438 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
with some additional proceedings characteristic of the temper of the Government, and the consequent reaction
produced on the popular *d. Fountainhall remarks :-((We see a great s t i r made for thecolleginem burning
the Pope at Christmas 1680 ; this year the boyes and prentices forboor ther solemnity on Zuille day, because it
happened to be a Sunday, but they had it on the 26th of December at night. Ther preparations were BO quiet
that none suspected it this year ; they brought him to the Croce, and fixed his chair in that place wher the
gallows stands, he was trucked up in a red goune and a mitar with 2 keyea over his arme, a crucifix in on
hand and the oath of the Test in the other, then they put fyre to him, and it brunt lenthy till it came to the
pouder at which he blew up in the air, While they ware at this employment ther ware lightnings and claps
of thunder, which is very unusuall at that season of the year. At this tyme many things were done in mockerie
.of the Test : on I shall tell. The children of Heriots Hospital1 finding that the dog which keiped the yairds
of that Hospitd had a public charge and office, they ordained him to take the Test, and offered him the paper,
but he, loving a bone rather than it, absolutely refused it ; then they rubbed it over with butter (which they
called ane Explication of the Teat in imitation of Argile), and he licked of the butter but did spite out the
paper, for which they held a jurie on him, and in derision of the sentence against Argile, they found the dog
guilty of treason, and actually hanged him,”
X, WEST BOW. MAJOR WEIR
IN our account of Major weir (Part ii. chap. ixi), his sister is styled Gnzel Weir, in accordance with Master
Jam Frazw’s Providential Passages, a MS. from which Mr George Sinclair has evidently borrowed the
greater portion of his account of the Major, without acknowledging the source of his information. In Law’s
Memorials, however, as well as h Shclair’s BaSatan’8 Ittvisible WorZd Discovered, she bears the name of Jean
Weir, by which she is most frequently alluded to. One of the witnesses examined on the trial of this noted
wizard, as appears from the Crimiltal Record in the Register EIouse of Edinburgh, wag “ Maister John Sinclare,
minister at Ormistoune,” who deponed, among other strange items of evidence, that (‘having asked him if he
had seen the deivell, he answered, that any fealling he ever hade of him was in the dark I”-Law‘a Memorials,
note, p. 26.
Projecta for improving the Old Town of Edinburgh, and for extending it beyond its ancient limits, appear
to have engaged gened attention even so early a3 the reign of Charles II., when the court and levees of the
Duke of York at Holyrood, revived somewhat of the old life and splendour of the Scottish capital, which her
citizens had so long been strangers to. On account of the narrow limits of the Old Town, its inhabitanta were
on nearly the same familiar footing a8 those of a country village ; and schemes of improvement that might now
lie unheeded for years in the hands of some civic committee, were then discussed at every club and changehouse,
until they became incorporated among the $xed idem of the population, affording at any time a ready
theme for the display of wisdom by that industrious class of idlers, usually composed of retired traders,
country lairda, and half-pay officers, to whom a subject for grumbling over, and improving in theory, is aa
necessary as daily food.
In Cough’s British Topography (vol. ii p. 674), the following account appears of an ingenious model of
Edinburgh, constructed about the middle of last century. It was, no doubt, furnished to the author by George
Paton, and shows how early some of the improvement schemes, which have since cost the citizens so much both
in antipuitier and taxes, were made the subject of reforming speculations, and favourably entertained as
desirable alterations on the mug and closely-packed little Scottish capital of the eighteenth century:-
