Thief! Saw thou nocht the great preparativesOf Edinburgh, the noble famous town?Thou saw the people labouring for their livesTo mak triumph with trump and clarioun:Sic pleasour never was in this regiounAs suld have been the day of her entrace,With great propinis given to her Grace.Thou saw makand richt costly scaffolding,Depaintit weell with gold and silver fine,Ready preparit for the upsetting;With fountains flowing water clear and wine;Disguisit folks, like creatures divine,On ilk scaffold, to play ane sindry story:But all in greeting turnit thou that glory.Thou saw there mony ane lusty fresh galland,Weell orderit for ressaving of their Queen;Ilk craftisman, with bent bow in his hand,Full galyartly in short clothing of green;The honest burgess cled thou suld have seen,Some in scarlot, and some in claith of grain,For till have met their Lady Soverane;Provost, Bailies, and Lordis of the town,The Senatours, in order consequent,Cled into silk of purpur, black, and brown;Syne the great Lordis of the Parliament,With mony knichtly Baron and Banrent,In silk and gold, in colours comfortable:But thou, alas! all turnit into sable.Syne all the Lordis of Religioun,And Princes of the Priestis venerable,Full pleasandly in their processioun,With all the cunning Clerkis honourable:But, theftuously, thou tyrane treasonable,All their great solace and solemnitiesThou turnit intill duleful dirigies.Syne, next in order, passing through the town,Thou suld have heard the din of instruments,Of tabron, trumpet, shalm, and clarioun,With reird redoundand through the elements;The Heralds, with their aweful vestiments;With Macers, upon either of their hands,To rule the press with burnist silver wands.
Thief! Saw thou nocht the great preparativesOf Edinburgh, the noble famous town?Thou saw the people labouring for their livesTo mak triumph with trump and clarioun:Sic pleasour never was in this regiounAs suld have been the day of her entrace,With great propinis given to her Grace.Thou saw makand richt costly scaffolding,Depaintit weell with gold and silver fine,Ready preparit for the upsetting;With fountains flowing water clear and wine;Disguisit folks, like creatures divine,On ilk scaffold, to play ane sindry story:But all in greeting turnit thou that glory.Thou saw there mony ane lusty fresh galland,Weell orderit for ressaving of their Queen;Ilk craftisman, with bent bow in his hand,Full galyartly in short clothing of green;The honest burgess cled thou suld have seen,Some in scarlot, and some in claith of grain,For till have met their Lady Soverane;Provost, Bailies, and Lordis of the town,The Senatours, in order consequent,Cled into silk of purpur, black, and brown;Syne the great Lordis of the Parliament,With mony knichtly Baron and Banrent,In silk and gold, in colours comfortable:But thou, alas! all turnit into sable.Syne all the Lordis of Religioun,And Princes of the Priestis venerable,Full pleasandly in their processioun,With all the cunning Clerkis honourable:But, theftuously, thou tyrane treasonable,All their great solace and solemnitiesThou turnit intill duleful dirigies.Syne, next in order, passing through the town,Thou suld have heard the din of instruments,Of tabron, trumpet, shalm, and clarioun,With reird redoundand through the elements;The Heralds, with their aweful vestiments;With Macers, upon either of their hands,To rule the press with burnist silver wands.
Thief! Saw thou nocht the great preparativesOf Edinburgh, the noble famous town?Thou saw the people labouring for their livesTo mak triumph with trump and clarioun:Sic pleasour never was in this regiounAs suld have been the day of her entrace,With great propinis given to her Grace.
Thief! Saw thou nocht the great preparatives
Of Edinburgh, the noble famous town?
Thou saw the people labouring for their lives
To mak triumph with trump and clarioun:
Sic pleasour never was in this regioun
As suld have been the day of her entrace,
With great propinis given to her Grace.
Thou saw makand richt costly scaffolding,Depaintit weell with gold and silver fine,Ready preparit for the upsetting;With fountains flowing water clear and wine;Disguisit folks, like creatures divine,On ilk scaffold, to play ane sindry story:But all in greeting turnit thou that glory.
Thou saw makand richt costly scaffolding,
Depaintit weell with gold and silver fine,
Ready preparit for the upsetting;
With fountains flowing water clear and wine;
Disguisit folks, like creatures divine,
On ilk scaffold, to play ane sindry story:
But all in greeting turnit thou that glory.
