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.
