from time to time—one cause was imperfect sanitation; a stronger was sheer lack of food.

Here is James Melville’s account of plague-torn Edinburgh in November 1585:—“On the morn we made haste and coming to Losterrick (Restalrig) disjoined, and about eleven hours came riding in at the Water-gate up through the Canongate, and rode in at the Nether Bow through the great street of Edinburgh, in all whilk way we saw not three persons, sae that I miskenned Edinburgh, and almost forgot that I had ever seen sic a town.”

One effect of poverty was innumerable beggars. Naturally they thronged Edinburgh, where they made themselves a well-nigh intolerable nuisance. The Privy Council formulated edicts against “the strang and idle vagabonds” who lay all day on the causeway of the Canongate, and bullied the passers-by into giving them alms. Perhaps it was to regulate an abuse which could not be entirely checked, that the King’s bedesmen, or Bluegowns, as they were called, from their dress, were established or re-formed as licensed beggars. These assembled yearly on the King’s birthday to receive an annual dole of bread and ale and blue gown, and to hear service in St. Giles’. More welcome than all was the gift of a penny for every year of the King’s reign, which was given in a leather purse. The place was the north side of the Tolbooth, hence called “The Puir Folks’ Purses,” or more briefly, “The Purses.” The scene was afterwards transferred to the Canongate Church, and then it was done away with altogether. The analogous Maundy money is still distributed annually at Westminster Abbey. The classic example of this picturesque figure of old Scots life is Edie Ochiltree in The Antiquary, but in Scott’s time Bluegowns still adorned Edinburgh streets; hence the following anecdote. Scott, as he went to and fro from college, was in the habit of giving alms to one of those gentlemen. It turned out that he kept a son Willy, as a divinity student at college, and he made bold to ask Scott to share a humble meal with them in their cottage at St. Leonards, at the base of Arthur’s Seat. “Please God I may live to see my bairn wag his head in a pulpit yet.” At the time appointed Scott partook of the meal with father and son, the latter at first not unnaturally a little shamefaced. The fare was simple, but of the very best; there was a “gigot” of mutton, potatoes, and whisky. “Dinna speak to your father about it,” said Mrs. Scott to Walter; “if it had been a shoulder he might have thought less, but he will say that gigot was a sin.” The old Edinburgh beggars were no doubt a droll lot, though particulars of their pranks are sadly lacking. When Sir Richard Steele, known to his familiars as Dickie Steele, was in Edinburgh in 1718, he collected the oldest and oddest of them to some obscure “howf” in Lady Stair’s Close; he feasted them to their heart’s content and avowed “he found enough native drollery to compose a comedy.” Well, he didn’t, but the same century was to give us a greater than Steele and—The Jolly Beggars!

The folk of old Edinburgh were used to scenes of bloodshed—I tell elsewhere the story of “Cleanse the Causey,” as the historic street fight between the Douglases and the Hamiltons was called. It was almost a matter of necessity that men should go armed. Wild dissipation was a common incident, passions were high, and people did not hold either their own lives or those of others at any great rate. Here is a story from 1650, when the English were in occupation of Edinburgh, and so for the time the predominant party. An English officer had a squabble with some natives; he mounted his horse and said to them disdainfully, “With my own hands I killed that Scot which ought this horse and this case of pistols and who dare say that in this I wronged him?” He paid bitterly for his rashness. “I dare say it,” said one of his audience, “and thus shall avenge it.” He stabbed him with a sword right through the body so that he fell dead. The Scot threw himself into the vacant saddle, dashed over the stones to the nearest Port, and was lost for ever to pursuit.

