Part 5
[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 equalled them. Such was the case of Cranshaws, a pastoral parish among the Lammermoor Hills. A former minister of Cranshaws having wooed a lass of humble rank, the father of the lady, when consulted on the subject, said, ‘Tak’ him, Jenny; he’s as gude deid as living!’ meaning, of course, that she would be as well off as a widow as in the quality of a wife.
[14] ‘The monograms of the name of our blessed lady are formed of the letters M. A., M. R., and A. M., and these stand respectively for Maria, Maria Regina, and Ave Maria. The letter M. was often used by itself to express the name of the Blessed Virgin, and became a vehicle for the most beautiful ornament and design; the letter itself being entirely composed of emblems, with some passage from the life of our lady in the void spaces.’—_Pugin’s Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament and Costume_, 1844.
[15] Keith’s History.
[16] The New College and Assembly Hall of the (United) Free Church.
THE WEST BOW.
THE BOWHEAD—WEIGH-HOUSE—ANDERSON’S PILLS—ORATORIES—COLONEL GARDINER—‘BOWHEAD SAINTS’—‘THE SEIZERS’—STORY OF A JACOBITE CANARY—MAJOR WEIR—TULZIES—THE TINKLARIAN DOCTOR—OLD ASSEMBLY ROOM—PAUL ROMIEU—‘HE THAT THOLES OVERCOMES’—PROVOST STEWART—DONALDSONS THE BOOKSELLERS—BOWFOOT—THE TEMPLARS’ LANDS—THE GALLOWS STONE.
[The West Bow has long since disappeared as a street; see note on p. 54.]
In a central part of Old Edinburgh—the very Little Britain of our city—is a curious, angular, whimsical-looking street, of great steepness and narrowness, called the West Bow. Serving as a connection between the Grassmarket and Lawnmarket, between the Low and the High Town, it is of considerable fame in our city annals as a passage for the entry of sovereigns, and the scene of the quaint ceremonials used on those occasions. In more modern times, it has been chiefly notable in the recollections of country-people as a nest of the peculiarly noisy tradesmen, the white-iron smiths, which causes Robert Fergusson to mark, as one of the features of Edinburgh deserted for a holiday:
‘The tinkler billies[17] o’ the Bow Are now less eident[18] clinkin.’
Another remarkable circumstance connected with the street in the popular mind is its having been the residence of the famed wizard, Major Weir. All of these particulars serve to make it a noteworthy sort of place, and the impression is much favoured by its actual appearance. A perfect Z in figure, composed of tall antique houses, with numerous dovecot-like gables projecting over the footway, full of old inscriptions and sculpturings, presenting at every few steps some darksome lateral profundity, into which the imagination wanders without hindrance or exhaustion, it seems eminently a place of old grandmothers’ tales, and sure at all times to maintain a ghost or two in its community. When I descend into particulars, it will be seen what grounds there truly are for such a surmise.
To begin with
THE BOWHEAD.
This is a comparatively open space, though partially straightened again by the insertion in it of a clumsy, detached old building called the _Weigh-house_, where enormous masses of butter and cheese are continually getting disposed of. Prince Charles had his guard at the Weigh-house when blockading the Castle; using, however, for this purpose, not the house itself, but a floor of the adjacent tall tenement in the Lawnmarket, which appears to have been selected on a very intelligible principle, in as far as it was the deserted mansion of one of the city clergy, the same Rev. George Logan who carried on a controversy with Thomas Ruddiman, in which he took unfavourable views of the title of the Stuart family to the throne, not only then, but at any time. It was, no doubt, as an additional answer to a bad pamphlet that the Highlanders took up their quarters at Mr Logan’s.
ANDERSON’S PILLS.
