210 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street.
likely to have arisen. It happened by accident
that the Earl of Bothwell, coming out of the Earl
of Crawford?s lodging, was met by the Earl of Marr,
who was coming out of the Laird of Lochleven?s
lodging hard by; as it being about ten o?clock at
night, and so dark that they could not know one
another, he passed by, not knowing that the
Master of Glammis was there, but thinking it was
only the Earl of Marr. However, it was said that
some ambushment of men and hackbuttiers had
been duressed in the house by command of both
parties.?
Some brawl or tragedy had evidently been on
the tapis, for next day the king had the Earl of
Bothwell and the Master before him at Holyrood,
and committed the former to ward .in the Palace
of Linlithgow, and the latter in the Castle of Edinburgh,
? for having a band of hacquebuttiers in
ambush with treasonable intent.?
Passing to more peaceable times, on the same
side of the street, we come to one of the most
picturesque edifices in it, numbered as 155 (and
nearly opposite Niddry Street), in which Allan
Ramsay resided and began his earlier labours, ?at
the sign of the Mercury,? before he removed, in
1726, to the shop in the Luckenbooths, where we
saw him last.
It is an ancient timber-fronted land, the sinplarly
picturesque aspect of which was much marred
by some alterations in 1845, but herein worthy
Allan first prosecuted his joint labours of author,
editor, and bookseller. From this place he issued
his poems in single or half sheets, as they were
mitten ; but in whatever shape they always found
a ready sale, the citizens being wont to send their
children with a penny for ? Allan Ramsay?s last
piece.? Here it was, that in 1724 he published
the first volume of ?The Tea Table Miscellany,?
a collection of songs, Scottish and English,
dedicated
? To ilka lovely British lass,
Frae Ladies Charlotte, Anne and Jean,
Wha dances barefoot on the green.?
This publication ran through twelve editions, and
its early success induced him in the same year to
bring out ? The Evergreen,? a collection of Scottish
poems, ?? wrote by the Ingenious before 1600,?
professed to be selected from the Bannatyne MSS.
And here it was that .Ramsay- had some of his
hard struggles with the magistrates and clergy,
who deemed and denounced all light literature,
songs, and plays, as frivolity and open profanity, in
She sour fanatical spirit of the age.
Doon to ilk bonny singing Bess
Religion, in form, entered more into the daily
habits of the Scottish people down to 1730 than it
now does. Apart from regular attendance at
church, and daily family worship, each house had
some species of oratory, wherein, according to the
Domestic Annals, ? the head of the family could
at stated times retire for his private devotions,
which were usually of a protracted kind, and often
accompanied by great moanings and groanings,
expressive of an intense sense of human worthlessness
without the divine favour.? Twelve
o?clock was the hour for the cold Sunday dinner.
(? Nicety and love of rich feeding were understood
to be the hateful peculiarities of the English, and
unworthy of the people who had been so much
more favoured by God in the knowledge of matters
of higher concern.? Puritanic rigour seemed to
be destruction for literature, and when Addison,
Steele, and Pope, were conferring glory on that of
England, Scotland had scarcely a writer of note ;
and Allan Ramsay, in fear and trembling of legal
and clerical censure, lent out the plays of Congreve
and Farquhar from that quaint old edifice
numbered 155, High Street.
The town residence of the Ancrum family was
long one of the finest specimens of the timberfronted
tenements of the High Street. It stood on
the north side, at the head of Trunk?s Close,
behind the Fountain Well, and though it included
several rooms with finely-stuccoed ceilings, and a
large hall, beautifully decorated with rich pilasters
and oak panelling-and was undoubtedly worthy
of being preserved-it was demolished in 1873.
Here was the first residence of Scott of Kirkstyle,
who, in 1670, obtained a charter under the great
seal of the barony of Ancrum, and in the following
year was created Sir John Scott, Baronet, by
Charles 11.
In 1703 the house passed into the possession of
Sir Gilbert Elliot, Bart., of Stobs, who resided here
with his eight sons, the youngest of whom, for his
glorious defence of Gibraltar, was created Lord
Heathfield in 1787.
On the same side of the street, Archibald
Constable, perhaps the most eminent publisher
that Scotland has produced, began business in a
small shop, in the year 1795, and from there, in
the November .of that year, he issued the first of
that series of sale catalogues of curious and rare
books, which he continued for a few years to
issue at intervals, and which attracted to his shop
all the bibliographers and lovers of literature in
Edinburgh.
Hither came, almost daily, such men as Richard
Heber, afterwards M.P. for the University of
