256 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Cowgate.
Mr. Andrew Anderson, printer to the King?s most
Excellent Majesty, for Mr. Andrew Symson, and
which must unhesitatingly be pronounced to be
superior in elegance to almost any other doors
given to modem houses either in Edinburgh or in
London. On a frieze between the mouldings is a
legend in a style of lettering and orthography which
speaks of the close of the fifteenth century :-
GIF . YE . DEID . AS , YE . SOULD . YE
MYCHT . HAIF . AS ,,YE , VULD,
In modem English, ?If we died as we should, we
might have as we would.? There is unfortunately
no trace of the man who built the house and put
upon it this characteristic apophthegm; ,but it is
known that the upper floors were occupied about
(before?) 1700 by the worthy Andro Syrnson, who
having been ousted from his charge as an episcopal
minister at the Revolution, continued to make a
living here by writing and printing books.?
Symson had been curate of Kirkinner,inGalloway,
a presentation to him by the earl of that title, and
was the author of an elaborate work, and mysterious
poem of great length, issued from his printinghouse
at the foot of the Horse Wynd,- entitled,
?Tripatriarchicor; or the lives of the three patriarchs,
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, extracted forth of
are to be sold by him in the Cowgate, near the
foot of the Hose Wynd, Anno Dom. 1699.?
The Horse Wynd which once connected the
Cowgate with the open fields on the south of the
city, and was broad enough for carriages in days
before such vehicles were known, is supposed to
have derived its name from an inn which occupied.
the exact site of the Gaelic church which was
erected there in 1815, after the building in the
Castle Wynd was abandoned, and which ranked
as a quoad suoa parish church after 1834, though
it was not annexed to any separate territory. It
was seated for 1,166, and cost ;t;3,000, but was
swept away as being in the line of the present
Chambers Street. ,
COLLEGE WYND. (From a Drawinf 6y Willinffl Channing.)
The Cowgate.] LADY GALLOWAY. Z S 7
Although the name of this wynd is as old as
the middle of the seventeeth century, none of the
buildings in it latterly were older than the middle of
the eighteenth. They had all been removed by
those who were anxious for the benefit of such fine
air as its surroundings afforded, for in the map of
1647 the Yicus Epuorzrm is shown as having to
the westward gardens in plenitude, divided by four
long hedgerows, and closed on the south by the
became remarkable for piety, mingled with great
stateliness and pride; and she is thus referred to
in the Ridotto of Holyrood, partly written by her
sister-in-law, Lady Bruce of Kinloss :--
?And there was Bob Murray, though married, alas !
Yet still rivalling Johnstone in beauty and grace.
And there was my lady, well known by her airs,
Who ne?er goes to revel but after her prayers.?
The Bob herein referred to was Sir Robert
crenelated wall of the city, and it terminated by a
bend eastward at the Potterrow Port.
Respectable members of the bar were always
glad to have a flat in some of the tall edifices on
the east side of the wynd. About the middle of it,
on the west side, was a distinct mansion called
Galloway House, having a large Fcdiment, and
ornamented on the top by stone vases. This
residence was built by Alexander, sixth Earl of
Galloway, one of the Lords of Police, who died in
1773. His countess Catharine, daughter of John
Earl of Dundonald, colonel of the Scottish Horse
Guards, was mother of Captain George Stewart, who
fell at Ticonderoga. She had been a beauty in her
youth, and formed the subject of one of Hamilton
of Bangour?s poetical tributes, and in her old age
81
Murray of Clermont. Among all the precise
granddames of her time in Edinburgh, Lady
Galloway was noted for her pre-eminent pomp and
formality, and would order out her coach with six
horses, if but to pay a visit to a friend at the corner
of the wpd, or to Lord hfinto, whose house was a few
yards westward of it. ? It was alleged that when
the countess made calls, the leaders were sometimes
at the door she was going to when she was stepping
into the camage at her own door. This may be
called a tour de force illustration of the nearness of
friends to each other in Old Edinburgh.?
New College Wynd, which strikes from the
eastern part of Chambers Street, runs first IIO feet
northward, then 180 feet westward, and then northward
again in the line of the Iower part of the
