236 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street.
the printing office of this strange genius (who died
in I 799, ?? and there the most eminent literary men
of that period visited and superintended the printing
of works that have made the press of the
?? 0 Willie, come sell your fiddle,
Oh sell your fiddle sae fine ;
0 Willie, come sell your fiddle,
And buy a pint 0? wine.
If I should sell my fiddle,
The warl? would think I was mad,
For many a rantin? day
My fiddle and I hae had.
?As I came by Crochallan,
I cannily keekit ben-
Rattlin?, roarin? Willie,
Was sitting at yon board
en?-
Sitting at yon board en?,
And amang guid companie
;
Rattlin?, roarin? Willie,
You?re welcome hame to
In verse elsewhere
me !?
was accused by Sir Alexander Forbes of Tolquhoun
of stealing a gilded drinking-cup out of his house,
a mistake, as it proved, in the end.
Eastward of this were, in succession, Geddes?s,
W.R.-C.M. ; and the house immediately below it
contained the only instance known to exist in
Edinburgh of a legend over an interior doorway:
AUGUSTA . NI. VSVM . AVGVSTA.
W. F. B. G.
1
These were the initials
of William Fowler, a
merchant burgess of
Edinburgh, supposed to
be the author of ?The
Triumph of Death,? and
the others are, ot course,
those of his wife. As to
what this house was
originally nothing is
known, and the peculiarity
of the legend has
been a puzzle to many.
Later it was the
residence of Sir George liarities of his introducer,
who had become, in middle life, careless of his Drummond, who in 1683 and 1684 was Lord
costume and appearance :- 1 Provost of the city. In those days the lower
Burns notes the pecu- LINTEL OF DOORWAY IN DAWNEY DOUGLAS?S TAVERN.
(From a Sketclr &Y the Author.)
~~
To Crochallan came,
The old cocked hat, the brown surtout the same ;
His bristling beard just rising ill its might ;
?Twas four long nights and days to shaving night.?
At the foot of the close there stood, till 1859,
ground that sloped down to the North Loch
appears to have been all laid out in pleasant gardens,
wherein stood a summer-house belonging to
Lord Forglen, who was Sir Alexander Ogilvie, Bart.,
a commissioner for the Treaty of Union, and who
an advocate.
Adjoining
this is Mylne?s
EY DOUGLAS?S TAVERN.
Henry Mackenzie,
h o t , Hume, and foremost among the
host, the poet Burns.?
Here was long shown an old time-blackened
desk, at which these, and other men such as these,
revised their proofs, and a stool on which Burns
sat while correcting the proofs of his poems published
between December, 1786, and April, 1787.
Lower down the close, over the doorway of a house
where the Bill Chamber stood for several generations,
were carved the date, 1616, and the initials
Square, the entrance to which bears the date of
1689, a lofty and gloomy court, having on its side
a flight of steps to the North Bridge. This-the
project of one of the famous masonic family of
Mylne-was among the first improvements effected
in the old town, before its contented burgesses
became aspiring, and dreamt of raising a New
Edinburgh, beyond the oozy bed of the bordering
loch. Many distinguished people lived here of old.
Among them was Charles Erskine of Alva, Lord
High Street.] LORD
Justice Clerk in 1748, who long occupied two flats
on the west side of the square, the back windows
of which overlook the picturesque vista of Cockburn
Street, and the door of which was among the
last that displayed the ancient riq.
This cadet of the loyal and ancient house of
ALVA. 23 7
Wily old Simon Lord Lovat, of the ?45, who
was perpetually involved in law pleas, frequently
visited Lord Alva at his house in Mylne?s Square ;
and the late Mrs. Campbell of Monzie, his
daughter, was wont to tell that when Lord Lovat
caught her in the stair ?he always took her up
I ?
MYLNE?S SQUARE.
Mar was born in 1680, and died in 1763. Before
the nse of the new city, it affords us a curious
, glimpse of the contfnted life that such a legal
dignitary led in those days, when we find him
happy during winter in a double flat, in this
obscure place, and in summer at the little villa of
Drumsheugh, swept away in 1877, and of which
no relic now remains, save the rookery with its old
trees in Randolph Crescent.
in his arms and kissed her, to her horror-he was
In this mansion in Mylne?s Square Lord Alva?s
two step-daughters, the Misses Maxwell of Reston,
were married; one, Mary, became the Countess
of William Earl of Sutherland, a captain in
the 56th Foot, who, when France threatened
invasion in 1759, raised, in two months, a regment
among his own clan and followers; the
so ugly.?l
