LEITH. ‘07
revels, resulting usually in a number of free fights and occasional serious
skirmishes with the town-guard. Booths, taverns, and theatrical amusements
of every description, and to almost any extent, stood along the outer line of
the shore, reaching eastwards, while the pier, for the time being, was improvised,
and largely taken advantage of, as an excellent stand for the people. From
the time of the Restoration to the year 1816, these races appear to have been
held annually; but at that period they were removed to the Links of
Musselburgh, where they have been run ever since. Ferguson, in his ‘ Leith
Races,’ gives a very humorous and truly descriptive account of them, which
poem, we may add, not only suggested to Burns, Scotia’s bard par MtceZZmc,
but afforded him a model for, that inimitable and bitingly telling satire of
his, the ‘Holy Fair,’ so full of fun, racy description, and pawky commonsense.
Ecclesiastically, Leith is divided into the two parishes of North and South
Leith, separated from each other by the river ; the former lying to the west,
and including in it, since 1630, the baronies of Newhaven and Hillhousefield ;
the latter, to the east, is much the larger, and of a triangular shape, extending
along the shore to the Figget-bum at Portobello, thence following the line of
the public road to the city, embracing the abrogated parish of Restalng, and
till lately the Calton Hill, and reaching onwards to Leith Walk. Objections
have been taken to the site of the town as not the best adapted for a maritime
port. It has been urged that, in consequenee of the flat, sandy expanse
on which it is placed, and which the retiring tide at its ebb leaves quite-dry
for over a mile in breadth, it never can command any great depth of water,
while the river again, flowing through the harbour, runs so sluggishly, and
with such small volumeusually, that it has not power to keep the mouth of
the harbour free of .the mud and sand with which it is apt to become silted
up.‘ That, however, in these times, has been greatly obviated, and probably
at no distant day is destined to disappear altogether before the various
efficient and energetic efforts of engineering enterprise.
The harbour and docks, crowd4 as they generally are with shipping, flying
the colours of almost every nation and country, is a sight in itself worth
seeing. Indeed, a walk in this direction on a fine summer day or a quiet
autumn evening, when the winds are low and the sea ‘ calm as cradled child,’
and especially along either of the piers which form the harbour, with ships
and steamers and other craft ever in motion, outwards or inwards, lending
life and charm to the scene, is highly interesting. Then again, at the further
end of either promenade, what a grand and extensive prospect I Both sides
.
108 QUEENSFERRY TO MUSSELBURGH.
of the Forth, the Fife and the Lothian coasts, with the different towns and
villages along their sea-board, are distinctly visible ; the Lomonds forming a
bold and picturesque background to the one, and the gently rising and finely
wooded hills of Carberry and Falside a quieter and more subdued background
to the other ; with Inchkeith, of pious legend, in the foreground ; the
great Bass Rock, of Covenanter tale, further off on the right j and the mazy,
half-seen and half-unseen May, with its wonderful tragedy of ‘doul and
wae,’ far away in the distance, lit up with the bright fierce radiance of a
noonday sun, or ‘mistied with the golden breath of departing day;’-a
quiet careless saunter out to the further end of this fine sea promenade in
the afternoon or evening of a mild, sunshiny July or August day is a great
enjoyment; a happiness that lingers in the memory like some low sweet
strain of music heard across some moonlit lake, or warbled in some remote
and shadowy glen.
The town originally appears to have been built close to the harbour, the
most ancient part of it reaching from the shore along the east bank of the
stream for nearly half a mile, and the houses moved back sufficiently far to
form a pretty roomy quay for the loading and unloading of vessels. From
this quay eastwards the town diverged into a number of narrow streets and
lanes which are still extant : the dwellings tall, dark, and dingy, all very old,
and bearing obvious traces of having housed a much higher class of occupants
than now inhabit them. In these earlier days the principal thoroughfare to
and from the shore was Tolbooth Wynd, over which of late has come a great
change in the disappearance of almost all the edifices of the olden period, with
the substitution of shops and business premises in their stead, of an ornateness
of structure and grandeur of window-display that will contrast favourably even
with Princes Street itself. Kirkgate, into which in general all the other streets,
alleys, and lanes conducted, was then the chief street, although now-adays a
little shorn of its glory, and led to the foot of Leith Walk, a fine, broad
thoroughfare leading up to the city, and which, with an ordinary degree of
architectural taste and enterprise, might have been made the handsomest street
in Europe. Bernard and Constitution Streets, both of them of comparatively
recent formation, and in which are many substantial and elegant edifices,
are now the more common thoroughfare to and from the harbour and docks ;
while away to the south-east of Constitution Street, again, and facing the Links
on every side-an extensive grassy plain of nearly a mile in length and
over a quarter of a mile in breadth, the common playground of cricket and
golf-are rows of houses and villas of the most stately and imposing
