.276 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street.
and from Lord Lindesay?s Lives or the Lindesays? ?
we learn that his nephew, Walter Scott, when a boy,
occasionally accompanied his aunt on visits to the
Countess of Balcarres, and some forty years after,
when having occasion to correspond with Lady
Anne, he wrote : ?? I remember the ZocaZe of Hyndford?
s Close perfectly, even to the Indian screen
with harlequin and columbine, and the harpsichord,
though I never had the pleasure of hearing
Lady Anne play upon it. I suppose the close,
once too clean to soil the hem of your ladyship?s
garment, is now a resort for the lowest mechanics
- a n d so wears the world away. . . . It is, to be
sure, more picturesque to lament the desolation
~~ ~
carres, who died in 1768, a lady who is said to
have been the progenitrix of as many persons as
ever any woman was in the same space of time,
for Sir Bernard Burke records her as having eight
children and fifteen grandchildren. Her eldest
daughter, Anne-and of all her family almost the
only one remembered now-was the authoress of
the sweet ballad of Add Robin Gray, written to
the ancient Scottish air called ?The bridegroom
greets when the sun gaes doon.? She was born
on the 8th of December,
1750, and was
married to Sir Andrew
Barn a r d, C ol on ial
Secretary at the Cape
of Good Hope, and
she died at Berkeley
Square, London, in
1825, after surviving
her husband eighteen
years. The whole history
of the ballad, and
her authorship thereof,
are too well known to
require repetition here ;
but the first verse, as
she wrote it, is invariably
omitted now:-
?When the sheep are in
the fauld, and the kye
a? at hame,
When a? the weary world
to sleep are gane,
The waes 0? my heart fa?
in showers from m y ee?
While my gudeman lies
sound by me.?
the whole place has been (1847) converted into
store-rooms and cellars.? As in many other instances,
not even a tradition or a memory of the
names even of the great or noble who dwelt here
has come down to us.
The close nunbered as go in Edgar?s old map is
called the Fountain, it is supposed from the circumstance
of its entrance being opposite the stone
conduit in the recess near John Knox?s house. A
fountain named ? the Endmylie?s Well,? frequently
occurs in old historical works connected with the
city, or offices therein, but whether it is the same
cannot be determined now. William Powrie, one
of Bothwell?s accomplices in the murder of Darnley,
of towers on hills and haughs than the degradation
of an Edinburgh close ; but I cannot help thinking
on the simple and cosie retreats where worth and
talent, and elegance to boot, were often nestled,
and which now are the resort of misery, filth,
poverty, and vice.?
The little tea-parties of Lady Balcarres, who was
a daughter of Sir Robert Dalrymple of Castleton,
were always famous for the strong infusion of Jacobite
spirit that pervaded them, attainted peers and
baronets being always
spoken of, or announced,
with their old
Scottish rank and titles
in defiance of all acts
of attainder, though she
lived to see the ninth
year of the reign of
George 111.
The next alley,called
South Foulis? Close, is
named Fowler?s in
Edgar?s map of the
city, and some portion
of this alley must have
escaped the conflagration
of 1544, as Wilson
refers to a large mansion
?that bears the
date 1539 over its
main doorway, with
two coats of arms impaled
on one large
shield in the centre,
but all now greatly defaced.
Another nearly
opposite to it exhibits