The measures against those acts of violence were ludicrously ineffectual. In the houses the firearms were chained down lest they should be used in accidental affrays; but the streets were not policed at all, and gentlemen did much as they liked. It is told of Hugh Somerville of Drum, who died in 1640, that he went one day to St. Giles’ with Lady Ross, his sister-in-law. A gentleman happened by chance, it would seem, to push against him, there was a scuffle and Somerville had his dagger out on the instant, and would have stuck it into the intruder had not Lady Ross seized and held him; the while she begged the stranger to go away. A duel was like to ensue, but in cold blood the affair no doubt seemed ridiculous, and was made up. Quarrels about equally small matters often led to duels. In January 1708, two friends, young Baird of Saughtonhall and Robert Oswald, were drinking in a tavern at Leith, when they had a dispute; they accommodated it, and drove to Edinburgh together, they leave the coach at the Netherbow, when Baird revives the quarrel, and in a few minutes, or perhaps seconds, kills his friend with his sword. A reaction followed, and the assassin expressed his deep regret, which did not bring the dead man to life again; the other fled, but finally escaped without punishment as the act was not premeditated. One of the last incidents of this class was a duel between Captain Macrae of Marionville and Sir George Ramsay of Bamff in 1790. It arose out of a quarrel caused by the misconduct of a servant. Macrae shot his opponent dead, and then fled to France, and he never thought it safe to return to Scotland. Duelling was considered proper for gentlemen, but only for gentlemen, and not to be permitted to all and sundry. Towards the end of the sixteenth century a barber challenged a chimney sweep, and they had a very pretty “set to” with swords at which neither was hurt. The King presently ordered the barber to summary execution because he presumed to take the revenge of a gentleman. The upper classes did not set a good example to their inferiors. One need not discuss whether the Porteous mob was really a riot of the common people. The Heart of Midlothian, if nothing else, has made it a very famous affair. The Edinburgh mob, which was very fierce and determined according to Scott, had one or two remarkable maxims. At an Irish fair the proper course is to bring down your shillelagh on any very prominent head. Here the rule was to throw a stone at every face that looked out of a window. Daniel Defoe was in Edinburgh in 1705, on a special mission from Government, to do all he could to bring about the Union. From his window in the High Street he was gazing upon the angry populace and only just dodged a large stone. He afterwards discovered not merely the rule but the reason thereof, that there might be no recognition of faces. As the old cock crows the young cock learns, even the children were fighters. I have already told how the boys of the High School killed Bailie Macmorran in a barring out business. There is a legend of the famous Earl of Haddington, “Tam of the Coogate,” that when a fight was on between the lads of the High School and the students of the College, he took strenuously the side of the former. Nay, he drove the students out of the West Port, locked the gate in their faces, that they might cool themselves by a night in the fields, and placidly retired to his studies. The fighting tradition lasted through the centuries. Scott tells us of the incessant bickers between the High School and street callants, which, however lawless, had yet their own laws. During one of those fights a youth known from his dress as Green-breeks, a leader of the town, was stuck with a knife, and somewhat seriously wounded. He was tended in the Infirmary and in due time recovered, but nothing would prevail upon him to give any hint whereby his assailant might be discovered. The High Schoolboys took means to reward him, but the fights were continued with unabated vigour.

Student riots are a chapter by themselves, and in Edinburgh were almost to be looked upon as a matter of course, and to a mild extent still are, on such occasions as Rectorial elections. In past times no occasion was lost for burning the Pope in effigy, that was always a safe card to play. Even the piety of old Edinburgh served to stimulate its brawls. The famous commotion at the reading of the service book in St Giles’ on 23rd July 1637 is a case in point. Jenny Geddes is to-day commemorated within the Cathedral itself, and she lives in history by her classic pleasantry, on the Dean announcing the collect for the day: “Deil colic the wame o’ thee fause thief, wilt thou say mass at my lug?” There is one other story about Jenny to be told. On 19th June 1660 there were great rejoicings in Edinburgh upon the Restoration. There was service at the Church, banquet of sweetmeats and wine at the Cross, which ran claret for the benefit of the populace; at night there were fireworks at the Castle, effigies of Cromwell and the Devil were paraded through the streets, bonfires blazed everywhere, and as fuel for these last Jenny is reported to have contributed her stool. No doubt much water had run under the bridge since 1637; Jenny may or may not have changed her views, but she was nothing if not enthusiastic, and there was really no inconsistency in her conduct. Other folk than Jenny had a difficulty to reconcile their various devotions!

The people of Edinburgh had a strong aversion from bishops. On 4th June 1674, as the members of the Council were going to their meeting-place in the Parliament Close, fifteen ladies appeared with a petition for a free ministry. Archbishop Sharp was pointedly described as Judas, and Traitor. Indeed one of the ladies struck him on the neck, screaming that he should yet pay for it ere all was done. Any scandal against a bishop was readily circulated. Bishop Patterson of Edinburgh was lampooned as a profligate and loose liver. In the midst of a seemingly impassioned discourse he is said to have kissed, in the pulpit, his bandstrings, that being the signal agreed upon between him and his lady-love to prove that he could think upon her even in the midst of solemn duties. He was nicknamed “Bishop Bandstrings.” The bishops of the persecuting Church disappear from history in a rather undignified manner. Patrick Walker tells with great glee how at the Revolution, as the convention grew more and more enthusiastic for the new order, they, fourteen in number, “were expelled at once and stood in a crowd with pale faces in the Parliament Close.” Some daring members of the crowd knocked the heads of the poor prelates “hard upon each other,” the bishops slunk off, and presently were seen no more in the streets. “But some of us,” continues Patrick, “would have rejoiced still more to have seen the whole cabalsie sent closally down the Bow that they might have found the weight of their tails in a tow to dry their stocking soles, and let them know what hanging was.”

