6 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Canongate
attendants to say such prayers by her bedside as ? the seventeenth century, and the lofty buildings on
were fitting for a person not expected to survive a
mortal disorder.
? He ventured to remonstrate, and observed that
her safe delivery warranted better hopes; but he
was sternly commanded to obey the orders first
given, and with difficulty recollected himself
sufficiently to acquit himself of the task imposed
on him, He was then again hurried into the chair ;
but as they conducted him down-stairs he heard
the report of a pistol! He was safely conducted
home, and a purse of gold was forced upon
him; but he was warned at the same time
that the least allusion to this dark transaction
would cost him his life. He betook himself to
rest, and after long and broken musing, fell into a
deep sleep. From this he was awakened with the
dismal news that a fire of uncommon fury had
broken out in the house of -, near the head of
the Canongate, and that it was totally consumed,
with the shocking addition that the daughter of the
proprietor, a young lady eminent for beauty and
accomplishments, had perished in the flames. The
clergyman had his suspicions ; but to have made
them public would have availed gothing. He was
timid ; the family was of the first distinction; above
all, the deed was done, and could not be amended.
?Time wore away, and with it his terrors; but
he became unhappy at being the solitary depositary
-of this fearful mystery, and mentioned it to some
of his brethren, through whom the anecdote
acquired a sort of publicity. The divine had long
been dead when a fire broke out on the same spot
where the house of - had formerly stood, and
which was now occupied by buildings of an inferior
description. When the flames were at their height,
the tumult that usually apends such a scene was.
suddenly suspended by an unexpected apparition.
A beautiful female in a nightdress, extremely rich,
but at least half a century old, appeared in ,the
very midst of the fire, and uttered these tremendous
words in her vernacular idiom :-? Anes bumeddwice
burned-the third time 1?11 scare you all ! ?
The belief in this story was so strong, that on a
fire breaking out, and seeming to approach the
fatal spot, there was a good deal of anxiety testified
lest the apparition should make good her denunciation.?
I
According to a statement in Nates and Queries,
this story was current in Edinburgh before the
childhood of Scott, and the murder part of it
was generally credited, He mentions a person
acquainted with the city in 1743 who used to tell
ithe tale and point out the site of the house. It is
Remarkable that a great fire did happen there in
.
the spot date from that time.
Of the plague, which in 1645 nearly depopu- .
lated the Canongate as well as the rest of Edinburgh,
a singular memorial still remains, a little lower
down the street, on the north side, in the form of
a huge square tenement, called the Morocco Land,
from the effigy of a turbaned Moor, which projects
from a recess above the second floor, and having
an alley passing under it, inscribed with the following
legend :-
? MISERERE MEI, DOMINE : A PECCATO, PKOBRO,
DEBITO, ET MORTE SUBITA. LIBERA ~~1.6.18.?
Of the origin of this edifice various romantic stories
are told: one by Chambers, to the effect t5at a
young woman belonging to Edinburgh, having been
taken upon the sea by an African rover, was sold
to the harem of the Emperor of Morocco, whose
favourite wife she became, and enabled her brother
to raise a fortune by merchandise, and that in
building this stately edifice he erected the black
nude figure, with turban and necklace of beads, as
a memorial of his royal brother-in-law; but the
most complete and consistent outline of its history
is that given by Wilson in his ? Memorials,? from
which it would appear that during one of the
turnults which occurred in the city after the accession
of Charles I., the house of the Provost, who had
rendered himself obnoxious to the rioters, was
assaulted and set on fire. Among those arrested as a
ringleader was Andrew Gray, a younger son of the
Master of Gray, whose descendants inherit the
ancient honours of Kinfauns, and who, notwithstanding
the influence of his family, was tried, and
sentenced to be executed on the second day
thereafter.
On the very night that the scaffold was being
erected at the Cross he effected his escape from
the City Tolbooth by means of a rope conveyed
to him by a friend, who had previously given some
drugged liquor to the sentinel at the Puir-folkspurses,
and provided a boat for him, by which he
crossed the North Loch and fled beyond pursuit.
Time passed on, and the days of the great civil
war came. ? Gloom and terror now pervaded the
streets of the capital. It was the terrible pear
1645-the last visitation of the pestilence to Edinburgh-
when, as tradition tells us,? says Wilson,
?grass grew thickly .about the Cross, once as
crowded a centre of thoroughfare as Europe could
boast of.?
