THE HIGH STREET. 233
of his mother, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Craig, has been preserved by Sir James
Balfour, and is worth quoting as a sample of party rancour against the Whig statesman :-
Deed well ye deathe,
And burate the lyke a tune,
That took away good Elspet Craige,
And left ye knave her sone.
History and romance contend for the associations of the Scottish capital, not always
with the advantage on the dull side of fact. On a certain noted Saturday night, in the
annals of fiction, Dandy Dinmont and Colonel Mannering turned from the High Street
“ into a dark alley, then up a dark stair, and into an open door.” The alley was Writers’
Court, and the door that of Clerihugh’s tavern ; a celebrated place of convivial resort during
the last century, which still stands at the bottom of the court, though its deserted walls no
longer ring with the revelry of High Jinks, and such royal mummings as formed the sport
of Pleydell and his associates on that jovial night. The picture is no doubt a true one of
scenes familiar to grave citizens of former generations. Clerihugh’s tavern was the favourite
resort of our old civic dignitaries, for those douce festivities ” that were then deemed
indispensable to the satisfactory settlement of all city affairs. The wags of last century
used to tell of a certain city treasurer, who, on being applied to for a new rope to the Tron
Kirk bell, summoned the Council to deliberate on the demand ; an adjournment to Clerihugh’s
tavern it was hoped might facilitate the settlement of 80 weighty a matter, but
one dinner proved insufficient, and it was not till they had finished their third banquet in
Writers’ Court, that the application was referred to a committee of councillors, who spliced
the old bell rope and settled the bill I
We have already alluded to some of the most recently cherished superstitions in regard
to Mary King’s Close, associated with Beth’s Wynd as one of the last retreats of the
plague ; but it appears probable, from the following epigram ‘‘ on Marye King’a pest,”
by Drummond of Hawthornden, that the idea is coeval with the name of the close :-
‘
Turne, citizens, to God ; repent, repent,
And praye your bedlam frenziea may relent ;
Think not rebellion a trifling thing,
Thia plague doth fight for Mark and the Xing.’
Mr George Sinclair has furnished, in his “ Satan’s Invisible World Discovered,” an
account of apparitions seen in this close, and (‘attested by witnesses of undoubted veracity,”
which leaves all ordinary wonders far behind! This erudite work was written to confound
the atheists of the seventeenth century. It used to be hawked about the streets by the
gingerbread wives, and found both purchasers and believers enough to have satisfied even
its credulous author. Its popularity may account for the general prevalence of superstitioue
prejudices regarding this old close, which was, at best, a grim and gousty-looking place,
and appears, from the reports of property purchased for the site of the Royal Exchange,
to have been nearly all in ruins when that building was erected, most of the houses having
been burned down in 1750. The pendicle of Satan’s worldly possessions, however, which
1 Writers’ Court derives its name from the Signet Library having been kept there until ita removal to the magnificent
apartments which it now occupies adjoining the Parliament House.
a Drummond of Hawthorndeu’s Poems, Maitland Club, p. 395.
Originally published in 1685, by Mr George Siclair, Professor of Philosophy in Glasgow College, and afterwards
minister of Eastwood in Renfrewahire.
2Q