Thou saw there mony ane lusty fresh galland,Weell orderit for ressaving of their Queen;Ilk craftisman, with bent bow in his hand,Full galyartly in short clothing of green;The honest burgess cled thou suld have seen,Some in scarlot, and some in claith of grain,For till have met their Lady Soverane;
Thou saw there mony ane lusty fresh galland,
Weell orderit for ressaving of their Queen;
Ilk craftisman, with bent bow in his hand,
Full galyartly in short clothing of green;
The honest burgess cled thou suld have seen,
Some in scarlot, and some in claith of grain,
For till have met their Lady Soverane;
Provost, Bailies, and Lordis of the town,The Senatours, in order consequent,Cled into silk of purpur, black, and brown;Syne the great Lordis of the Parliament,With mony knichtly Baron and Banrent,In silk and gold, in colours comfortable:But thou, alas! all turnit into sable.
Provost, Bailies, and Lordis of the town,
The Senatours, in order consequent,
Cled into silk of purpur, black, and brown;
Syne the great Lordis of the Parliament,
With mony knichtly Baron and Banrent,
In silk and gold, in colours comfortable:
But thou, alas! all turnit into sable.
Syne all the Lordis of Religioun,And Princes of the Priestis venerable,Full pleasandly in their processioun,With all the cunning Clerkis honourable:But, theftuously, thou tyrane treasonable,All their great solace and solemnitiesThou turnit intill duleful dirigies.
Syne all the Lordis of Religioun,
And Princes of the Priestis venerable,
Full pleasandly in their processioun,
With all the cunning Clerkis honourable:
But, theftuously, thou tyrane treasonable,
All their great solace and solemnities
Thou turnit intill duleful dirigies.
Syne, next in order, passing through the town,Thou suld have heard the din of instruments,Of tabron, trumpet, shalm, and clarioun,With reird redoundand through the elements;The Heralds, with their aweful vestiments;With Macers, upon either of their hands,To rule the press with burnist silver wands.
Syne, next in order, passing through the town,
Thou suld have heard the din of instruments,
Of tabron, trumpet, shalm, and clarioun,
With reird redoundand through the elements;
The Heralds, with their aweful vestiments;
With Macers, upon either of their hands,
To rule the press with burnist silver wands.
This outgoes Scott himself for the possible pomp of Old Edinburgh, and is poetically authentic. Later records, however, enable us to tone down Lindsay’s description of the High Street on a great gala day by the sight of it on any ordinary market day.
Since the reign of James III., it appears, there had been an authorised distribution of the markets for different kinds of commodities through prescribed parts of the town, with the general effect that, while live stock and such bulkier commodities as wood and fodder were sold and bought only in the Grassmarket and its low-lying purlieus, the markets for all other commodities were divided mainly between the two piazzas of the High Street, each having its own “tron” or weighing apparatus. Of late years, however, there had been encroachments by each piazza on the market rights of the other, with a good deal of mutual complaint and bad feeling. We hear more particularly that, about 1559, in consequence of temporary dilapidations in the lower piazza by recent English and French ravagings of the town, the upper piazza, or High Street above the Tolbooth, had drawn into it far more than its statutory share of the market traffic. The complaints of this by the inhabitants of the lower piazza had been such that the Provost, Bailies, and Council passed an order on the subject, which may be read in Dr. Marwick’s admirable Extracts from the Burgh Records. “Upounconsideratioun of the thraing of mercattis abone the Over Tolbuth, and that the passage upon all mercat dayis is sa stoppit be confluence of peple that nane may pas by are uther, as alsua upoun consideratioun that the saidis landis and fore-tenementis be-eist Nudryis Wynde [i.e.in the lower piazza] ar almaist desolait and nocht inhabitit, beand the fairest and braidest parts of the toun, for laik of merkattis and resort of peple thairto”: it was decreed that in all time coming the markets for hides, wool, and skins should be specifically in the lower piazza. For a while the order took effect; but, by the “procurment of certane particular personis having thair landis abone the Tolbuth,” the upper piazza had again obtained the advantage. Things seem to have rectified themselves eventually; but about 1561 there was still this war of the markets between the two piazzas, with a continued overthronging of the upper.
Whether in one of the piazzas or in both, one has but to imagine the litter that would be left on market days, and to add that to the litter disgorged into the street upwards from the closes, or flung down into the street from the fore-stairs, to see that a good deal of Dunbar’s earlier description must be allowed to descend through Lindsay’s intermediate and more gorgeous one, as still true of the ordinary Edinburgh of the date of Queen Mary’s return.
