Potterrow.] AN OLD TAVERN. 333
Moray, who died in 1810, lived in the Potterrow,
in a large mansion, which was entered through a
garden ?at the east end of the row, and another
by Chapel Street.?? An advertisement, offering it
for sale in 1783, says the earl had occupied it ?for
these ten years past;? that it consists of fifteen
apartments, with servants? hall, vaulted cellar, and
ample stabling. This was, in all probability, the
house formerly occupied by the Duke of Douglas.
The Original Seceder Congregation, afterwards
located in Richmond Street, was established in the
Potterrow about 1794, and removed to the former
quarter in 1813.
We get an idea of the class of humble Edinburgh
merchapzt, as the phrase was understood in Scotland.
On Sundays, too, Mrs. Flockhart?s little
visage might have been seen in a front gallery seat
in Mr. Pattieson?s chapel in the Potterrow. Her
abode, situated opposite to Chalmers? Entry, in
that suburban thoroughfare, was a square, about
fifteen feet each way.?
A mere screen divided her dwelling-house from
her tavern, and before it, every morning, the
bottles containing whisky, rum, and brandy, were
placed on the bunker-seat of a window, with
glasses and a salver of gingerbread biscuits. Anon
an elderly gentleman would drop in, saluting her
with ?? Hoo d?ye do, mem I ? and then proceed to
ROOM IN CLARINDA?S HOUSE, GENERAL?S ENTRY.
taverns of the old school from the description that
Chambers gives us of a famous one, Mrs. Flockhart?s-
otherwise ? Lucky Fykie?s ?-in the Potter-.
row, at the close of the last century,
It was a small as well as obscure edifice, externally
having the appearance of a huckster?s
shop. Lucky Fykie was a neat little elderly
woman, usually clad in an apron and gown of the
same blue-striped stuff, with a black silk ribbon
round her mutch, the lappets of which were tied
under her chin. ?Her husband, the umquhile
John Flucker, or Flockhart, had left her some
ready money, together with his whole stock-in-trade,
consisting of a multifarious variety of articlesropes,
tea, sugar, whipshafts, porter, ale, beer,
yellow-sand, camstune, herrings, nails, cotton-wicks,
thread, needles, tapes, potatoes, lollipops, onions,
and matches, &c., constituting ,her a respectable
help himself from one of the bottles ; another and
another would drop in, till the tiny tavern was
full, and, strange to say, all of them were men of
importance in society, many of them denizens of
George Square - eminent .barristers or wealthy
bankers-so simple were the habits of the olden
time.
In No. 7, Charles Street, which runs into Crichton
Street, near the Potterrow, Lord Jeffrey, the eminent
critic, was born in 1773, in the house of his father,
a Depute-Clerk of Session, though some accounts
have assigned his birthplace to Windmill Street.
Lady Duffus was resident in Charles Street in I 784,
Where this street is now, there was an old locality
known as Charles?s Field, which on Restoration
Day, 1712, was the scene of an ingenious piece
of marked Jacobitism, in honour of the exiled I Stuarts
pub
ale house
public house
tavern
