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
