Traditions of Edinburgh

_Go with one flight to Christ_; which, the reader will find, can only be made out by Latinising his name into NICHOLAUS EDUARTUS. We learn from Moyses’s _Memoirs_ that, in Janua...

[13] Before the Government bounty had supplemented the poor stipends of the Scotch Church up to £150, many of them were so small that the widow’s allowance from this fund nearly...

Between the eastern suburbs of Edinburgh and the village of Restalrig stands a solitary house named Marionville, enclosed in a shrubbery of no great extent, surrounded by high w...

Hume removed at Whitsunday 1762 to a house which he purchased in James’s Court—the eastern portion of the third floor in the west stair (counting from the level of the court). T...

She was more happy as Countess of Stair than she had been as Lady Primrose. Yet her new husband had one failing, which occasioned her no small uneasiness. Like most other gentle...

[245] I was indebted to my friend Dr John Brown (_Horæ Subsecivæ_, p. 42) for drawing my attention to a quotation of Seneca by Beyerlinck (_Magn. Theatr. Vit. Human._, tom. vi....

In those days both civil and criminal procedure was conducted in much the same spirit as a suit at war. When a great noble was to be tried for some monstrous murder or treason,...

Strange to say, this great merchant came to poverty, and died in a prison. The reader of the Waverley novels may remember David Deans telling how his father ‘saw them toom the s...

The case of Katherine Nairne, in 1766, excited in no small degree the attention of the Scottish public. This lady was allied, both by blood and marriage, to some respectable fam...

Besides the many old houses that are haunted, there are several endowed with the simple credit of having been the scenes of murders and suicides. Some contain rooms which had pa...

Mr Denovan had discovered in Leith a man, then acting as a teacher, but who in 1806 was a sailor-boy, and who had witnessed some circumstances immediately connected with the mur...

On the west side of the street, immediately to the south of the Canongate Kilwinning Mason Lodge, there is a neat self-contained house of old fashion, with a flower-plot in fron...

It may be added that many of these young ladies were sent to reside with and be _finished off_ by the Honourable Mrs Ogilvie, lady of the Honourable Patrick Ogilvie of Longmay a...

[154] ‘Upon the 26th of February [1617], the Cross of Edinburgh was taken down. The old long stone, about forty footes or thereby in length, was to be translated, by the devise...

Amongst the social features of a bygone age in Edinburgh were the _bickers_ in which the boys were wont to indulge—that is, street conflicts, conducted chiefly with stones, thou...

In the reign of Charles II. other buildings were added behind, forming a neat quadrangle; and here was the Scottish coin produced till the Union, when a separate coinage was giv...

A project for a new street on the site of Halkerston’s Wynd, leading by a bridge to the grounds of Mutrie’s Hill, where a suburb might be erected, was formed before the end of t...

The late Mrs Murray of Henderland knew Ramsay for the last ten years of his life, her sister having married his son, the celebrated painter. She spoke of him to me in 1825, with...

‘The concerts of St Cecilia’s Hall formed one of the most liberal and attractive amusements that any city in Europe could boast of. The hall was built on purpose at the foot of...

In Edinburgh, where he lived for upwards of thirty years previous to his death in 1789, his livelihood was at first ostensibly gained by keeping a little school, latterly by cel...

When the worship of Bacchus held such sway in our city, his peculiar temples—the taverns—must, one would suppose, have been places of some importance. And so they were, comparat...

We get an idea of a class of taverns, humbler in their appointments, but equally comfortable perhaps in their entertainments, from the description which has been preserved of _M...

Mr Hope’s wife and daughters being left as heirs of Lady Grange, an action was raised in their name for the £1150 formerly awarded, and for three years additional of her annuity...

The PIOUS CLUB was composed of decent, orderly citizens, who met every night, Sundays not excepted, in a _pie-house_, and whose joke was the _équivoque_ of these expressions—sim...

The small booths around St Giles’s continued, till 1817, to deform the outward appearance of the church. Long before their destruction, the booksellers at least had found the sp...

A careful investigation was made into every circumstance connected with this fatal affair, but without demonstrating anything except the passionate rashness or magnanimity of th...

If my reader be an inhabitant of Edinburgh of any standing, he must have many delightful associations of Leith Walk in connection with his childhood. Of all the streets in Edinb...

Ladies in the last century wore dresses and decorations many of which were of an inconvenient nature; yet no one can deny them the merit of a certain dignity and grace. How fine...

Lord Monboddo’s motion for the enforcement of the bill, on account of its representing the value of a horse, is partly an allusion to his Gulliverlike admiration of that animal,...

The _High Jinks_ of Counsellor Pleydell, in _Guy Mannering_, must have prepared many for these curious traits of a bypast age; and Scott has further illustrated the subject by t...

Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 61314-h.htm or 61314-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/61...

At this angle of the Bow the original city-wall crossed the line of the street, and there was, accordingly, a gate at this spot,[35] of which the only existing memorial is one o...

At the back of the Commendator’s house there is a projection,[67] on the top of which is a bartisan or flat roof, faced with three lettered stones. There is a tradition that Oli...

Looking at the present state of this ancient street, it is impossible to hear without a smile the description of it given by Alexander Alesse about the year 1530—_Ubi nihil est...

The only authentic information to be obtained on the point is presented by Maitland, when he tells us that the clearing of the Boroughmoor of timber took place in consequence of...

Her caprices were endless. At one time when a ball had been announced at Drumlanrig, after the company were all assembled her grace took a headache, declared that she could bear...

CASTLE. Blair’s or Baird’s Close 1| Castlehill Walk or A| Allan Ramsay’s House a Brown’s Close 3| Esplanade | Blyth’s Close 2 Webster’s Close 5| CASTLEHILL B| Nairn’s Close 4 Si...