been thrown down to facilitate the act. J?ames
Hay had been provided with a key that opened the
long-unused gate of the gloomy-domed mausoleum
of Sir George Mackenzie, a place still full of terror
to boys, as it is supposed to be haunted by the
blood-red spirit of the persecutor, and there he
.secreted himself, while the following advertisement
appeared in the Edinburgh Advertiser of the 24th
.November, 1783 :-
?? ESCAPED FROM THE TOLBOOTH OF EDINBURGH,
?James Hay, indicted for highway roblery, ag.ed about IS
years, by trade a glazier, 5 feet 10 inches high, slender
made, pale complexion, long visage, brown hair cut short,
pitted a little in the face with the small-pox, speaks slow
with a Ruur in his tone, and has a mole on one of his cheeks.
?The magistrates offer a reward of Tuen& Guimus to any
person who will apprehend and secure the said James Hay,
to be paid by the City Chamberlain, on the said James Hay
being re-committed to the Tolbwth of this city.?
But James Hay had been a ?? Herioter,? brought
up in the famous hospital which adjoins the ancient
.and gloomy burying-ground ; thus, he contrived to
make known his circumstances to some of his boy-
. ish friends, and besought them to assist him in his
.distress, as it was impossible for his father to do
. so. A very clannish spirit animated ?the Auld
Herioters? of those days, and not to succour one
,of the community, however undeserving he might
be of aid, would have been deemed by them as a
-crime of the foulest nature ; thus, Hay?s sshoolfellows
supplied his wants from their own meals,
-conveying him food in his eerie lurking-place, by
.scaling the old smoke-blackened and ivied walls, at
the risk of severe punishment, and of seeing sights
<6 uncanny,? for six weeks, till the hue and cry
abated, when he ventured to leave~the tomb in the
night, and escaped abroad or to England, beyond
reach of the law.
? The principal entrance to the Tolbooth,? to
quote one familiar with the old edifice, ? was at the . bottom of the turret next the church. The gateway
was of good carved stonework, and occupied
by a door of ponderous massiveness and strength,
having, besides the lock, a flap padlock, which,
however, was generally kept unlocked during the
day. In front of the door there always paraded a
private of the Town Guard, with his rusty-red
clothes and Lochaber axe or musket. The door
.adjacent to the principal gateway was in the final
days of the Tolbooth ? Michael Kettins? shoe-shop;??
but had formerly been a thiefs hole. After further
.describing the tortuous access, the writer continues :
A? You then entered the ha& which being free to all
prisoners save those in the east end, was usual?ly
dlled with a crowd of shabby-looking but very
nerry loungers, A small rail here served as an
rdditional security, no prisoner being permitted to
:ome within its pale. Here, also, a sentinel of the
rown Guard was always walking with a bayonet or
i ramrod in his hand. The hall being also the chapel
3f the gaol, contained an old pulpit of singula$
fashion-such a pulpit as one could have imagined
Knox to have preached from, and which indeed
he is traditionally said to have actually done. At
the right hand side of the pulpit was a door, leading
up the large turnpike (stair) to the apartments
occupied by the criminals, one of which was of
plate-iron. The door was always shut, except
when food was taken up to the prisoners. On the
west end of the hall hung a board, whereon was
inscribed the following emphatic lines :-
? A prison is a house of care,
A place where none can thrive ;
A touchstone true to try a friend,
A grave for men alive.
Sometimes a place of right,
Sometimes a place of wrong, 5 .
Sometimes a place for jades and thieves,
And honest men among.?
The floor immediately above the hall was occupied
by one room for felons, having a bar along part
of the floor, to which condemned criminals were
chained, and a square box of plate-iron in the centre
was called ?the cage? which was said to have been
constructed for the purpose of confining some extraordinary
culprit who had broken half the jails in the
kingdom. Above this room was another of the same
size appropriated to felons.? At the western end
was the platform where public executions took place.
Doomed to destruction, this gloomy and massive
edifice, of many stirring memories, was swept away
in 1817, and the materials of it were used for the
construction of the great sewers and drains in the
vicinity of Fettes Row, emphatically styled ? the
grave of the old Tolbooth.? The arched doorway,
door, and massive lock, Sir Walter Scott engrafted
on a part of his mansion at Abbotsford; and in
1829 he found that ??a tom-tit was pleased to
build her nest within the lock of the Tolbootha
strong temptation,? he adds, in the edition of his
works issued in the following year, ? to have committed
a sonnet.?
The City Guard-house formed long a ? pendicle?
-to use a Scottish term-of the old Tolbooth.
Scott has described this edifice as ?a long, low,
ugly building, which, to a fanciful imagination,
might have suggested the idea of a long black
snail crawling up the middle of the High Street,
and deforming its beautiful esplanade.? It stood
in front of the Black Turnpike, and during the
