Chapter ELEVEN: The Streets

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—

“Or d’une corde d’une toise
Saura mon col que mon cul poise.”

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_:

“Jock Bell gaed forth to play his freaks,
Great cause he had to rue it,
For frae a stark Lochaber aix
He gat a _clamihewit_
Fu’ sair that night.”

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

“He, peching on the causey, lay
O’ kicks an’ cuffs well sair’d.
A highland aith the serjeant gae
She maun pe see our guard.
Out spak the warlike corporal,
‘Pring in ta drunken sot!’
They trail’d him ben, an’ by my saul
He paid his drucken groat
For that neist day.”

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.

“London and death gar thee look dool,”

sings Allan Ramsay. Holyrood was at an end, save for the election of representative Peers. At the first after the Union it was noted that all elected were loyal to the English government, “a plain evidence of the country’s slavery to the English Court.” A fruit-woman paraded the courts of the palace bawling most lustily, “Who would buy good pears, old pears, new pears, fresh pears—rotten pears, sixteen of them for a plack.” Remember that pears is pronounced “peers” in Scots and the point of the joke is obvious.

In the suburb of the Pleasance a tailor called Hunter had erected a large house which folk named Hunter’s Folly, or the Castle of Clouts. Gillespie, the founder of Gillespie’s Hospital, was a snuff merchant; when he started a carriage the incorrigible Harry Erskine suggested as a motto:

“Wha wad hae thocht it
That noses had bocht it?”

Harry was usually more good-humoured. A working man complained to him of the low value of a dollar, which he showed him. Now, from the scarcity of silver at the time, a number of Spanish dollars were in circulation, on which the head of George III. had been stamped over the neck of the Spanish King; the real was some sixpence less than the nominal value. Erskine gravely regretted that two such mighty persons had laid their heads together to do a poor man out of a sixpence. Not that the lawyers always had the best of it. Crosby, the original Counsellor Pleydell in _Guy Mannering_, was building a spacious mansion in St. Andrew Square. His home in the country was a thatched cottage. “Ah, Crosby,” said Principal Robertson to him one day at dinner, “were your town and country house to meet, how they would stare at one another.”

Nor did the people always get the laugh. Walter Ross, an Edinburgh character of the eighteenth century, had built a square tower in his property on the north side of the New Town; in this were all the curious old stones he could procure. The people called it Ross’s Folly, and notwithstanding his prominently displayed threats of man-traps and spring guns they roamed at will over his domain. Somehow or other he procured a human leg from the dissecting room, dressed it up with stocking, shoe, and buckle and sent the town-crier with it, announcing that “it had been found that night in Walter Ross’s policy at Stockbridge,” and offering to restore it to the owner!

A more innocent pleasantry is ascribed to Burns. A lady of title, with whom he had the slightest acquaintance, asked him to a party in what was no doubt a very patronising manner. Burns never lost his head or his independence in Edinburgh. He replied that he would come if the Learned Pig was invited also. The animal in question was then one of the attractions of the Grassmarket. To balance this is a story of a snub by a lady. Dougal Geddie, a successful silversmith, had donned with much pride the red coat of a Town Guard officer. He observed with concern a lady at the door of the Assembly Rooms without an attendant beau. He courteously suggested himself “if the arm of an old soldier could be of any use to her.” “Hoot awa’, Dougal, an auld tinkler you mean,” said the lady.

One constantly recurring street scene in old Edinburgh was the execution of criminals. Not a mere case of decorous hanging, but a man, as like as not, dismembered in sight of the gaping crowd, and that man was often one who had been within the memory of all a great personage in the State, to whom every knee had been bowed, and every cap doffed. Great executions were famous events, and were distinguished by impressive and remarkable incidents; but I shall not attempt to record these. Some little remembered events must serve for illustration. In 1661 Archibald Cornwall, town officer, was hanged at the Cross. He had “poinded” an honest man’s house, wherein was a picture of the King and Queen. These, from carelessness or malice or misplaced sense of humour, he had stuck on the gallows at the Cross from which as noted he presently dangled. In 1667 Patrick Roy Macgregor and some of his following were condemned at Edinburgh for sorning, fire-raising, and murder. Those caterans were almost outside the law, and they were duly hanged, the right hand being previously cut off—a favourite old-time addition to capital punishment. Macgregor was a thick-set, strongly-built man of fierce face, in which gleamed his hawk-like eye, a human wolf the crowd must have thought him. He was “perfectly undaunted” though the hangman bungled the amputation business so badly that he was turned out of office the next day. Executions were at different periods carried out on the Castle Hill, at the Cross, the Gallow Lee, on the road to Leith, and at various places throughout the city, but the ordinary spot was, from about 1660 till 1785, in the Grassmarket, at the foot of the West Bow, after that at the west end of the Tolbooth, till its destruction in 1817, then at the head of Libberton’s Wynd, near where George IV. Bridge now is, till 1868, when such public spectacles were abolished. An old Edinburgh rhyme commemorates the old-time progress of the criminal.