In this tall _land_, dated 1690, there is a house on the second-floor where that venerable drug, Dr Anderson’s pills, is sold, and has been so for above a century. As is well known, the country-people in Scotland have to this day [1824] a peculiar reverence for these pills, which are, I believe, really a good form of aloetic medicine. They took their origin from a physician of the time of Charles I., who gave them his name. From his daughter, Lillias Anderson, the patent came to a person designed Thomas Weir, who left it to his daughter. The widow of this last person’s nephew, Mrs Irving, is now the patentee; a lady of advanced age, who facetiously points to the very brief series of proprietors intervening between Dr Anderson and herself, as no inexpressive indication of the virtue of the medicine. [Mrs Irving died in 1837, at the age of ninety-nine.] Portraits of Anderson and his daughter are preserved in this house: the physician in a Vandyke dress, with a book in his hand; the lady, a precise-looking dame, with a pill in her hand about the size of a walnut, saying a good deal for the stomachs of our ancestors. The people also show a glove which belonged to the learned physician.
[1868.—In 1829 Mrs Irving lived in a neat, self-contained mansion in Chessels’s Court, in the Canongate, along with her son, General Irving, and some members of his family. The old lady, then ninety-one, was good enough to invite me to dinner, when I likewise found two younger sisters of hers, respectively eighty-nine and ninety. She sat firm and collected at the head of the table, and carved a leg of mutton with perfect propriety. She then told me, at her son’s request, that in the year 1745, when Prince Charles’s army was in possession of the town, she, a child of four years, walked with her nurse to Holyrood Palace, and seeing a Highland gentleman standing in the doorway, she went up to him to examine his peculiar attire. She even took the liberty of lifting up his kilt a little way; whereupon her nurse, fearing some danger, started forward for her protection. But the gentleman only patted her head, and said something kind to her. I felt it as very curious to sit as guest with a person who had mingled in the Forty-five. But my excitement was brought to a higher pitch when, on ascending to the drawing-room, I found the general’s daughter, a pretty young woman recently married, sitting there, dressed in a suit of clothes belonging to one of the nonagenarian aunts—a very fine one of flowered satin, with elegant cap and lappets, and silk shoes three inches deep in the heel—the same having been worn by the venerable owner just seventy years before at a Hunters’ Ball at Holyrood Palace. The contrast between the former and the present wearer—the old lady shrunk and taciturn, and her young representative full of life and resplendent in joyous beauty—had an effect upon me which it would be impossible to describe. To this day, I look upon the Chessels’s Court dinner as one of the most extraordinary events in my life.]
ORATORIES—COLONEL GARDINER.
This house presents a feature which forms a curious memorial of the manners of a past age. In common with all the houses built from about 1690 to 1740—a substantial class, still abundant in the High Street—there is at the end of each row of windows corresponding to a separate mansion, a narrow slit-like window, such as might suffice for a closet. In reality, each of these narrow apertures gives light to a small cell—much too small to require such a window—usually entering from the dining-room or some other principal apartment. The use of these cells was to serve as a retreat for the master of the house, wherein he might perform his devotions. The father of a family was in those days a sacred kind of person, not to be approached by wife or children too familiarly, and expected to be a priest in his own household. Besides his family devotions, he retired to a closet for perhaps an hour each day to utter his own prayers;[19] and so regular was the custom that it gave rise, as we see, to this peculiarity in house-building. Nothing could enable us more clearly to appreciate that strong outward demonstration of religious feeling which pervaded the nation for half a century after the agonies of ‘the Persecution.’ I cannot help here mentioning the interest with which I have visited Bankton House,[20] in East Lothian, where, as is well known, Colonel Gardiner spent several years of his life. The oratory of the pious soldier is pointed out by tradition, and it forms even a more expressive memorial of the time than the closets in the Edinburgh houses. Connected with a small front room, which might have been a library or _study_, is a little recess, such as dust-pans and brooms are kept in, consisting of the angular space formed by a stair which passes overhead to the upper floor. This place is wholly without light, yet it is said to have been the place sacred to poor Gardiner’s private devotions. What leaves hardly any doubt on the matter is that there has been a wooden bolt within, capable only of being shot from the inside, and therefore unquestionably used by a person desiring to shut himself in. Here, therefore, in this darksome, stifling little cell, had this extraordinary man spent hours in those devotional exercises by which he was so much distinguished from his class.[21]
BOWHEAD SAINTS—SEIZERS—A JACOBITE BLACKBIRD.