Villon had long before sung on a near prospect of the gallows⁠—

But you are sure Patrick had never heard of François, and the same dismally ludicrous idea had occurred independently.

Certain picturesque figures or rather classes of men lent a quaint or comic touch to the streets of old Edinburgh, but all are long swept into Time’s dustbin. One of these consisted of the chairmen. The Old Town was not the place for carriages; cabs were not yet, and even to-day they do not suit its steep and narrow ways; but the sedan chair was the very thing, you could trundle it commodiously up and down hill, and narrow must have been the close through which it could not pass. The chairmen who bore the burden of the chair were mainly Highlanders, who flocked to Edinburgh as the Irish did afterwards, and in early days formed a distinct element in city life. They are reported as of insatiable greed, but their earnings probably were but small and uncertain. Still such was their reputation, and it was once put to the test to decide a wager. Lord Panmure hired a chair and proceeded a short way down the Canongate. When he got out he handed the chairman a guinea. Millionaires were not yet in the land, possibly the chairman imagined he had found a benevolent lunatic, or he may even have smelt a wager. “But could her honour no’ shuist gie the ither sixpence to get a gill?” The coin was duly handed over, then Donald thought he might do something for his companion and preferred a modest request for “three bawbees of odd change to puy snuff.” But even the chairmen had another side. Among them was Edmund Burke, who died in 1751. He had been an attendant on Prince Charlie, and had as easily as you like netted £30,000 by treachery, for such was the handsome price fixed for the young chevalier, “dead or alive”; but it never crossed his mind to earn it!

Of much the same class were the caddies, whose name still lingers as the attendants on golf-players; the caddie was the man-of-all-work of old Edinburgh, for various indeed were his functions. Even to-day, if you look at some of the high houses, you remember how much time inhabitants must have spent in going up and down stairs; load the climber with burdens and life were scarce worth living. The chief burden was water, and the caddies were the class who bore the stoups containing it up and down. These water-carriers soon acquired a pronounced and characteristic stoop; they were dressed in the cast-off red jackets of the City Guard, the women among them had thick felt great-coats and hats like the men, their fee was a penny a barrel. The same name was applied to a division that worked with their brains rather than their hands; they knew every man in the town, and the name, residence, and condition of every stranger to whom they acted as guides and even companions. You sought your caddie at the Cross, where he would lounge of a morning on a wooden bench till some one was good enough to employ him. You remember the interesting account Scott gives of the caddies in the part of Guy Mannering which treats of the visit to Edinburgh of the Colonel.

Still more characteristic of old Edinburgh was the Town Guard, who for many a long day acted most inefficiently as police and guardians of the peace to the city. They are, so to speak, embalmed in the pages of Scott and Fergusson. The first treats them with a touch of comic contempt, the other calls them “the black banditti,” and deprecates their brutal violence. He had some cause, personal or otherwise. One of their number, Corporal John Dhu, a gigantic Highlander, as short of temper as he was long of body, during a city row with one fell stroke stretched a member of the mob lifeless on the pavement. The populace told wondrous legends of this corps. They existed, it was averred, before the Christian era, nay, some of them were present at the Crucifixion as Pilate’s guard! In truth they only dated from the seventeenth century, at any rate as a regularly constituted corps, and they came to an end early in the nineteenth. They attended all civic ceremonies and civic functions, their drums beat every night at eight o’clock in the High Street. Their guard-house long stood opposite the Tron Church. There was always a collision between them and the populace on occasion of rejoicing, as witness Fergusson’s Hallow Fair:

The unfortunate wretch received a still worse blow, nor even then were his troubles ended:

Once in the year, at any rate, the populace got their own back again—that was the King’s birthday, when the authorities assembled in the Parliament House to honour the occasion. Thereafter the mob went with one accord for the Guard, and always routed them after a desperate resistance. Scott jocosely laments the disappearance of those picturesque figures, with their uniform of rusty red, their Lochaber axes, their huge cocked hats. But two survived to be present at the inauguration of his monument on 15th August 1846. Their pay was sixpence a day. The Gaelic poet, Duncan Macintyre, was once asked if anything could be done to improve his worldly prospects. He confessed a modest ambition to be enrolled in the Edinburgh Town Guard! After this Burns’s post as a Dumfries exciseman might seem princely. All competent critics agree that Macintyre was the sweetest of singers, a poet of true genius, and that his laudatory epitaph in old Greyfriars was justly earned. Captain James Burnet, who died on the 24th August 1814, was the last commander of this ancient corps. If not so famous as some of his predecessors, Major Weir or Captain Porteous, for instance, he was still a prominent Edinburgh character. He weighed nineteen stones, yet, for a wager, climbed Arthur’s Seat in a quarter of an hour. You do not wonder that he lay panting on the earth “like an expiring porpoise.” He was one of the “Turners,” as those were scornfully called who assembled on Sunday afternoons, not to go to church, but to take a walk or turn. At an earlier day he and his fellows had been promptly pounced upon by the seizers, who were officials appointed to promenade the streets during the hours of divine service. These would apprehend the ungodly wanderer and even joints of mutton frizzling and turning with indecent levity on the roasting-jacks. In or about 1735 the blackbird of a Jacobite barber, in horrid defiance of the powers that were, civil and ecclesiastical, and to the utter subversion of Kirk and State, touched “the trembling ears” of the seizers with “The King shall enjoy his own again,” most audaciously whistled. The songster was forthwith taken into custody and transported to the guard-house.