“Up the Lawnmarket, And doun the West Bow,
Up the big ladder, And doun the wee tow.”

As the clock struck the hour after noon, the City Guard knocked at the door of the Tolbooth. It was flung open and the condemned man marched forth. The correct costume was a waistcoat and breeches of white, edged with black ribbon, wherewith the nightcap on his head was also trimmed. His hands were tied behind him, and a rope was round his neck. On each side was a parson, behind shuffled the hangman, disguised in an overcoat, round were the City Guard, with their arms ready. Among the fierce folk of that violent town a rescue was always a possibility, and so the gruesome figure went to his doom. One other case and I leave the subject. It was a popular belief in Edinburgh that a man could not be hanged later than four o’clock afternoon. A certain John Young had been convicted of forgery, and condemned to death. The time appointed for his execution was the 17th December 1750, between two and four in the afternoon. Under the pretence of private devotion he locked himself in the inner room of the prison, and nothing would persuade him to come out. He was only got at by breaking the floor of the room overhead, and even then there was difficulty. A gun was presented at his head; it happened to be unloaded. On a calculation of probabilities he even then refused to surrender; he was finally seized and dragged headlong downstairs. He anxiously inquired if it were not yet four o’clock, and was assured he would be hanged, however late the hour. As a matter of fact, it was already after four, though not by the clock, which had been stopped by the authorities. He refused to move, declined, as he said, to be accessory to his own murder, but was hanged all the same about half-past four. His pranks had only given him another half-hour of life. There were numerous lesser punishments: flogging, mutilation, branding, all done in public, to the disgust or entertainment of the populace. I tell one story, farce rather than tragedy. On the 6th of November 1728, Margaret Gibson, for the crime of theft, was drummed through the town; over her neck was fixed a board provided with bells which chimed at each step she made, a little from her face there was attached a false face adorned with a fox’s tail, “In short she was a very odd spectacle.” No doubt; but where did the edification come in? I ought to mention that the officials who attended an execution were wont thereafter to regale themselves at what was called the Deid Chack. The cheerful Deacon Brodie, just before his violent exit from life, took leave of a town official in this fashion, “Fare ye weel, Bailie! Ye need na be surprised if ye see me amang ye yet, to tak’ my share o’ the Deid Chack.” Perhaps he meant his ghost would be there, or—but it is not worth speculating. This gruesome feast was abolished through the influence of Provost Creech, who did much for the city.

“Auld Reekie aye he keepit tight
And trig an’ braw.”

The crook in Creech’s lot was an old soldier, Lauchlin M‘Bain, who pretended to sell roasting-jacks. He had a street call of “R-r-r-roasting toasting-jacks,” which was found perfectly unbearable, even by the not too nice ears of the citizens. He blackmailed various parties, and then attached himself like a burr to Creech. He bellowed before his door with such fell intent that the civic dignitary was frantic. He had Lauchlin up before the local courts, but the old soldier, who had fought on the government side at Culloden, produced his discharge which clearly gave him a right to practise his business in Edinburgh. Creech had to submit and buy the intruder off. Creech himself played pranks just as mischievous on a certain drunken Writer to the Signet called William Macpherson, a noted character of the day. He lived in the West Bow with his two sisters, whom he, with quaint barbarity, nicknamed Sodom and Gomorrah. He was not above taking fees in kind. Once he thus procured an armful of turnips, with which he proceeded homewards; but he was tipsy, and the West Bow was near the perpendicular, and ere long he was flat on his face, and the turnips flying in every direction. He staggered after them and recovered most. The Governor of the Castle had asked Creech to procure him a cook; he became so insistent in his demands that the bookseller got angry, and happening to meet Macpherson, he coolly told him that the Governor wished to see him on important business. Macpherson could not understand why everybody treated him in such a cavalier manner, and a comical conversation took place, which was brought to a head by the Governor demanding his character. At last he blurted out in rage that he was a Writer to the Signet. “Why, I wanted a cook,” said the Governor. Macpherson retired in wrath to comfort himself with that unfailing remedy, the bottle.

