B- Sq-I MISS JEANNIE ELLIOT. =7*
-was compelled to have recourse to a sedan chair
by which he was wont to be carried to Court by
.George IV. Bridge. He died in No. 17, in 1846,
lsurviving for thirty-one years the death of his
favourite and lamented son, Colonel William Miller
of the 1st Foot Guards, who fell mortally wounded
-at Quatre Bras.
No. 3 was the residence, in IS! I, of James Haig,
-of Beimerside and that ilk, who is mentioned in the
? Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,? with reference
-to the old prophecy said to have been made by
?Thomas the Rhymer, that,
?? Tide tide, whatever betide,
There ?U aye be a Haig in Beimerside?
?The family have possessed the estate for many
.centuries. ?The grandfather of the present proprietor
of Beimerside,? wrote Scott in 1802, ?had
twelve daughters before his lady brought him a
male heir. The common people trembled ?for their
favourite soothsayer. The late Mr, Haig was at
length born, and their belief in the prophecy confirmed
beyond the shadow of a doubt.?
No. 14 was the residence of stout and portly
?Sir John Leslie, Bart., K.H., Professor of Natural
History in the University, the celebrated mathematician,
the successor of playfair, who died in
1832 ; and though mentioned last, not least, this
now nearly defunct square held the residence of
Miss Jeannie Elliot, authoress, about the middle of
-the last century, of the song ?The Flowers of
-the Forest,? who is said to have composed it in
consequence of a wager with her brother that she
.could not write a ballad on the subject of Flodden
.as they were driving homeward one evening in the
.carriage. ?? Yielding,? says the biographer of the
? Songstresses of Scotland,? ? to the influence of
the moment, Jean accepted the challenge. Leaning
back in her corner with all the most mournful
.stories of the country-side for her inspiration, and
two lines of an old ballad which had often rung in
her ears and trembled on her lips for a foundation,
she planned and constructed the rude framework
.of her ?Flowers of the Forest,? in imitation of
the older song to the same air.?
Miss Elliot of Minto dwelt on the first floor
.of a house beside the archway or pend which gave
-access to Brown Square from the Candlemaker
Row, in the south-west corner, opposite the Greyfriars?
Gate. She spent the latter part of her life
.chiefly in Edinburgh, where she mingled a good
deal in the better sort of society. ?? I have been
-told,? says Chambers in his ?? Scottish Songs,? ?? by
one who was admitted in youth to the privileges
of her conversation, that she was a remarkably
agreeable old lady, with a prodigious fund of
Scottish anecdote, but did not appear to have been
handsome.? Miss Tytler describes her, when
advanced in years, to have been a little delicate
old woman, in a close cap, ruffle, and ample snowwhite
neckerchief; her eyebrows well arched, but
having a nose and mouth that belonged to an
expressive, rather than a handsome face. She
generally went abroad in a sedan.
Eastward of this quarter lay Argyle Square (now
swept away to make room for Chambers Street), an
open area of 150 feet long, by the Same in breadth,
including the front gardens of, the houses on the
north side. The houses were all massive, convenient,
and not inelegant, and in some instances,
three storeys in height. The exact date of its being
built seems doubtful, tradition takes it back nearly
to 1730, and it is said to have been named from
the following circumstances :-A tailor named
Campbell having got into the graces of his
chief, the great John Duke of Argyle and Greenwich,
was promised the first favour that peeis
acquaintance or interest might throw in his way.
Accordingly, on the death of George I., the Duke
having early intelligence of the event, let his clans
man, the tailor, instantly know it, and the latter,
before his brethren in the trade were aware, bought
up all the black cloth in the city, and forthwith
drove such a trade in supplying the zealous Whigs
with mourning suits at his own prices, that he
shortly realised a little fortune, wherewith he laid
the foundation of a greater.
He began to build the first houses of this square,
and named it Argyle in hbnour of his patron, and
much of it appears to have been finished when
Edgar drew his first plan of the city in 11/42. In
the plan of 1765 the whole of the south side was
still called Campbell?s New Buildings. But prior
to any edifice being erected here, a retired bookseller
of the Parliament Close, who had once been
Lord Provost, built himself a mansion in what he
deemed a very rustic and suburban quarter, at the
head of Scott?s Close, latterly used as a ministers?
hall. Prior to that, and after the Provost?s death,
it had been the family mansion of Sir Andrew Agnew
of Lochnaw.
Lord Cullen dwelt here in a flat above what was
in 1824 a grocery store; and in the central house,
on the north side, lived Dr. Hugh Blau, the eminent
divine and sermon writer, one of the greatest
ornaments of the Scottish Church and of his native
capital ; and in that house (when he was Professor
of Rhetoric) died his wife, on the 9th February,
1795 ; she was his cousin Catharine, daughter of
the Rev. James Bannatyne, a city minister.