The Parliament was compelled to sit at Stirling,
and the Town Council, on the 10th of April,
agreed with Joannes Paulitius, M.D., that he
should visit the infected at a salary of AS0 Scot
Canongate.] , THE MOROCCO LAND. 7
per month. A number of the ailing were hutted
in the King?s Park, a few were kept at home, and
aid for all was invoked from the pulpits. The
Session of the Canongate ordained, on the 27th of
June, that, ?to avoid contention in this fearful
time,? all those who died in the park should be
buried therein ; for it would seem that those who
perished by the plague were buried in places apart
from churchyards, lest the infection might burst
forth anew if ever the graves were reopened.?
Maitland records. that such was the terror prevailing
at this period that the prisoners in the
Tolbooth were all set at liberty, and all who were
not free men were compelled,
under severe penalties, to quit
the city, until at length, ? by the
unparalleled ravages committed by
the plague, it was spoiled of its
inhabitants to such a degree that
there were scarcely sixty men left . capable of assisting in the defence
of the town in case of an
attack,?
At this crisis a large armed
vessel of peculiar rig and aspect
entered the Firth of Forth, and
came to anchor in Leith Roads.
By experienced seamen she was
at once pronounced to be an
Algenne rover, and dismay spread
over all the city. This soon
reached a culminating point when
a strong band landed from her,
and, entering the Canongate by
Moors. After some conference with his men he
intimated his possession of an elixir of wondrous
potency, and demanded that the Provost?s daughter
should be entrusted to his skill, engaging that if he
did not cure her immediately to embark with his
men, and free the city without ransom. After considerable
parley the Provost proposed that the
leader should enter the city and take up an abode
in his house.?
This was rejected, together with higher offers of
ransom, till Sir John Smith yielded to the exhortations
of his friends, and the proposal of the Moor
was accepted, and the fair sufferer was borne to a
house at the head of the Canongate,
wherein the corsair had taken
up his residence, and from thence
she went forth quickly restored
and in health.
The most singular part of this
story is its denouement, from
which it would appear that the
corsair and physician proved to
be no other than the condemned
fugitive Andrew Gray, who had
risen high in the favour and service
of the Emperor of Morocco.
?He had returned to Scotland,?
says Wilson, ?? bent on revenging
his own early wrongs on the magis-.
trates of Edinburgh, when, to his
surprise, he found in the destined
object of his special vengeance
relation of his own. He married
the Provost?s daughter, and settled EFFIGY OF THE MOOR, MOROCCO LAND.
the.Water Gate, advanced to the
Netherbow Port and required admittance. The
magistrates parleyed with their leader, who demanded
an exorbitant ransom, and scoffed at the
risk to be run in a plague-stricken city.
The Provost at this time was Sir John Smith, of
Groat Hall, a small mansion-house near Craigleith,
and he, together with his brother-in-law, Sir William
Gray, Bart., of Pittendrum, a staunch Cavalier,
and one of ?the wealthiest among the citizens, to
whom we have referred in our account of Lady
Stair?s Close, agreed to ransom the city for a
large sum, while at the same time his eldest son
was demanded by the pirates as a hostage. ? It
seems, however,? says Wilson, ?that the Provost?s
only child was a daughter, who then lay stricken
of the plague, of which her cousin, Egidia Gray,
had recently died. This information seemed to
work an immediate change on the leader of the
-
?Dom. Ann.,? Vol. 11.
down a wealthy citizen in the burgh
of Canongate. The house to which his fair patient.
was borne, and whither he afterwards brought
her as his bride, is still adorned with an effigy
of his royal patron, the Emperor of Morocco,
and the tenement has ever since borne the name
of the Morocco Land. . . . . We have had
the curiosity to obtain a sight of the title-deeds
of the property, which prove to be of recent
date. The earliest, a disposition of 1731, so far
confirms the tale that the proprietor at that date is
John Gray, merchant, a descendant, it may be, of
the Algerine rover and the Provost?s daughter.
The figure of the Moor has ever been a subject of
pcapular admiration and wonder, and a variety of
legends are told to account for its existence. Most
of them, though differing in almost every other
point, seem to agree in connecting it with the last
visitation of the plague.??
Near this tenement, a little to the eastward, was
the mansion of John Oliphant of Newland, second