These were not the days of care for the insane, the “natural” was allowed to run about the streets untouched. Jamie Duff was one of the most famous of those. In old Scotland a funeral was a very pompous and very solemn function. Duff made it a point to be present at as many as possible, with cape, cravat, and weepers of the most orthodox pattern, however shabby the material, even paper not being disdained. He commonly marched at the head of the procession—a hideous burlesque of the whole affair. His pranks met with strange and unexpected tolerance; instead of being driven away, he was fed and encouraged. He appears at the funeral of Miss Bertram in _Guy Mannering_. Scott has gathered many such memories into his works. One adventure of Duff’s was not a success. He had got together, or aped the cast-off suit of a bailie, and assumed the title of that mighty functionary. The authorities interfered and stripped him, thus making themselves the butt of many a local witticism. He subsisted on stray gifts of all kinds, but he refused silver money. He thought it was a trick to enlist him. Another feature of the street was the Highland gentleman. The memory of one, Francis M‘Nab, Esq. of M‘Nab, still lingers. Once a Lowland friend inquired if Mr. M‘Nab was at home. “No,” was the answer, and the door was shut in his face, not before he had heard the tones of the chieftain in the background. Apprised of his error, he called next day, and asked for “The M‘Nab,” and was received with open arms. It happened on the way to Leith races that the chieftain’s horse dropped down dead under him. “M‘Nab, is that the same horse you had last year?” said an acquaintance at the next race-meeting. “No, py Cot,” replied the Laird; “but this is the same whip”—the other made off at full speed. When in command of the Breadalbane Fencibles, he allowed his men to smuggle a huge quantity of whisky from the Highlands. A party of excisemen laid hands on the baggage of the corps. M‘Nab pretended to believe they were robbers. He was a big man, with a powerful voice; he thundered out to his men “Prime, load”—the gaugers took to their heels, and the whisky was saved.

Smuggling might almost be called the first of Highland virtues. Archibald Campbell, the city officer, had the misfortune to lose his mother. He procured a hearse, and reverently carried away the body to the Highlands for burial. He brought the hearse back again, not empty, but full of smuggled whisky. This fondness for a trick or practical joke was a feature of old Edinburgh. It lived on to later times. In 1803 or 1804, Playfair, Thomas Thomson, and Sydney Smith instigated by Brougham, proceeded one night to George Street, with the intention of filching the Galen’s Head, which stood over the door of Gardiner, the apothecary. By one climbing on the top of the others their object was all but attained, when, by the dim light of the oil-lamps, Brougham was descried leading the city watch to the spot, his design being to play a trick within a trick. There was a hasty scramble, and all got off. None save Brougham was very young, and even he was twenty-six, and to-day the people are decorous and the place is decorous. Who can now recall what the Mound was like, when it was the chosen locus of the menageries of the day? Fergusson, Lord Hermand, was proceeding along it just having heard of the fall of the “ministry of all the talents”; he could not contain himself. “They are out—by the Lord, they are all out, every mother’s son of them!” A passing lady heard him with absolute horror. “Good Lord, then we shall all be devoured!” she screamed, not doubting but that the wild beasts had broken loose.

A word as to weather. The east coast of Scotland is exposed to the chilling fog or mist called haar, and to bitter blasts of east wind, as well as to the ordinary rain and cloud. Edinburgh, being built on hills, is peculiarly affected by those forces, and the broad streets and open spaces of the New Town worst of all. The peculiar build of the old part was partly, at least, meant as a defence from weather. Fergusson boldly says so.

“Not Boreas that sae snelly blows
Dare here pap in his angry nose,
Thanks to our dads, whase biggin stands
A shelter to surrounding lands.”

But there is no shelter in Princes Street. On the 24th of January 1868 a great storm raged. Chimney-pots and portions of chimney-stacks came down in all directions. Fifty police carts were filled with the rubbish. Cabs were blown over, an instance of the force of the east wind which impressed James Payn the novelist exceedingly. A gentleman had opened Professor Syme’s carriage door to get out. The door was completely blown away; a man brought it up presently, with the panel not even scratched and the glass unbroken. Another eminent doctor, Sir Robert Christison, was hurled along Princes Street at such a rate, that when, to prevent an accident, he seized hold of a lamp-post he was dashed violently into the gutter and seriously hurt his knee. The street was deserted, people were afraid to venture out of doors. Even on a moderately gusty night the noise of the wind amidst the tall lands and narrow closes of the Old Town, as heard from Princes Street, is a sound never to be forgotten; it has a tragic mournful dignity in its infinite wail, the voice of old Edinburgh touched with pity and terror! Some one has said what a charming place Edinburgh would be if you could only put up a screen against the east wind. As that is impossible it may be held to excuse everything from flight to dissipation!