In the latter part of the seventeenth century, the inhabitants of the West Bow enjoyed a peculiar fame for their piety and zeal in the Covenanting cause. The wits of the opposite faction are full of allusions to them as ‘the Bowhead Saints,’ ‘the godly plants of the Bowhead,’ and so forth. [This is the basis of an allusion by a later Cavalier wit, when describing the exit of Lord Dundee from Edinburgh, on the occasion of the settlement of the crown upon William and Mary:
‘As he rode down the sanctified bends of the Bow, Ilka carline was flyting, and shaking her pow; But some young plants of grace, that looked couthie and slie, Said: “Luck to thy bonnet, thou bonnie Dundee!”’
It is to be feared that Sir Walter has here shown a relenting towards the ‘young plants,’ for which they would not have thanked him.] All the writings of the wits of their own time speak of the system to which they were opposed as one of unmitigated sternness. It was in those days a custom to patrol the streets during the time of divine service, and take into captivity all persons found walking abroad; and indeed make seizure of whatever could be regarded as guilty of Sabbath-breaking. It is said that, led by a sneaking sense, the patrol one day lighted upon a joint of meat in the course of being roasted, and made prize of it, leaving the graceless owner to chew the spit. On another occasion, about the year 1735, a capture of a different kind was made. ‘The people about that time,’ says Arnot, ‘were in use to teach their birds to chant the songs of their party. It happened that the blackbird of an honest Jacobitical barber, which from his cage on the outside of the window gave offence to the zealous Whigs by his songs, was neglected, on a Saturday evening, to be brought within the house. Next morning he tuned his pipe to the usual air, _The king shall enjoy his own again_. One of the _seizers_, in his holy zeal, was enraged at this manifestation of impiety and treason in one of the feathered tribe. He went up to the house, seized the bird and the cage, and with much solemnity lodged them in the City-Guard.’[22] Pennycook, a burgess bard of the time, represents the officer as addressing the bird:
‘Had ye been taught by me, a _Bowhead saint_, You’d sung the Solemn League and Covenant, Bessy of Lanark, or the Last Good-night; But you’re a bird prelatic—that’s not right.... Oh could my baton reach the laverocks too, They’re chirping _Jamie, Jamie_, just like you: I hate vain birds that lead malignant lives, But love the chanters to the Bowhead wives.’
MAJOR WEIR.[23]
It must have been a sad scandal to this peculiar community when Major Weir, one of their number, was found to have been so wretched an example of human infirmity. The house occupied by this man still exists, though in an altered shape, in a little court accessible by a narrow passage near the first angle of the street. His history is obscurely reported; but it appears that he was of a good family in Lanarkshire, and had been one of the ten thousand men sent by the Scottish Covenanting Estates in 1641 to assist in suppressing the Irish Papists. He became distinguished for a life of peculiar sanctity, even in an age when that was the prevailing tone of the public mind. According to a contemporary account: ‘His garb was still a cloak, and somewhat dark, and he never went without his staff. He was a tall black man, and ordinarily looked down to the ground; _a grim countenance, and a big nose_. At length he became so notoriously regarded among the Presbyterian strict sect, that if four met together, be sure Major Weir was one. At private meetings he prayed to admiration, which made many of that stamp court his converse. He never married, but lived in a private lodging with his sister, Grizel Weir. Many resorted to his house, to join him and hear him pray; but it was observed that he could not officiate in any holy duty without the black staff, or rod, in his hand, and leaning upon it, which made those who heard him pray admire his flood in prayer, his ready extemporary expression, his heavenly gesture; so that he was thought more angel than man, and was termed by some of the holy sisters ordinarily _Angelical Thomas_.’ Plebeian imaginations have since fructified regarding the staff, and crones will still seriously tell how it could run a message to a shop for any article which its proprietor wanted; how it could answer the door when any one called upon its master; and that it used to be often seen running before him, in the capacity of a link-boy, as he walked down the Lawnmarket.
