so OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [North Loch.
THE garden wherein St. David budded trees and
cultivated such fruits and flowers as were then
known in Britain is a place of flowers and shrubs
again, save where it is intersected by the prosaic
railway or the transverse Earthen Mound; but
those who see the valley now may find it difficult
to realise, that for 300 years it was an impassable
lake, formed for the defence of the city on the
north, when the wall of 1450 was built ; but the
well that fed it is flowing still, as when David
referred to it in his Holyrood charter. Fed by it
and other springs, the loch was retained by a dam
and sluice at the foot of Halkerston's Wynd-the
dam being a passable footway from the city to the
northern fields.
In the royal gardens a tournament was held in
1394 by order of Annabel Drummond, queen of
Robert III., at which, according to Bower, the
continuator of Fordun, her eldest son, David, Duke
HOLPROOI) PALACE, WEST FRONT.
of Rothesay, the same prince who penshed so
miserably at Falkland, presided when in his
twentieth year.
In 1538, prior to committing the effigy of St.
Giles to the flames, the Reformers ducked it in
the loch-it being the legal place for sousing all
offenders against the seventh commandment.
In 1562 the Town Council enacted that all
persons of loose life should be ducked in a certain
part of the loch, wherein a pillar and basin were
formed for the purpose; but this not having the
desired effect, all such persons were ordered to be
committed, without distinction, to the iron room of
the Tolbooth, to be kept therein for a month on
tread and water, and to be then whipped out of
the city at a cart's tail. The deacon of the fleshers
having fallen under this law, the crafts, deeming it
an indignity to their order, assembled in arms,
broke open the prison, and released him.
C H A P T E R X I I .
THE MOUND.
The North Loch used for Sousings and Duckings-The Boats, Swans, Ducks, and Eels-Accidents in the Loch--Last Appearance of the Loch
-Formation of the Mound-" Gcordie Boyd's Mud Brig"-The Rotunda--Royal Irrstitution-Board of Manufactures-History of the Baard
-The Equivalent Money-% J. Shaw Lefevre's Report-School of Design-Gallery of Sculpture--Royal Society of Edinburgh-Museum
of Antiquiua.
North Loch.] <?GANGING TO THE DEIL HIS AIN GATE? 81
For the sake ot ornament the magistrates kept
Swans and wild ducks on the loch, and various
entries for their preservation occur in their accounts;
and one passed in Council between 1589-
94 ordained a boll of oats to be procured for
feeding them A man was outlawed for shooting
a swan in the said loch, and obliged to find another
rash act. Hearing the tumult, the father of the
late Lord Henderland threw up his window in
James?s Court, and leaning out, cried down the
brae to the people : ?What?s all the noise about?
Can?t ye e?en let the man gang to the dei1 his ain
gate ?? Whereupon the honest man quietly walked
out of the loch, to the no small amusement of the
THE HOLYROOD FOUNTAIN.
in its place. ?I The loch,? says Chambers, ? seems
to have been a favourite place for boating. Various
houses in the neighbourhood had servitudes of the
use of a boat upon it, and these, in later times,
used to be employed to no little purpose in
smuggling whisky into the town. . . . . It
was also the frequent scene of suicide, and on this
point one or two droll anecdotes are related. A
man was proceeding deliberately to drown himself,
when a crowd of the townspeople rushed down to
the water-side, venting cries of horror and alarm at
the spectacle, yet without actually venturing into
the water to prevent him from accomplishing the
59
lately appalled neighbours.? There a lady was.
saved from suicide by her hoop-petticoat.
The loch must have abounded in some kind of
fish, as the Council Register refers to an eel-ark
set therein, at ten merks yearly, for the benefit of
the Trinity Hospital; and in February, 1655,
Nicoll records that in consequence of the excessively
stormy weather, some thousands of dead
eels were cast upon its banks, ? to the admiration
of many.?
On the 11th February, 1682, three men were
drowned in the loch by the ice giving way. We
have a proverb,? says Lord Fountainhall, under
