New Town.] JAMES CRAIG. I I7
1869 to make way for Grosvenor Street, in excavating
the foundation of which a number of ancient
bronze Caledonian swords were found-the relics
of some pre-historic strife. One was Specially remarkable
for having the hilt and pommel of bronze
cast in one piece with the blade-a form very rare,
there being only one other Scottish example known
-one from Tames, in Aberdeenshire, and now in
the British Museum.
The few houses enumerated alone occupied the
lonely site of the New Town when Gabriel?s Road,
of the poet Thomson, and who engraved thereon
the following appropriate lines from his uncle?s
poem :-
SI August, around, what public works I see !
Lo, stately streets ! 10, squares that court the breeze!
See long canals and
Each part with each, and with the circling main,
whole entwined
nvea join
The names given to the streets and squaresthe
formal array of parallelograms drawn by
Craig-were taken from the royal family chiefly,
latterly a mean, narrow alley, was a delightful
country path, ?? along which,? says Wilson, in I 847,
?some venerable citizens still remember to have
wended their way between green hedges that
skirted the pleasant meadows and cornfields of
Wood?s Farm, and which was in days of yore a
favourite trysting place for lovers, where they
breathed out their teIpder tale of passion beneath
the fragrant hawthorn.?
It ran in an oblique direction through the
ancient hamlet of Silvermills, and its course is yet
indicated by the irregular slant of the garden walls
that separate the little plots behind Duke Street
from the East Queen Street Gardens at the lower
end.
The plan of the proposed new city was prepared
by James Craig, an eminent architect, nephew
? and the tutelary saints of the island, The first
thoroughfare, now-a magnificent terrace, was called
St. Giles Street, after the. ancient patron of the
city ; but on the plan being shown to George 111.
for his approval, he exclaimed, ? Hey, hey !-what,
what!-St. Giles Street !-never do, never do!?
And so, to escape from a vulgar London association
of ideas, it was named Princes Street, after the
future George IV. and the Duke of York.
Craig survived to see his plans only partially
carried out, as he died in 1795, in his fifty-fifth year.
He was the son of Robert Craig, merchant, and
grandson of Robert Craig, who in the beginning of
that century had been a magistrate of Edinburgh.
His mother was Mary, youngest daughter of James
Thomson, minister of Ednam, and sister of the
author of ?The Seasons.?
