3 30 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
the usual substitute with our simple forefathers for the comfortable glazed sash that now
admits the morning beams to the meanest dwelling. Gawin Douglas, in his prologue
to the seventh book of the 4‘Bneid,’’ which contains a description of winter, warned
that the “ day is dawing ” by the whistling of a sorry gled, and glancing through
A schot wyndo onschet, a litill on char,
Pemavyt the mornyng bla, wan, and har.
Douglas, at the time he undertook his vigorous translation of Virgil, was Provost of the
Collegiate Church of St Giles, and we could hardly wish for more conclusive evidence of
the general prevalence of this rude device throughout the Scottish capital during the
prosperous era of the reign of James IT., than the very natural and graphic manner in
which the keen wintry prospect he espies through his half-open shutter is described, and
the comfortable picture of his own blazing hearth, where he solaces himself by the
resumption of his pleasing task :-
The dew-droppis congelit on stibbill and r p d ,
And scharp hailstanys mortfundeit of kynd,
Hoppand on the thak and on the causay by :
The scbot I closit, and drew inwart in hy,
Chyvirrand for cdd, the ae8~onw as so snell,
Schupe with hayt flambe to fleym the freezyng fell.
And as I bownyt me to the fyre me by,
Baith up and down the hows I dyd aspy :
And seeand Virgill on ane lettron stand,
To write onone I hynt a pen in hand.
Another of these picturesque tenements is Palfrep’s or the King’s Head Inn, a fine
antique stone land built about the reign of Charles I. An inner court is enclosed by the
buildings behind, and it long remained one of the best frequented inns of old Edinburgh,
being situated nearly at the. junction of two of the principal approaches to the town
from the south and west. From the style and apparent age of the building, however,
there can be little question that its original occupants ranked among the old Scottish
aria tocracy.
In making the excavations necessary for the erection of a handsome suit of additional
court-rooms for the accommodation of the Lords Ordinary, built to the south of the old
Parliament Hall towards the close of 1844, some curious discoveries were made, tending
to illustrate the changes that have been effected on the Cowgate during the last four
centuries. In the space cleared by the workmen, on the site of the Old Parliament Stairs,
a considerable fragment of the fist city wall was laid bare ; a solid and substantial mass
of masonry, very different from the hasty superstructure of 1513. On the sloping ground
to the south of this, at about fourteen feet below the surface, a range of strong oaken
m 5 a were found lying close together, and containing human remains, In one skull
the brain remained 80 fresh as to show the vermicular form of surface, although the
ancient Churchyard of St Giles, of which these were doubtless some of the latest occupants,
had ceased to be used as a place of sepulture since the grant of the Greyfriars’
gardens for that purpose in 1566. The form of these coffins was curious, being quite
straight at the sides, but with their lids rising into a ridge in the centre, and altogether
closely resembling in form the stone coffins of a still earlier era. During the same
