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
234 MEMORIAL$ OF BDINBURGH.
we have now to describe, is understood to be still standing in the nether regions of the I
Royal Exchange area.
From Professor Sinclair’s veracious narrative, it appears that Mr Thomas Coltheart, a
respectable law agent, removed from a lower part of the town to a better house in Mary
King’s Close. The maid-servant was warned by the neighbour3 of its being haunted on
her first coming about the house, and became so intimidated that she deserted her place,
leaving Mr Coltheart and his wife alone in their new dwelling, to defy the devil and his
minions as they best might. The good lady had seated herself beside her husband’s bedwho
had lain down on the Sunday afternoon, being slightly indisposed-and was engaged
in reading the Bible, when happening to lift her eye, she was appalled by beholding a head,
seemingly that of an old man with a grey beard, suspended in mid air at a little distance,
and gazing intently on her. She swooned at the sight, and lay in a state of insensibility
till the return of her neighbours from church. Her husband, on being told of the apparition,
sought to reason her out of her credulity, and the evening passed over without further
trouble ; but they were not long gone to bed when he himself spied the same phantom-head,
b i the light of the fire, gazing at him with its ghastly eyes. He rose and lighted a candle,
and took to prayer, but with little effect; for in about an hour the bodiless phantom was
joined by that of a child also suspended in mid air, and this again was followed by a naked
arm from the elbow downwards, which, in defiance of all adjurations and prayers, not only
persisted in remaining, but seemed bent on shaking hands with them. The poor agent in
the most solemn manner addressed this very friendly but unwelcome intruder, engaging to
do his utmost to right any wrongs it had received, if it would only begone, but all in
vain. The goblins evidently considered that the worthy couple, and not they, were the
intruders. They persisted in making themselves at home; though after all they seem
to have been civil enough ghosts, with no unfriendly intentions, so that they were only
allowed the run of the house. By and by the naked arm was joined by a spectral dog,
which deliberately mounted a chair, and turning its nose to its tail, went to sleep. This
was followed by a cat, and soon after by other and stranger creatures, until the whole floor
swarmed with them, so that “ the honest couple went to their knees again within the bed;
there being no standing in the floor of the room. In the time of prayer, their ears were
startled with a deep, dreadful, and loud groan, as of a strong man dying, at which all the
apparitions and visions at once vaniahed I ”
Mr Coltheart must have been a man of no ordinary courage, or this night’s experience
would have satisfied him to resign his new house to the devil, or his subtenants, who seemed
to have taken a previous lease of it. He continued to reside there till his death without
further molestation ; but at the very moment he expired, a gentleman whose law-agent and
intimate friend he was, being in his house at Tranent-a small town about ten miles
from Edinburgh-was awoke while asleep ia bed there with his wife, by the nurse, who
was affrighted by something like a cloud moving about the room. While the gentleman
got hold of his sword to defend himself and them against this unwonted visitor, the cloud
gradually assumed the form of a man. ‘‘At last the apparition looked him fully and
perfectly in the face, and stood by him with a ghostly and pale countenance.” The gentleman
recognised his friend Thomas Coltheart, and demanded of him if he was dead, and
what was his errand? Whereat the ghost held up his hand three times, shaking it towards