After a life characterised externally by all the graces of devotion, but polluted in secret by crimes of the most revolting nature, and which little needed the addition of wizardry to excite the horror of living men, Major Weir fell into a severe sickness, which affected his mind so much that he made open and voluntary confession of all his wickedness. The tale was at first so incredible that the provost, Sir Andrew Ramsay,[24] refused for some time to take him into custody. At length himself, his sister (partner of one of his crimes), and his staff were secured by the magistrates, together with certain sums of money, which were found wrapped up in rags in different parts of the house. One of these pieces of rag being thrown into the fire by a bailie, who had taken the whole in charge, flew up the chimney, and made an explosion like a cannon. While the wretched man lay in prison, he made no scruple to disclose the particulars of his guilt, but refused to address himself to the Almighty for pardon. To every request that he would pray, he answered in screams: ‘Torment me no more—I am tormented enough already!’ Even the offer of a Presbyterian clergyman, instead of an established Episcopal minister of the city, had no effect upon him. He was tried April 9, 1670, and being found guilty, was sentenced to be strangled and burnt between Edinburgh and Leith. His sister, who was tried at the same time, was sentenced to be hanged in the Grassmarket. The execution of the profligate major took place, April 14, at the place indicated by the judge. When the rope was about his neck, to prepare him for the fire, he was bid to say: ‘Lord, be merciful to me!’ but he answered as before: ‘Let me alone—I will not—I have lived as a beast, and I must die as a beast!’ After he had dropped lifeless in the flames, his stick was also cast into the fire; and, ‘whatever incantation was in it,’ says the contemporary writer already quoted,[25] ‘the persons present own that it gave rare turnings, and was long a-burning, as also himself.’
The conclusion to which the humanity of the present age would come regarding Weir—that he was mad—is favoured by some circumstances; for instance, his answering one who asked if he had ever seen the devil, that ‘the only feeling he ever had of him was in the dark.’ What chiefly countenances the idea is the unequivocal lunacy of the sister. This miserable woman confessed to witchcraft, and related, in a serious manner, many things which could not be true. Many years before, a fiery coach, she said, had come to her brother’s door in broad day, and a stranger invited them to enter, and they proceeded to Dalkeith. On the way, another person came and whispered in her brother’s ear something which affected him; it proved to be supernatural intelligence of the defeat of the Scotch army at Worcester, which took place that day. Her brother’s power, she said, lay in his staff. She also had a gift for spinning above other women, but the yarn broke to pieces in the loom. Her mother, she declared, had been also a witch. ‘The secretest thing that I, or any of the family could do, when once a mark appeared upon her brow, she could tell it them, though done at a great distance.’ This mark could also appear on her own forehead when she pleased. At the request of the company present, ‘she put back her head-dress, and seeming to frown, there was an exact horse-shoe shaped for nails in her wrinkles, terrible enough, I assure you, to the stoutest beholder.’[26] At the place of execution she acted in a furious manner, and with difficulty could be prevented from throwing off her clothes, in order to die, as she said, ‘with all the shame she could.’
The treatise just quoted makes it plain that the case of Weir and his sister had immediately become a fruitful theme for the imaginations of the vulgar. We there receive the following story: ‘Some few days before he discovered himself, a gentlewoman coming from the Castle-hill, where her husband’s niece was lying-in of a child, about midnight perceived about the Bowhead three women in windows shouting, laughing, and clapping their hands. The gentlewoman went forward, till, at Major Weir’s door, there arose, as from the street, a woman about the length of two ordinary females, and stepped forward. The gentlewoman, not as yet excessively feared, bid her maid step on, if by the lantern they could see what she was; but haste what they could, this long-legged spectre was still before them, moving her body with a vehement cachinnation and great unmeasurable laughter. At this rate the two strove for place, till the giantess came to a narrow lane in the Bow, commonly called the Stinking Close, into which she turning, and the gentlewoman looking after her, perceived the close full of flaming torches (she could give them no other name), and as if it had been a great number of people stentoriously laughing, and gaping with tahees of laughter. This sight, at so dead a time of night, no people being in the windows belonging to the close, made her and her servant haste home, declaring all that they saw to the rest of the family.’
