L UCKENBOOTHS AND PARLIAMENT CLOSE. I97
Bow, . . the buildings on each side of the way being all of squared stone, five,
six, and seven stories high.” When I came first into the High Street,” says another
traveller, writing more than a century after him, ‘‘ I thought I had never seen anything
of the kind more magn3cent.” Gradually, however, the traveller learned, from his
civic entertainers, to mingle suggestions of improvement with his admiration. ‘‘ You
have seen,” says Topham, writing from Edinburgh in 1776, “the famous street at
Lisle, la Rue Royale, leading to the port of Tournay, which is said to be the finest in
Europe, but which, I can assure you, is not to be compared either in length or breadth
to the High Street at Edinburgh.” He adds, however, ‘‘ would they be at the expense
of removing some buildings which obstruct the view, nothing could be conceived .
more magnificent.’’ ’ Similar remarks might be quoted from later travellers ; we shall
only add that of our greatest living landscape painter, k n e r , expressed since the removal
of the Luckenbooths, that ‘‘ the old High Street of Edinburgh was only surpassed in
Europe by that of Oxford” Imposing as the effect of the High Street still is,-
although scarcely a year passes without the loss of some one or other of its ancient and
characteristic features,-we doubt if its broad and unencumbered thoroughfare will ever
again meet with the praise that it received from travellers who had to pass through the
narrow defile of the Purses, or thread their way along by the still more straitened
Krames that clung on to the old church walls. So far as picturesque effect is concerned,
this improvement very much resembles a reform effected of late years in Salisbury
Cathedral. An ancient screen which divided the Lady Chapel from the choir had long
been an eyesore to certain men of taste, who found in the glimpses of the little chapel
that they caught beyond, far too much left to their imagination. It was accordingly
demolished, under the direction of Mr Jamea Wyatt, when, to their surprise, much of the
rich effect of the chapel vanished along with the screen, and they began to think that it
might have been a part of the original designer’s intention to conceal the plain shafts of
the pillars, while their capitals, and the rich groinings of the roof, alone appeared. We
strongly suspect our city reformers fancied that every bit of the old church which the
Luckenbooths concealed was to disclose features as rich as the fine Gothic crown they
saw towering over the chimney-tops.’
The ancient buildings that occupied the middle of the High Street, between the
Tolbooth and the Cross, formed a range of irregular and picturesque lands, nearly all
with timber fronts and lofty peaked gables projecting into the street. Through one of
these, an alley, sometimes called the Old-Kirk Style, led from the head of Advocates’
Close to the old north porch of St Giles’s Church, obliterated in the remodelling of that
venerable edifice. This ancient alley is alluded to by the name it generally received
to the last in Dunbar’s Address to the Merchants of Edinburgh, written about the year
Letters from the North of Scotland, 1754.
Topham’s Lettem, p. 8. There is an amusing tendency in many-minds to regard every near object aa obstructing
the &U, without the least consideration of what liea beyond it. We heard lately of an English lady, who, on her arrival
in Edinburgh, took up her abode in fashionable lodgings at the west end of Princea Street. On B friend inquiring how
she liked the proapect from her window, she replied, that the view would really be very fine, were it not for that great
castle standing in the way I
The chief ornament of Edinburgh is St Giles’s Church, a magnificent Gothic pile, the beauties of which are almost
wholly concealed by the Louses in ita near neighbourhood, particularly the Luckenbooths, which, it is expted, will
shortly be pulled down.”-Campbell’s Journey, 1802, rol. 5. p. 125.
a
198 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
1490 ; and in the following century it was the scene of the assassination of M‘Lellan
of Bombie, who in the year 1525, was waylaid and slain there in open day, with perfect
impunity, by the lairds of Lochinvar and Drumlanrig, during the turbulent sway of
the Douglases, in the minority of James V. Numerous personal encounters occurred
at the same place in early times, consequent on its vicinity to the Parliament House
and courts of law; and even after the fruits of many revolutions had put an end to
such scenes of violence, this dark alley maintained somewhat of its old character, as a
favourite resort of the thief and pickpocket,-degenerate successors of the cateran and
moss-trooper !
The timber
land immediately in front of St Giles’s steeple was only three stories high, and with a very
low-pitched roof, so as to admit of the clock being seen by passers in the High Street;
while the one adjoining it to the west, after rising to the height of five stories and finishing
with two very steep overhanging gables in front, had a sixth reared above these, with
a flat lead roof,-like a crow’s nest stuck between the battlements of some ancient peel
tower.’ The two most easterly lands in the Luckenbooths differed from the rest in being
tall and substantial erections of polished ashlar work. The first of these was surmounted
with stone gables of unequal size, somewhat in the style of “ Gladstone’s land,” at the head
of Lady Stair’s Close, and apparently built not later than the reign of Charles I. The other
building, which presented its main front down the High Street, though evidently a more
recent erection, yielded in interest to none of the private buildings of Edinburgh. ‘( Creech’s
Land,” as it was termed, according to the fashion of the burgh, after one of its latest and
most worthy occupants, formed the peculiar haunt of the muses during the last century.
”hither Allan Ramsay removed in 1725,-immediately after publishing the fist complete
edition of his great pastoral poem,-from the sign of the Mercury’s Head, opposite Niddry’s
Wynd, and there,-on the first floor, which had formerly been the London Coffee House,
*-he substituted for his former celestial sign, the heads of Ben Jonson and Drummond
of Hawthornden, and greatly extended his business with the profits of his successful
devotion to the Muses. It was on his removal to this central locality that he established
his circulating library,-the first institution of the kind known in Scotland, not without
both censure and interference from some of the stricter leaders of society at that period.
“ Profaneness,” says Wodrow, “ is come to a great height ; all the villanous, profane,
and obscene books of plays, printed at London by Curle and others, are got down from
London by Allan Ramsay, and lent out for an easy price to young boys, servant women
of the better sort, and gentlemen; and vice and obscenity dreadfully propagated.”
Ramsay’s fame and fortune progressed with unabating vigour after this period; and
his shop became the daily resort of the leading wits and literati, as well as of every
traveller of note that visited the Scottish capital.
The buildings of the middle row were extremely irregular in character.
Ante, p. 28. ’ Maitland informs us (p. 181) that the Krames were first erected against St cfiles’s Church in 1555. The Boothraw,
or Luckenbooths, however, we have shown (ante, p. 172) was in existence 150 years before that, and probably
much earlier. Maitland derives its latter name from a species of woollen cloth called Luken, brought from the Low
Countries ; but Dr Jamieson assigns the more probable source in the old Scotch word Luckm, closed, or shut up ;
signifying booths closed in, and admitting of being locked, in contradistinction to the open stands, which many still living
can remember to have seen displayed in the Lawnmarket every market day.
