318 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [The West Bow.
Jambites pointing t a it with mingled howls and
jeers, as a proof of the enslavement of Scotland.??
Outside the archway of the Bow Port, and on
the west side of the street, was the house of Archibald
Stewart, Lord Provost of Edinburgh in the
ever memorable year 1745. Its upper windows
overlooked the Grassmarket, and it was as full of
secret stairs, trap-doors, little wainscoted closets,
and concealed recesses, as any haunted mansion
in a nursery tale. In one apartment there stood
a cabinet, or what appeared to be such, but which
in reality was the entrance to a trap-stair. It is
unknown whether Provost Stewart-whose Jacobite
proclivities are well known, as they brought him
before a court on charges of treason-contrived
this means of retreat, or whether (which is more
probable) it had been a portion of the original
design of the house ; but local tradition avers that
he turned it to important use on one occasion. , It is said that during the occupation of Edinburgh
by the Highland army in 1745 he gave a
secret entertainment to Prince Charles and some
of the chiefs of his army ; and it was not conducted
so secretly but that tidings of it reached the officer
commanding in the adjacent Castle, which was then
garrisoned chiefly by the 47th or Lascelles Regiment.
A party of the latter was sent to seize the
Prince if possible, and, to do so, came down the
Bow from the street of the Castle Hill. Fortunately,
their own appearance created an alarm, and before
they gained admission the guests of the Provost
had all disappeared by the?secret stair.
Tradition has never varied in the relation of
this story, but the real foundation of it is difficult
of discovery, This house stood at the foot of
Donaldson?s Close, and Archibald Stewart was th(!
third chief magistrate of Edinburgh who had inhabited
it.
In subsequent years it came into possession of
Alexander. Donaldson, the well-known bookseller,
.whose litigation with the trade in London made
much noise at one time, as he was in the habit of
deliberately reprinting the most modem English
works in Edinburgh, where, before his epoch, both
printing and publishing were at the lowest ebb.
Refemng to the state of this branch of industry at
the time he wrote (1779), Arnot says:--?Till
within these forty years, the printing of newspapers
and of school-books, of the fanatic effusions of
Presbyterian clergymen, and the law-papers of the
Court of Session, joined to the patent Bible printing,
gave a scanty employment to four printinghouses.
Such, however, has been the increase of
this trade by the reprinting of English books, that
there are now no fewer than twenty-seven printingoffices
in Edinburgh.? In our own time there are
about eighty.
From his printing-house in the Castle Hill,
Alexander Donaldson issued the first number of
his once famous newspaper, The Edinburgh Advertiser,
on the 3rd of January, 1764. It was a large
quarto, and was also issued and sold from his shop,
?I near Norfolk Street in the Strand, London ;?, and,
his first number contains the following curious.
advertisement, among others :-
?Any young woman not under IS, nor much
over 30 years of age, that is tolerably handsome,
and would incline to give her hand to a Black
Prince, upon directing a letter to F. Y., care of the
Publisher, will be informed particularly as to this.
matrimonial scheme, which they may be assured
is a good one in every respect, the colour of the
husband only excepted. If desired, secresy may
be depended on.?
For a long course of years this journal, prominent
as a Conservative organ, proved a most lucrative
speculation; and as all his other undertakings
prospered, he left, together with his old house in
the Bow, a rich inheritance to his son, the late Mr.
James Donaldson, who eventually realised a large
fortune, the mass of which (about ;t;240,000) at
his death, in 1840, he bequeathed to found the
magnificent hospital which bears his name at the
west end of the city.
Six years before his death the old house in the
Bow, where he and his father had resided for so
many years, and wherein they had entertained most
of the literati of their time, was burned to the
ground.
Lower down than the house of the Donaldsons
was an ancient edifice, with a timber front of picturesque
aspect, in former times the town mansion
of the Napiers of Wrightshouse-a family which
passed away about the close of the 17th century,
but was of some importance in its time.
Alexander Napier of Wrightshouse appears as
one of an inquest in 1488. His coat armorial
was a bend, charged with a crescent between two
mullets. He married Margaret Napier of Merchiston,
whose father, Sir Alexander, was slain at
Flodden, and whose brother (his heir) was slain at.
Pinkie. In 1581, among the names of the Commissioners
appointed by James VI., ?anent the
cuinze,? that of William Napier of the Wrightshouse
appears; and in 1590 his sister Barbara.
Napier was accused of witchcraft on the 8th of Mayr
and of being present at the great meeting of Scottish
witches held by the devil in North Berwick.
