254 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street.
where a curiously-carved fleur-de-lis surmounts the
gable, a grotesque gurgoyle of antique form serves
as a gutter to the roof.?
Abbot Andrew Durie, who was nominated to the
abbacy of Afelrose in 1526 by Tames V., resided
here; and Knox assures us that his death was
hastened by dismay and horror occasioned by the
terrible uproar on St. Giles?s day, in 1558.
The Close in earlier time took its name from the
abbots of Melrose j but at a later period was called
Rosehaugh?s Close, from Sir George Mackenzie of
Rosehaugh, King?s Advocate during the reigns of
Charles 11. and Tames II., author of many able
works on Scottish law, and also a successful
cultivator of general literature.
He obtained a charter of the property from Provost
Francis Kinloch and the magistrates in 1677,
and the house he occupied still exists, and seems
to have been a stately-enough edifice for its age.
Sir George has still an unpleasant place in the
local imagination of the Edinburgh people as ? The
Bluidy Mackenzie,? the persecutor of the Covenanters;
and though the friend of Dryden, and the
founder of the first and greatest national library in
Scotland, .he is regarded as a species of ogre in his
native capital.
The mausoleum in which he lies in the Greyfriars?
Churchyard, a domed edifice with ornate
Corinthian columns and niches, is believed by the
urchins of the city to be haunted still, as it was
commonly believed that his body could never rest
in its grave. Hence it used to be deemed a
?brag? or feat, for a boy more courageous than
his fellows to shout through the keyhole intd the
dark and echoing tomb-
? Bluidy Mackenzie, come out if ye daur,
Lift the sneck, and draw the bar ! ?
after which defiance all fled, lest the summoned
spirit might appear, and follow them.
He had a country house, ten miles south of
Edinburgh, called Shank, now in ruins. His granddaughter
was Lady Anne Dick, of Corstorphine,
whose eccentricities were wont to excite much
attention in Edinburgh society, and who was the
authoress of many droll pasquils, and personal
pasquinades in verse, which created many enemies,
who exulted in the follies of which she was guilty.
Among the latter was a fancy for dressing herself
like a gallant of the day, and going about the town
at night in search of adventures and frolics, one of
which ended unpleasantly in her being consigned
to the City Guard House. In many of her verses she
half-banteringly deplores the coldness of Sir Peter
Murray of Balmanno, in Kincardineshire, but more,
it is believed, from whim than actual fancy or regard.
One begins thus :-
? Oh, wherefore did I cross the Forth,
And leave my love behind me?
Why did I venture to the north
With one that did not mind me ?
Had I but visited Carin,
It would have been much better,
Than pique the prudes and make a din
For careless, cold Sir Peter !
<I I?m - anre I?ve seen a better limb,
And twenty better faces ;
But still my mind it ran on him
When I was at the races;
At night when we were at the ball
Were many there discreeter ;
The well-bred duke, and lively Maule,
Panrnure behaved much better.?
In conclusion, she expresses an opinion that she
must be mad ? to follow cold Sir Peter.? She died
in 1741.
During a great part of the eighteenth century
the ancient mansion in Rosehaugh?s Close was
occupied by Alexander Fraser of Strichen, who was
connected by marriage with the descendants of
Sir George RIackenzie, and who gave to the alley
the name it now bears, Strichen?s Close. He was
raised to the bench as Lord Strichen, in 1730, and
occupied a seat there and his residence in the
close for forty-five years subsequent to that date,
and was the direct ancestor of the present Lord
Lovat in the peerage of Great Britain.
The manners and habits of the people of Edinburgh
in those days-say about 173o-were as
different from those of their successors as if
they had been the natives of a foreign country.
From Carlyle?s ,Memoirs we learn that when gentlemen
were invited to dine, each brought his own
knife, fork, and spoon with him in a case (just as
gentlemen did in France prior to the first Revolution),
and a marked peculiarity of the period was
a combination of showy and elegant costume with
much simplicity, coarseness of thought, and roughness
of speech, occasional courtesy, and great
promptness to ire. Intercourse with France, and
the service of so many Scottish gentlemen in the
French army, !ed to a somewhat incongruous ingrafting
of. French politeness on the homely manners?
of the Scottish aristocracy; yet it was no
uncommon thing for a lady to receive gentlemen,
together with lady. visitors, in her bed-room, for
then, within the walled city, the houses had few
rooms without a bed, either openly or screened;
while the seemliness and delicacy now attendant
on marriages and births were almost unknown.
The slender house accommodation in the turn
