APPENDIX. 445
XVI. ST KATHERINE'S WELL.
THE marvellous hiatmy of the origin of this well (page 418) rests on very early authority, Boece gives the
following account of both the well and chapel :--" Ab hoc oppido plus minus duobus passuum miUibuq fons
cui olei guttze innatant, scatturit ea vi, ut si nihil inde collegeris, nihilo plus confluat ; quamtumvia autem
abstuleris nihilo minus remaneat. Natam esse aiunt effuso illic oleo Diva Catherina:, quod ad Divam
Margaritam, ex Monte Sinai adferebatur. Fidem rei faciunt, Fonti nomen Diva: Catherina: inditum, atque in
ejusdem honorem sacellum juxta, Diva Margaritze jussu aedificatum. Valet hoc oleum contra variaa cutis
scabricies." Dr Turner thus describes the substance which forms the peculiar characteristic of this and ~imilar
wells :-
" Petroleum and Bitumen. Under the= names are known certain natural tarry matters, more or less fluid,
which have evidently resulted from the decomposition of wood or coal, either by heat or by spontaneous action
under the surface of the earth. The most celebrated arathose of Persia and the Birman empire, and of Amiano
in Italy.',-(EJements of Chemistry, seventh edition, p. 1182.) I
The following analysis of the water of St Katherine's Well has been made expressly for this work, in the
chemical laboratory of Dr George Wilson, F.S.A. :-"The water from St Katherine's Well contains, after
filtration, in each imperial gallon, grs. 28.11 of solid matter, of which grs. 8.45 consists of soluble sulphates
and chlorides of the earths andalkalies, and gra. 19.66 of insoluble calcareous carbonates."
XVII. CLAUDERO.
THE eccentric poet claudero deserves special notice among the Memorials of Edinburgh in the olden time,
as he has not only commemorated in his verse some of the most striking objects of the Old Town that have
disappeared, but he appears to have been almost the sole remonstrant against their reckless demolition.
James Wilson, the poet and satirist, who amused the citizens some eighty gem ago with. his humorous and
somewhat coarse lampoons, was a native of Cumbernauld, some of whose characters form the subject of his
verse. He was a cripple, in consequence, it is said, of the merciless beating he received from his own parish
minister'at Cumbernauld, where he had rendered himself an object of universal hatred or fear by his. mi'schiefloving
disposition, The account of thk unwonted practice of clerical discipline, which is given in the
Traditions of Edinburgh, states that the occasion of his lameness was a pebble thrown from a tree at the minister
who, having been previously exasperated by his tricks, chased him to the end of a cloQed lane, and with his
cane inflicted such persong chastisement, as rendered him a cripple, and B hater of the whole body of the clergy
all the rest of his life. He went with a crutch under one arm, and a staff in the opposite hand ; one withered
leg swinging entirely free from the ground. The poetical merits of Claudero's compositions are of no very
high order, but it can hardly be doubted, notwithstanding, that all this youthful energy which rendered him
so great a torment to the whole village and parish, might have been turned to some good account under gentler
moral suasion than his Reverence of Cumbernauld applied with the paatoral stuff to his unruly parishioner.
Claudero had the good sense to disarm his numerous enemies of the handle they might find in the satirist's
own personal deformity, by being the first to laugh at himselE In his Miscellanier in Prose and Vwse,
published in 1766, and dedicated to the renowned Peter Williamson, he remarks in the author's preface :-" I
am regardleas of critics ; perhaps some of my lines want a foot ; but then, if the critic look sharp out, he will
446 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
find that loss sufficiently supplied in other places, where they have a foot too much ; and be$des men’s works
generally resemble themselves-if the poems are lame, so is the author !
Claudero lived ostensibly by teaching a school, which he kept in an old tenement in the Cowgate, at the
bottom of the High School Wynd. By his poetic effusions he contrived to eke out a precarious income, deriving
no unfrequent additions to his slender purse, both by furnishing lampoons to his less witty fellow-citizens who
desired to take their revenge on some offending neighbour by such means, and by engaging to suppress similar
effusions, which he frequently composed on some of the rich but sensitive old burghers, who willingly feed
him to aecure themselves against such a public pillory, He latterly added to his pofasaional income by performing
half-merk marriages, an occupation which, no doubt, afforded him additional eatisfaction, as he was
thereby taking their legitimate duties out of the hands of his old enemies, the clergy.
Claudero, like other great men who have kept the world in awe, was himself subjected to a domestic rule
sutliciently severe to atone to his bitterest enemies for the mongs they suffered from his pen. His wife was an
accomplished virago, whose shrewish tongue subdued the poetic fire of the poor satirist the moment he came
within her sphere, though, probably with little increase. to her own comfort Like other poets’ helpmates, she
had, no doubt, frequent occasion to complain of an empty larder, and the shrill notes of her usual welcome
often helped to send the not unwilling bard to some favourite howf, with its jolly circle of boon companions.
The Echo of the Royal Porch of the Palace of Holyrood-
House, which fell under Military Execution, Anno 1753.” From this it would appear that the military
guardians of the Palace had been employed in this wanton act of destruction. The poet-or rather the Echo
of the Old Porch-thus speaks of these
“ The hst piece in Claudem’s collected poems is,
Sons of Mars, with black cockade :”-
‘‘ They do not always deal in blood ;
Nor yet in breaking human bones,
For Quixot-like they knock down stones.
Regardlesa they the mattock ply,
To root out Scota antiquity.”
In the same vein the poet mourns the successive demolition of the most venerable antiquities of Edinburgh ;
genedy allowing the expiring relic to speak ita own grievances: The following is the lament-for the old City
Cross, which, Claudero insinuates in the last line, was demolished lest ita tattered and time-worn visage should
shame the handsome polished front of the New Exchange ; and this idea is enlarged on in the piece with which
it is followed up in the collection, entitled :-cc The serious advice and exhortation of the Royal Exchange to
the Cross of Edinburgh, immediately before its execution.”
(‘ The Last Speech una Dying Wwda of the Cross of Edidurgh, which war hanged, drawn, and quartwed, on
Monday the 16th of March 1756, for the horrid CTinze of being am Ewrnhrance lo the Street.-
Ye sons of Scotia, mourn and weep,
Express your grief with sorrow deep ;
Let aged sires be bath’d in team,
And ev’ry heart be fill’d with fears ;
Let rugged rocks with grief abound,
And Echo8 multiply the sound;
Let rivers, hills, Iet woods and plains,
Let morning dews, let winds and rainB,
United join to aid my woe,
And loudly mourn my overthrow.-
For Arthur’r Orin and Edinbuvgh Cross,
Have, by new achemers, got a toss;
We, heels o’er head, are tumbled down,
The modern taste ia London town.
