242 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE HIGH STREET-(continued).
?The Salamander Land ?-The Old Fishmarket Close-Heriot?s Mansion-The Deemster?s Hocse-Borthwick?s Close-Lord Durie?s House-
Old Assembly Rooms-Edinburgh As.emblies, 17zc-53-Mes Nicky Blurray-Formalities of the Balls-Ladies? Fashions-Assemblies
Removed to Hell?s Wpd-Hair Srreet and Hunter?s Square-Kennedy?s Close-George Buchanan?s Death-Niddry?r Wynd- Nicol
Edwards? House-A Case of Homicide in 1597-A Quack Doctor -Livingstone?s Liberty.
IN describing the closes and wynds which diverge
from the great central street of the old city on the
south we must resume at the point where the great
fire of 1824 ceased, a conflagration witnessed by
Sir Walter Scott, who says of it :-
?? I can conceive no sight more grand or terrible
than to see those lofty buildings on fire from top to
bottom, vomiting out flames like a volcano from
every aperture, and finally crashing down one after
another into a* abyss of fire, which resembled
nothing but hell ; for there were vaults of wine and
spirits, which sent up huge jets of flames wherever
they were called into activity by the fall of these
massive fragments.?
?( The Salamander Land,? an enormous black
tenement, so named from its having survived or
escaped the fires that raged eastward and westward
of it, and named also from that curious propensiv,
which is so peculiarly Scottish, for inventive
and appropriate sobriquets, was removed to
make way for the Police Chambers and the
Cournnt office, in the latter of which James Hannay,
the author of ?Satire and Satirists? and several
other works, and Joseph Robertson, the wellknown
Scottish antiquary, conducted the editorial
duties of that paper, the first editor of which
was Daniel Defoe. ?We have been told,? says
Wilson, writing of the old tenement in question,
?that this land was said to have been the residence
of Daniel Defoe while in Edinburgh ; the tradition,
however, is entirely unsupported by other testimony.?
Descending the street on the south, as we have
done on the north, we shall peep into each of the
picturesque alleys that remain, and recall those
.which are no more, with all the notables who once
.dwelt therein, and summon back the years, the
men, and the events that have passed away.
Through ?? the Salamander Land ? a spacious
archway led into the Old Fishmarket Close,
where, qrevious to the great fire, an enormous pile
of buildings reared their colossal front, with that
majestic effect produced now by the back of the
Royal Exchange and of James?s Court, and where
now the lofty tenements of the new police office
stand.
To this alley, wherein the cannon shot of Kirkaldy
fell with such dire effect during the great siege
of 1573, Moyse tells us the plague was brought, on
the 7th of May, 1588, by a servant woman from St.
Johnston.
Within the Fishmarket Close was the mansion of
George Heriot, the royal goldsmith, wherein more
recently resided President Dundas, ?? father of Lord,
Melville, a thorough bon vivant of the old claretdrinking
school of lawyers.?
Here, too, dwelt, we learn from Chambers?s
? Traditions,? the Deemster, a finisher of the law?s
last sentence, a grim official, who annually drew his
fee from the adjacent Royal Bank; and one of the
last of whom, when not officiating at the west end
of the Tolbooth or the east end of the Grassmarket,
eked out his subsistence by cobbling shoes,
Borthwick?s Close takes its name from the noble
and baronial hmily of Borthwick of that ilk, whose
castle, a few miles south from the city, is one of
the largest and grandest examples of the square
tower in Scotland. In the division 6f the city in
October, 1514, the third quarter is to be-according
to the Burgh records-? frae the Lopelie Stane
with the Cowgaitt, till Lord Borthwick?s Close,?
assigned to ?? Bailie Bansun,? with his sergeant
Thomas Amott, and his quartermaster Thomas
Fowler.
The property on the middle of the east side of
the close belonged to one of the Lords Napier of
Merchiston, but to which there is no record to
show; and it is n9t referred to in the minute will
of the inventor of logarithms, who died in 1617.
A new school belonging to Heriot?s Hospital
occupies the ground that intervenes between this
alley and the old Assembly Close.
On that site stood the town mansion of Lord
Dune, President of the Court of Session in 1642,
the hero of the ballad of ? Christie?s Will,? and
according thereto the alleged victim of the Earl of
Traquair, as given in a very patched ballad of the
Border Minstrelsy, beginning :-
? Traquair he has ridden up Chapelhope,
And sae has he doon by the Greymare?s Tail ;
Till he spiered for Christie?s Will?
But he never stinted his light gallop,
And hence for a time the alley bore the name of
Lord Dune?s Close.
On the site of his mansion, till its destruction by
the fire of 1824, stood the Old Assembly Rooms
