338 ‘MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
stentoriously laughing, and gaping with tahees of laughter. . . . Though sick with fear,
yet she went the next morning with her maid to view the noted places of her former night’s
walk, and at the close inquired who lived there? It is
not to be wondered that Major Weir’s house should have been deserted after his death,
and that many a strange sound and fearful sight should have testified to the secure hold the
powers of darkness had established on this dwelling of their emissaries. The enchanted
staff was believed to have returned to its post, and to wait as porter at the door. The hum
of the necromantic wheel was heard at the dead of night, and the deserted mansion wag
sometimes seen blazing with the lights of aome eldrich festival, when the Major and his
sister were supposed to be entertaining the Prince of Darkness. There were not even
wanting those, during the last century, who were affirmed to have seen the Major issue at
midnight from the narrow close, mounted on a headless charger, and gallop off in a whirlwind
of flame. The Major’s visits became fewer
and less ostentatious, until at length it was only at rare intervals that some midnight
reveller, returning homeward through the deserted Bow, was startled by a dark and silent
shadow that flitted across his path as he approached the haunted corner. The house is now
used as a, broker’s store, but the only tenant, during well-nigh two centuries, who has had
the hardihood to tempt the visions of the night within its walls, was scared by such horrible
sights, that no one is likely to molest the Dlajor’s privacy again. When all thesefacts
are considered, it need not excite our wonder that this house should have escaped even the
rabid assaults of an Improvements’ Commission, that raged 80 fiercely around the haunted
domicile. It may be reasonably questioned, indeed, whether, if workmen were found bold
enough to raze it to the ground, it would not be found on the morrow, in statu quo, grimly
frowning defiance on its baffled assailants I
Such are the associations with one little fragment of the Bow that still exists; our
remaining descriptions must be, alas I of things that were, and that appeared so hideous to
the refhed tastes of our civic reformers, that they have not grudged the cost of 22400,000
to have them removed. Directly facing the low archway leading into Major Weir’s Close
was the Old Assembly Rooms, bearing the date 1602, and described in its ancient titledeeds
as ‘‘ that tenement of land on the west side of the transe of the Over Bow, betwixt
the land of umq” Lord Ruthven on the north, and the King’s auld wall on the south
parts.” Lord Ruthven’s land, which appears in our engraving of the Old Assembly Rooms,
was an ancient timber-fronted tenement, similar to those we have described in the Castle
Hill. It possessed, however, a peculiar and thrilling interest, if it-was-as we conceive
from the date of the deed, and the new title of his sons, it must have been-the mansion
of the grim and merciless baron, who stalked into the chamber of Queen Nary on that
dire night of the 9th of March 1566, like the ghastly vision of death, and struck home his
dagger into the royal favourite, whose murder he afterwards claimed to have chiefly contrived.
A curious and valuable relic, apparently of its early proprietor, was discovered on the demolition
of this ancient tenement. Between the ceiling and floor in one of the apartments, a
large and beautifully-chased sword was found concealed, with the scabbard almoat completely
decayed, and the blade, which was of excellent temper, deeply corroded with
rust about half-way towards the hilt. The point of it was broken off, but it still measured
323 inches long. The maker’s name, WILHELWM IRSBERwGa,s inlaid in brass on the blade.
It was answered, Major Weir.’’
Time, however, wrought its usual cure,
.