Once the “seizers” got emphatically the worst of it. Dr. Archibald Pitcairne, poet, scholar, Jacobite, latitudinarian, was not in sympathy in many points with the Edinburgh of Queen Anne’s day, but he loved his glass as well as any of them. He had sent for some claret one Sunday forenoon, which the seizers had confiscated ere it reached his thirsty palate. The wit was furious, but he had his revenge. He doctored a few bottles of the wine with some strong drug of disagreeable operation, and then he procured its capture by the seizers. As he expected, the stuff went speedily down their throats; the result was all he could have wished. But Burnet came too late for all this, and a nickname was the only punishment for him and his fellows. He was also a prominent member of the Lawnmarket Club—the popular name for certain residents who met every morning about seven to discuss the news of the day, and to take their morning draught of brandy together. Nothing was done in old Edinburgh without the accompaniment of a dram; the “meridian” followed the “morning” (the very bells of St. Giles that chime the hour were known as the “gill” bells), as a matter of course, and both only sustained the citizen for the serious business of the evening. True, a great deal of the drinking was claret, indeed, huge pewter jugs or stoups of that wine were to be seen moving up and down the streets of Edinburgh in all directions, as ale jugs in London. When a ship arrived from Bordeaux the claret hogsheads were carted through the streets, and vessels were filled from the spigot at a very cheap rate. There was always a native-brewed “tippeny.” The curtain was already falling on old Edinburgh ere whisky was introduced as a regular article of consumption. A thin veil of decency was thrown over the dissipation; it was made a matter of aggravation in the charge against a gentleman of rank that he had allowed his company to get drunk in his house before it was dark in the month of July. The peculiar little separate boxes wherein the guests revelled in the Edinburgh taverns threw an air of secrecy and mystery over the proceedings. One of the most famous taverns was Johnny Dowie’s, in Libberton’s Wynd, where George IV. Bridge now stands. Its memories of Burns and Fergusson and a hundred other still famous names make it the Mermaid of Edinburgh. It had many baser clients. A visitor opens a door and finds a room, the floor covered with snoring lads. “Oh,” explains mine host with a tolerant grin, “just twa-three o’ Sir Wullie’s drucken clerks!” (Sir William Forbes the banker is meant). “The clartier the cosier,” says a wicked old Scots apothegm. Wolfe, the hero of Quebec, says that it was not till after Christmas, when the better folk had come into it from the country, that Edinburgh was “in all its perfection of dirt and gaiety.” There could not have been anything like sufficient water wherewith to wash, and all sorts of filth were hurled from the lofty houses into the street, “Gardy loo” was the conventional word of warning, uttered not seldom after and not before the event. Whether it was from the French “Gare à l’eau” may or may not be true. The delightful Mrs. Winifred Jenkins aptly translates it as: “May the Lord have mercy on your souls.”

Until imprisonment for debt was abolished the precincts of Holyrood were inhabited by fugitive debtors, for there these had the privilege of sanctuary. They were called Abbey lairds, and many were the stories told of the dodges to get them out of the bounds or to remain after Sunday was finished, for that was a free day for them. Two anecdotes may be quoted. On a certain Sunday in July 1709, Patrick Haliburton, one of those Abbey lairds, was induced to visit a creditor, by whom he was received with the utmost geniality. The bottle was produced and Patrick quaffed to his heart’s content; as he staggered from the door after midnight, a messenger seized him under a Writ of Caption and haled him off to prison. In 1724 Mrs. Dilkes, a debtor, had an invitation to a tavern within the verge, but to enter it she had to go a few paces beyond the Girth Cross. The moment she was outside she was nabbed; but this was too much for the women of the place, who rose in their might and rescued her.

The wit of old Edinburgh was satirical, bitter, scornful, and the practical jokes not in the best of taste. The Union, we know, was intensely unpopular, nowhere more than in the Canongate.