as 'Cummie,' used to watch nightly for 'Leerie' lighting Some the lamps : My tea is nearly ready, and the Sun has left the sky, All who know and love his Child's Garden of Verses, and Memories and Portraits, will take a special interest in the manse at Colinton, his mother's early home, where he spent many happy days of childhood with the numerous cousins of a large connection, and with his grandfather, Dr. Balfour of Colinton, whose personality he brings so vividly before us in The Manse.' Even yet the manse may be seen, still as a dream,' the trees, the shady walks, the stream foaming or still, as may be, and the garden with flower-plots lying warm in sunshine, laurels, and a great yew making elsewhere a pleasing horror of shade, the sound of water every where and the sound of mills': "The river, on from mill to mill, Flows past our childhood's garden still, Shall watch it from the water door.' We can walk out to Swanston by Fairmilehead and think of the friendly gauger who played on the flute 'Over the hills and far away,' and so reach the 'hamlet of twenty cottages, in the woody fold of a green hill.' For years Mr. and Mrs. Stevenson lived much at Swanston to benefit the health of their delicate boy, and in his writings there are many allusions to it and to the scenery of the Pentland Hills. As we look at the familiar scene now, many word-pictures come into our minds: the old gardener and the garden in the lap of the hill, with its rocks overgrown with clematis, its Literary Edinburgh shadowy walks, and the splendid breadth of champaign that one saw from the north-west corner.' John Todd, 'the oldest herd on the Pentlands, with his flocks and his dogs, who knew neither rest nor sleep except by snatches; in the grey of the summer morning and already far up the hill, he would wake the "toun" with the sound of his shoutings, and in the lambing time his cries were not yet silenced late at nights.' We see the cottages with their shining interiors, the green or scarred hillsides, the frosty winter nights, the still summer days, the silent dawns. It was not till he was gone that people realised the brave patience with which he had struggled against feeble health and enforced exile, nor was the steady toil fully estimated which perfected the style and grace of diction which so eminently characterise his writings. Many of these descriptions were written far from Scotland, and perhaps for that very reason are instinct with a pathos which touches the heart of the reader, especially if he too is a 'kindly Scot' in far lands. This is how he writes of the grey city of his birth from Vailima in the Southern Seas: "There is no Edinburgh emigrant far or near from China to Peru, but he or she carries some lively pictures of the mind, some sunset behind the Castle cliffs, some snow scene, some maze of city lamps, indelible in the memory and delightful to study in the intervals of toil.' 'Under the wide and starry sky This be the verse you grave for me: (Engraved on the tomb of Robert Louis Stevenson at CHAPTER XII SOCIAL LIFE AND CUSTOMS IN EDINBURGH IN OLDEN DAYS WH HEN visitors come to Edinburgh, and from the hotels in Princes Street look across the green valley to the rugged cliffs of the Castle and the irregular roofs of high houses which mark the line of the High Street and Lawnmarket, it is difficult for them to realise what Edinburgh was like in olden days. Then noble families lived in all the closes opening off the High Street; there were palaces in the Cowgate; the Canongate was a court suburb; the Nor' Loch filled the valley now occupied by the Waverley Station and Princes Street Gardens; Princes Street was a somewhat lonely pathway known as the Lang Gait; and Leith was a seaport two miles from Edinburgh. If it is difficult to realise these outward changes, it is far more difficult to get a clear idea of the great changes which have taken place in manners, customs, and modes of life in Edinburgh-indeed, all over Scotland, during the last two hundred years. From the Union of the Crowns to the Union of the Parliaments the old city, though despoiled of its royal denizens, and shorn of the gay functions and spectacles of the days of the Stuarts, had still much to brighten it. The mere presence of the 145 Lords and 160 Commoners who attended the sittings of the Scottish Parliament must have made a prodigious difference in a small city such as Edinburgh was then. It was not merely Edinburgh the members themselves, but their families and retainers who helped to make trade brisk, and to crowd the High Street and the Canongate. There are still to be seen Lady Stair's Close, Lord President Hyndford's Close, the Duke of Gordon's house, my Lord Seton's 'ludging,' the Marquis of Huntly's house, the Earl of Selkirk's house, Queensberry House, Moray House, etc. etc. The situation of Edinburgh, perched on a hill and confined by its walls and gates within narrow limits, led, as we have seen, to the building of immensely high houses arranged in flats,—at that time so strange to our English neighbours. These houses at first had gardens and orchards behind them, which are mentioned in many old documents; in time these were built upon, and hence came the 'closes' leading north and south from both sides of the High Street, and the 'courts,' which are chiefly behind the Lawnmarket houses. The old winding turnpike' or 'scale' staircase in many instances still remains, with low-browed archway surmounted by a carved motto or text, and heavy old door studded with nails. In one or two instances the remains of a hammered iron grating shuts off an inner court. In a house of ten or twelve stories there were a large number of families, of the most diverse social conditions. High up in the garrets lived poor tradespeople, or mechanics; descending gradually came better-class shopkeepers, ministers or professors, old dowagers, 'sma' gentry,' lawyers, advocates, Lords of Session, noblemen. In the cellars and one or two of the lower flats lived Highland chairmen, caddies, and sweeps. An anecdote is told of a Scotch laird who went up to London after the Union. He was offered rooms on the ground floor, which he refused, and indignantly retorted that 'he hadna' leeved a' his days on a sixth flat to be pit on the grun' noo.' These flats were very cramped and small, but in early days the best parlour or 'hall' possessed a box bed, and the family bedroom was also burgh in used as a sitting-room. We are told that Bruce of Social Kennet, an advocate of good family, lived in a flat in Life and the Lawnmarket which had three rooms and a kitchen, Customs for which he paid £11. One room was the 'Lady's,' in Edinprobably a parlour, the other his study and consultingroom, and the third the bedroom. The nurse and children slept in the study, their beds being removed during the day, while the cook slept in the kitchen under the dresser! When he was raised to the Bench and became Lord Kennet, they removed to a larger house in Horse Wynd. A traveller in 1697 says, 'there were turned up beds in nearly all the best rooms in Edinbro houses, they were so small.' Can we wonder that lawyers and their clients, merchants and their customers, one friend 'treating' another, adjourned to taverns when the accommodation in private houses was so scanty? The staple food for dinner in town and country was barley-broth, called and spelled broath. It was made of beef, generally salt, and was thickened with barley. In those days there were no barley-mills, so the barley was bruised in a mortar and then rubbed in a coarse cloth to husk it. Cabbage was also largely used, as other vegetables were little cultivated. In some old books we read of cabbie-claw, codfish dressed with a sauce made of horse radish and eggs. Friar's chicken was a dish which had descended from monastery cooks, and was considered a dainty. It was made of chicken cut in pieces and cooked with eggs and parsley and cinnamon. Cockie-leekie was then, as now, a favourite dish, and was reserved for company. It was made with a well-fed young cock, boiled with leeks and prunes, which seem to point to a French origin. Roast meat was very little used; pigeons and moorfowl were roasted on the spit or baked in 'pot ovens,' which may be seen to this day in herds' houses in the moorland solitudes of Dumfriesshire and Galloway. 1 Probably from cabillaud, French for cod. Olden Days |