For upwards of a century after Major Weir’s death, he continued to be the bugbear of the Bow, and his house remained uninhabited. His apparition was frequently seen at night, flitting, like a black and silent shadow, about the street. His house, though known to be deserted by everything human, was sometimes observed at midnight to be full of lights, and heard to emit strange sounds, as of dancing, howling, and, what is strangest of all, spinning. Some people occasionally saw the major issue from the low close at midnight, mounted on a black horse without a head, and gallop off in a whirlwind of flame. Nay, sometimes the whole of the inhabitants of the Bow would be roused from their sleep at an early hour in the morning by the sound as of a coach and six, first rattling up the Lawnmarket, and then thundering down the Bow, stopping at the head of the terrible close for a few minutes, and then rattling and thundering back again—being neither more nor less than Satan come in one of his best equipages to take home the major and his sister, after they had spent a night’s leave of absence in their terrestrial dwelling.
About fifty years ago, when the shades of superstition began universally to give way in Scotland, Major Weir’s house came to be regarded with less terror by the neighbours, and an attempt was made by the proprietor to find a person who should be bold enough to inhabit it. Such a person was procured in William Patullo, a poor man of dissipated habits, who, having been at one time a soldier and a traveller, had come to disregard in a great measure the superstitions of his native country, and was now glad to possess a house upon the low terms offered by the landlord, at whatever risk. Upon its being known that Major Weir’s house was about to be reinhabited, a great deal of curiosity was felt by people of all ranks as to the result of the experiment; for there was scarcely a native of the city who had not felt, since his boyhood, an intense interest in all that concerned that awful fabric, and yet remembered the numerous terrible stories which he had heard respecting it. Even before entering upon his hazardous undertaking, William Patullo was looked upon with a flattering sort of interest, similar to that which we feel respecting a regiment on the march to active conflict. It was the hope of many that he would be the means of retrieving a valuable possession from the dominion of darkness. But Satan soon let them know that he does not tamely relinquish any of the outposts of his kingdom.
On the very first night after Patullo and his spouse had taken up their abode in the house, as the worthy couple were lying awake in their bed, not unconscious of a certain degree of fear—a dim, uncertain light proceeding from the gathered embers of their fire, and all being silent around them—they suddenly saw a form like that of a calf, which came forward to the bed, and, setting its forefeet upon the stock, looked steadfastly at the unfortunate pair. When it had contemplated them thus for a few minutes, to their great relief it at length took itself away, and, slowly retiring, gradually vanished from their sight. As might be expected, they deserted the house next morning; and for another half-century no other attempt was made to embank this part of the world of light from the aggressions of the world of darkness.
It may here be mentioned that, at no very remote time, there were several houses in the Old Town which had the credit of being haunted. It is said there is one at this day in the Lawnmarket (a flat), which has been shut up from time immemorial. The story goes that one night, as preparations were making for a supper-party, something occurred which obliged the family, as well as all the assembled guests, to retire with precipitation, and lock up the house. From that night it has never once been opened, nor was any of the furniture withdrawn: the very goose which was undergoing the process of being roasted at the time of the occurrence is still at the fire! No one knows to whom the house belongs; no one ever inquires after it; no one living ever saw the inside of it; it is a condemned house! There is something peculiarly dreadful about a house under these circumstances. What sights of horror might present themselves if it were entered! Satan is the _ultimus hæres_ of all such unclaimed property!