and burned, and ?? that ilk mail in Edinburgh have
his lumes (vents) full of watter in the nycht, under
pain of deid !? (I? Qiurnal.?) This gives us a graphic
idea of the city in the sixteenth century, and of the
High Street in particular, ?with the majority of the
buildings on either side covered with thatch, encumbered
by piles of heather and other fuel
accumulated before each door for the use of the
inhabitants, and from amid these, we may add
the stately ecclesiastical edifices, and the substantial
mansions of the nobility, towering with all the
more imposing effect, in contrast to their homely
neighbourhood.?
Concerning these heather stacks we have the
following episode in ?Moyse?s Memoirs :?--?On the
2nd December, 1584, a b.kxteis boy called Robert
Henderson (no doubt by the instigation of Satan)
desperately put some powder and a candle to his
father?s heather-stack, standing in a close opposite
the Tron, and burnt the same with his.father?s
house, to the imminent hazard of burning the whole
Sown, for which, being apprehended most marvellously,
after his escaping out of town, he wus n~xt
day burnt pick at the cross of Edinburgh as an
example.?
There was still extant in 1850 a small fragment
.of Forrester?s Wynd, a beaded doorway in a ruined
wall, with the legend above it-
?? O.F. OUR INHERITANCE, 1623.?
?In all the old houses in Edinburgh,? says
Amot, ?it is remarkable that the superstition of
the time had guarded each with certain cabalistic
characters or talismans engraved upon its front.
These were generally composed of some texts of
Scripture, of the name of God, or perhaps an
emblematical representation of the crucifixion.?
Forrester?s Wynd probably took its name from
Sir Adam Forrester of Corstorphine, who was twice
chief magistrate of the city in the 14th century.
After the ?Jenny Geddes? riot in St. Giles?s,
Guthrie, in his ?Memoirs,? tells us of a mob, consisting
of some hundreds of women, whose place
.of rendezvous in 1637 was Forrester?s Wynd, and
who attacked Sydeserf, Bishop of Galloway, when
.on his way to the Privy Council, accompanied by
Francis Stewart, son of the Earl of Bothwell,
.?with such violence, that probably he had been
torn in pieces, if it had not been that the said
Francis, with the help of two pretty men that
attended him, rescued him out of their barbarous
hands, aud hurled him in at the door, holding back
the pursuers until those that were within shut the
door. Thereafter, the Provost and Bailies being
assembled in their council, those women beleaguered
them, and threatened to burn the house about their
ears, unless they did presently nominate two commissioners
for the town,? Src. Their cries were :
?? God defend all thdse who will defend God?s cause!
God confound the service-book and all maintainers
thereof !?
From advertisements, it wonld appear that a
character who made some noise in his time, Peter
Williamson, ?I from the other world,? as he called
himself, had a printer?s shop at the head of this
wynd in 1772. The victim of a system of kidnapping
encouraged by the magistrates of Aberdeen,
he had been c?arried off in his boyhood to America,
and after almost unheard-of perils and adventures,
related in his autobiography, published in 1758, he
returned to Scotland, and obtained some small
damages from the then magistrates of his native
city, and settled in Edinburgh as a printer and
publisher, In 1776 he started The Scots Spy, published
every Friday, of which copies are now
extremely rare. He had the merit of establishing
the first penny post in Edinburgh, and also published
a ?? Directory,? from his new shop in the
Luckenbooths, in 1784. He would appear for
these services to have received a small pension
from Government when it assumed his institution
of the penny post.
The other venerable alley referred to, Beith?s
Wynd, when greatly dilapidated by time, was nearly
destroyed by two fires, which occurred in 1786 and
1788. The former, on the 12th Decernher, broke
out near Henderson?s stairs, and raged with great
violence for man), hours, but by the assistance of
the Town Guard and others it was suppressed, yet
not before many families were burnt out. The
Parliament House and the Advocates? Library
were both in imminent peril, and the danger appeared
so great, that the Court of Session did not
sit tha? day, and preparations were made for the
speedy removal of all records. At the head of
Beith?s Wynd, in 1745, dwelt Andrew Maclure, a
writing-niaster, one of that corps of civic volunteers
who marched to oppose the Highlanders, but
which mysteriously melted away ere it left the West
Port. It was noted of the gallant Andrew, that
having made up his mind to die, he had affixed
a sheet of paper to his breast, whereon was written,
in large text-hand, ?This is the body of Andrew
Maclure j let it be decently interred,? a notice that
was long a source of joke among the Jacobite
wits.
With this wynd, our account of the alleys in
connection with the Lawnmarket ends. We have
elsewhere referred to the once well-known Club
formed by the dwellers in the latter, chiefly woc!!en
He died in January, 1799.