The wife of Archibald Douglas (brother of the
Laird of Carshoggil), her trial was one of great
BARBARA NAPIER 3?9 The West Bow.]
tlength, involving that of many others; but a portion
of the charges against her will suffice as a sample
of the whole, from U Pitcairn?s Trials.?
?? Satan had informed the witches that James VI.
sf Scotland was the greatest enemy he had, and
the latter?s visit to Norway, to bring over his queen,
seemed to afford an opportunity for his destrucition.
Accordingly, Dr. Fiar of Tranent, the
.devil?s secretary, summoned a great gathering of
witches on Hallow Eve, when zoo of them embarked,
each in a riddle or sieve, with much mirth
.and jollity; and after cruising about somewhere on
the ocean with Satan, who rolled himself before
them on the waves, dimly seen, but resembling a
huge haystack in size and aspect, he delivered to
-one of the company, named Robert Grierson, a
cat, which had been drawn previously nine times
through a crook, giving the order to ?cast the same
into the sea.? ?
This remarkable charm was intended to raise
such a furious tempest as would infallibly drown
the king and queen, then on their homeward
lroyage from Christiania, which, if any credit may
be given to the declaration of James (who greedily
swallowed the story), was not without some effect,
as the ship which conveyed him encountered a
furious contrary wind, while all the rest of the fleet
.had a fair one and a smooth sea.
On this, Barbara Napier and her infernal companions,
after regaling themselves with wine out of
their sieves, landed, and proceeded in procession
t o North Berwick Kirk, where the devil awaited
them in the pulpit, singing as they went-
?? Cummer go ye before, cummer go ye ;
Cif ye winna gang before, cummer let me.?
Sir James Melville gives us a most distinct account
-of the devil?s appearance on this auspicious ocusion.
His body was like iron; ?his faice was
terrible; his nose like the bek of an egle;? he
had claws like those of a griffin on his hands and
>feet. He then called the roll to see that all were
present, and all did him homage in a manner
.equally humiliating and indecorous, which does
not admit of description here.
All this absurdity being proved against Barbara
Napier, she was sentenced, with many others, on
the 11th of May, 1590, to be burnt ?at a stake sett
on the Castle HiU, with barrells, coales, heather,
and powder;? but when the torch was about to
be applied, pregnancy was alleged, according to
? Calderwood?s Historie,? as a just and sufficient
Cause for staying proceedings; the execution was
delayed, and ultimately the unfortunate creature
was set at liberty by order of James VI, Now
nothing remains of these Napiers but their tomb
and burial-place on the north side of the choir of
St. Giles?s.
In the basement of the house which was once
theirs was the booth from which the rioters, on the
night of the 7th September, 1736, obtained the
rope with which they hanged Porteous. It was
then rented by a woman named Jeffrey, a dealer in
miscellaneous wares, who offered them the rope
gratis when she learned for what purpose it was
required, but one of the conspirators threw a
guinea on the counter as payment. The house of
the Napiers was demolished in 1833.
Opposite the mansion of Provost Stewart, and
also outside the Bow Port, but on the east side of
the bend, was a tenement known as ?the Clockmaker?s
Land,? which was demolished in 1835, to
make way for what is now Victoria Street, but
which ?took its name from an eminent watchmaker,
a native of France, named Paul ,Romieu, who is
said to have occupied it from the time of Charles
11. (about 1675) till the beginning of the eighteenth
century. In front of the house there remained,
until its demolition, one of the wonders of the
Bow-a curious piece of mechanism, which formed
the sign of the ingenious Paul Romieu. It projected
over the street from the third storey-a gilded
ball representing the moon, which was made to
revolve by means of clockwork. A large iron
key of antique form, which was found among the
ruins of this house, is preserved in the hfuseum of
Antiquities.
Among the oldest edifices in ]this part of the
street was one which bore the singular name of
the ?? Mahogany Land,? having an outer stair protected
by a screen of wood. There was no date
to record its erection, but its ceilings were curiously
adorned by paintings precisely similar to those
which were found in the palace of Mary of Guise
in the Castle Hill ; and no record remained of its
generations of inmates, save that, like others about
to be mentioned, it bore the iron cross of the
Temple, and also the legend-which, from being a
simply moral apophthegm, and not Biblical, was
supposed to be anterior to the Reformation-22 .
yt. fhZis . overcommis, (i.e., ?He that bears overcomes.?)
There was also a half-obliterated shield.
For ages the Bow was famous as the chief place
for whitesmiths, and till about the time of its demcr
lition there was scarcely a shop in it occupied by
any other tradesmen, and even on Sunday the
ceaseless clatter of their hammers on all hands
rang from morning till night.
Behind the Mahogany Land ? lay several steep,
narrow, and gloomy closes, containing the most