No one really knows a city who does not know it by night as well as by day. Night obscures much that day forces into notice, and invests what remains with new visual fascinations, but still so that the individuality of any city or town is preserved through its darkened hours. Every town or city has its own nocturnal character. Modern Edinburgh asserts herself,equally by night as by day, as the city of heights and hollows. From any elevated point in her centre or on her skirts, if you choose to place yourself there latish at night, you may look down upon rows of lamps stretched out in glittering undulation over the more level street spaces; or you may look down, in other directions, upon a succession of tiers and banks of thickly edificed darkness, punctured miscellaneously by twinkling window-lights, and descending deeply into inscrutable chasms. More familiar, and indeed so inevitable that every tourist carries it away with him as one of his most permanent recollections of Edinburgh, is the nightly spectacle from Princes Street of the northern face of the Old Town, starred irregularly with window-lights from its base to the serrated sky-line. Perhaps this is the present nocturnal aspect of Edinburgh which may most surely suggest Old Edinburgh at night three hundred years ago. For, though we must be careful, in imagining Old Edinburgh, to confine ourselves strictly and exactly to as much of the present Edinburgh as stands on the ancient site, and therefore to vote away Princes Street, the whole of the rest of the New Town, and all the other accretions, this aspect of the Old Town at night from the north cannot have changed very greatly. A belated traveller passing through the hamlets that once straggled on the grounds of the present New Town, and arriving at the edge of the North Loch, in what is now the valley of Princes Street Gardens, must have looked up across the Loch to much the same twinkling embankment of the High Street and its closes, and to much the same serrated sky-line, lowering itself eastward from the shadowy mass of the Castle Rock. If the travellerdesired admission into the town, he could not have it on this side at all, but would have to go round to some of the ports in the town-wall from its commencement at the east end of the North Loch. He might try them all in succession,—Leith Wynd Port, the Nether Bow Port, the Cowgate Port, the Kirk of Field Port, Greyfriars Port, and the West Port,—with the chance of finding that he was too late for entrance at any, and so of being brought back to his first station, and obliged to seek lodging till morning in some hamlet there, or else in the Canongate. He could perform the whole circuit of the walls, however, in less than an hour, and might have the solace, at some points of his walk, of night views down into the luminous hollows of the town, very different from his first view upward from the North Loch.
While the belated traveller was thus shut out, the inhabitants within might be passing their hours till bed-time comfortably enough, whether in the privacy of their domiciles, or in more or less noisy loitering and locomotion among the streets and wynds. If it were clear moonlight or starlight, the wynds, and especially the stately length of the High Street, would be radiantly distinct, and locomotion in them would be easy. But even in the darkest nights the townsmen were not reduced to actual groping through their town, ifennui, or whim, or business, or neighbourly conviviality determined them to be out of doors. Not only would they carry torches and lanterns with them for their own behoof, especially if they had to find their way down narrow closes to their homes; not only were there the gratuitous oil-lights or candlelights from the windows of the fore-tenements inthe streets and wynds, sending down some glimmer into the streets and wynds themselves; but, by public regulation, the tenants of the fore-stair houses in the principal thoroughfares were bound to hang out, during certain hours of the evening, lamps for the guidance of those that might be passing. One has to remember, however, that people in those days kept very early hours. By ten o’clock every night Auld Reekie was mostly asleep. By that hour, accordingly, the house-lights, with some exceptions, had ceased to twinkle; and from that hour, save for bands of late roysterers here and there at close-mouths, and for the appointed night-watches on guard at the different ports, or making an occasional round with drum and whistle, silence and darkness reigned till dawn.
The Provost of Edinburgh in 1561 was Archibald Douglas of Kilspindie, a well-known laird of the great kin of the Angus Douglases. He had held the office continuously by annual election since 1553, with only two years of break. The four Bailies under him, answering to the Aldermen of an English town, were David Forster, Robert Ker, Alexander Home, and Allan Dickson, all merchant-burgesses. It would be possible, I believe, even at this distance of time, to give the names of as many as 1000 or 1500 other persons of the population, with particulars about not a few of them. In a town of such a size all the principal inhabitants must have been perfectly well acquainted with each other, and must have been known, by figure and physiognomy at least, to the rest of the community. We will name at present but one other inhabitant of the Edinburgh of 1561, who must have been about the best known of all. This was John Knox, the chief minister of the town,and the stated preacher, always on Sundays and often on week-days, in the great Church of St. Giles. His house, or the house of which he occupied a portion, if not then that very conspicuous projecting house of three storeys in the Nether Bow which visitors to Edinburgh now go to see as having been his, was certainly somewhere in that neighbourhood. From this point of what we have called the lower piazza of the High Street there is a direct view upwards to St. Giles’s Church, about 300 yards distant; and the walk in the other direction, down the Canongate, to Holyrood Abbey and Palace, is perhaps about twice as much. Divide a half-mile of sloping street into three equal parts, and Knox’s residence in Edinburgh, the house in which he sat on the day of young Queen Mary’s return among her Scottish subjects in August 1561, is to be imagined as just one-third down such a slope from the great Church of St. Giles, with the other two-thirds descending thence continuously, houses on both sides, to the Palace in which Mary had taken up her abode. Mary and Knox were to meet ere long.