Liberton?s Wynd.] DOWIE?S TAVERN. 119
town mansion of the abbot, with a beautiful chapel
attached to it, and may serve to remind us how
little idea we can form of the beauty of the
Scottish capital before the Reformation, adorned
as it was with so many churches and conventual
buildings, the very sites of which are now unknown,
Over the doorway of an ancient stone land in Gosford?s
Close,which stood immediately east of the Old
Bank Close, there existed a curious sculptured
lintel containing a representation of the crucifixion,
and which may with every probability be regarded
as another relic of the abbot?s house that once
occupied its site.?
This lintel is still preserved, and the house
which it adorned belonged to Mungo Tennant, a
wealthy citizen, whose seal is appended to a reversion
of the half of the lands of Leny, in 1540. It
also bears his arms, with the then common legend
-Soli. Deo. Honor. et. GZona.
In the lower storcy of this house was a stronglyarched
cellar, in the floor of which was a concealed
trap-door, admitting to another lower down, hewn
out of the living rock. Tradition averred it was a
chamber for torture, but.it has more shrewdly been
supposed to have been connected with the smugglers,
to whom the North Loch afforded by boat such
facilities for evading the duties at the city gates,
and running in wines and brandies. This vault is
believed to be still remaining untouched beneath
the central roadway of the new bridge. On the
first floor of this mansion the fifth Earl of Loudon,
a gallant general officer, and his daughter, Lady
Flora (latterly countess in her own right) afterwards
Marchioness of Hastings, resided when in town.
Here, too, was the mansion of Hume Rigg of
Morton, who died in it in 1788. It is thus described
in a note to Kay?s works :-? The dining and
drawing-rooms were spacious ; indeed, more so
than those of any private modern house we have
seen. The lobbies were all variegated marble, and
a splendid mahogany staircase led to the upper
storey. There was a large green behind, with a
statue in the middle, and a summer-house at the
bottom; but so confined was the entry to this
elegant mansion that it was impossible to get even
a sedan chair near to the door.?? On the zoth
January, 1773, at four k.~., there was? a tempest,
says a print of the time, ? and a stack of chimneys
on an old house at the foot of Gosfords Close,
possessed by Hugh Mossman, writer, was blown
down, and breaking through the roof in that part
of the house where he and his spouse lay, they
both perished in the ruins. . . . . In the
storey below, Miss Mally Kigg, sister to Rigg of
Morton, also perished.?
So lately as 1773 the Ladies Catharine and
Anne Hay, daughters of John Marquis of Tweeddale,
and in that year their brother George, the
fifth Marquis, resided there too, in the thud floor
of the front ? land ? or tenement. ? Indeed,? says
Wilson, ?the whole neighbourhood was the favourite
resort of the most fashionable and distinguished
among the resident citizens, and a perfect
nest of advocates and lords of session.? In the
pear 1794 the hall and museum of the Society of
Antiquaries were at the bottom of this ancient
thoroughfare.
Next it was Liberton?s Wynd, the avenue of which
is still partially open, and which was removed to
make way for the new bridge and other buildings.
Like many others still extant, or demolished, this
alley, called a wynd as being broader than a
close, had the fronts of its stone mansions so added
to and encumbered by quaint projecting out-shot
Doric gables of timber, that they nearly met overhead,
excluding the narrow strip of sky, and, save
at noon, all trace of sunshine. Yet herein stood
Johnnie Dowie?s tavern, one of the most famous in
the annals of Convivialia, and a view of which, by
Geikie, is preserved by Hone in his Year Book.?
Johnnie Dowie was the sleekest and kindest of
landlords ; nothing could equal the benignity of
his smile when he brought ?ben? a bottle of his
famous old Edinburgh ale to a well-known and
friendly customer. The formality with which he
drew the cork, the air with which he filled the long,
slender glasses, and the regularity with which he
drank the healths of all present in the first, with
his dozrce civility at withdrawing, were as long remembered
by his many customers as his ?Nor?
Loch trouts and Welsh rabbits,? after he had gone
to his last home, in 1817, leaving a fortune to his
son, who was a major in the amy. With a laudable
attachment to the old costume he always wore
a cocked hat, buckles at the knees and shoes, as
well as a cross-handled cane, over which he
stooped in his gait. Here, in the space so small
and dark, that even cabmen would avoid it now,
there came, in the habit of the times, Robert Fergusson
the poet, David Herd the earliest collector
of Scottish songs, ? antiquarian Paton,? and others
forgotten now, but who were men of local note
in their own day as lords of session and leading
advocates. Here David Martin, a well-known
portrait painter, instituted a Club, which was
quaintly named after their host, the ?Dowie
College;? and there his far more celebrated
pupil Sir Henry Raeburn often accompanied
him in his earlier years; and, more than all,
it was the favourite resort of Robert Bums,
