St. Giles?s Churchyard.
INTERIOR OF THE HIGH CHURCH, ST. GILES?S.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF ST. GILES?S.
St. Giles?s Churchyard-The IIaison Dieu-The Clam-shell Turnpike-The Grave of Knox-The City Cross--The Summons ot Pluto-
Executions : Kirkaidy, Gilderoy, and others-The Caddies--The Dyvours Stane-The Luckenbooths-The Auld Kirk S~yle-Eym?o
Lodging-Lard Coalstoun?s Wig-Allan Ramsay?s Library and ?Creech?s Land?-The Edinburgh Halfpenny.
DOWN the southern slope of the hill on which St.
Giles?s church stands, its burying-ground-covered
with trees, perchance anterior to the little parish
edifice we have described as existing in the time of
David 1.-sloped to the line of the Cowgate, where
it was terminated by a wall and chapel dedicated
to the holy rood, built, says Arnot, ?in memory of
?hrist crucified, and not demolished till the end of
the sixteenth century.? In July, 1800, a relic ot
this chapel was found near the head of Forrester?s
Wynd, in former days the western boundary of the
churchyard. This relic-a curiously sculptured
grouplike a design from Holbein?s ?Dance of
Death,? was defaced and broken by the workmen.
Amid the musicians, who brought up the rear,
was an angel, playing on the national bagpipe-a
St Gilds Churchyard. THE CHURCHYARD. I49
were a hospital and chapel known by the name
of the ?Maison Dieu.? ?We know not,? says
Arnot, ?* at what time or by whom it was founded ;
but at the Reformation it shared the common
fate of Popish establishments in this country. It
was converted into private property. This building
is still (1779) entire, and goes by the name of the
Clam-shell Turnpike, from the figure of an escalopshell
cut in stone above the door.?
Fire and modern reform have effected dire
changes here since Arnot wrote. Newer buildings
.occupy the site ; but still, immediately above the
entrance that led of old to Bell?s Wynd, a modern
stone lintel bears an escalop shell in memory of
the elder edifice, which, in the earliest titles of it
. conceit which appears among the sculpture at
Roslm chapel. So late as 1620 ?James Lennox
iselected chaplain of the chapelry of the holy rood,
in the burgh kirk-yard of St. Giles.? Hence it is
supposed that the nether kirk-yard remained in use
long after the upper had been abandoned as a
plad of sepulture.
All this was holy ground in those days, fQr in
U Keith?s Catalogue? we are told that near the
head of Bell?s Wynd (on the eastern side) there
the pavement of a noisy street, ?there sleep the
great, the good, the peaceful and the turbulent,
the faithful and the false, all blent together in their
quaint old coffins and flannel shrouds, with money
in their dead hands, and crosses or chalices on
their breasts ; old citizens who remembered the
long-haired King David passing forth with barking
hound and twanging horn on that Roodday in
harvest which so nearly cost him his life ; and how
the fair Queen Margaret daily fed the poor at the
castle gate ?with the tenderness of a mother;?
those who had seen Randolph?s patriots scale ?the
steep, the iron-belted rock;? Count Guy of Namur?s
Flemish lances routed on the Burghmuir, and
William Wallace mustering his bearded warriors
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that are extant, was written of as the ?old land,?
formerly belonging to George Crichton, Bishop of
Dunkeld, who held that see between the years
1527 and 1543, and was Lord Keeper of the
Privy Seal under King James V.
Overlooked, then, by the great cruciform church
of St. Giles, and these minor ecclesiastical edifices,
the first burying-ground of Edinburgh lay on the
steep slope with its face to the sun. The last
home of generations of citizens, under what is now
ST. GILES?S CHURCH IN Tni PRESENT DAY.
