Portobello.] THE FIGGATE MUIR ?43
to the line of the turnpike road. The whole surface
of the district round them is studded with
buildings, and has only so far subsided from the
urban character as to acquire for these, whether
villa or cottage, the graceful accompaninients of
garden or hedge-row. ?A stroll from the beautified
city to Piershill,? says a writer, ?when the
musical bands of the barracks are striving to drown
the soft and carolling melodies of the little songsters
on the hedges and trees at the subsession ot
Arthur?s Seat, and when? the blue Firth, with its
many-tinted canopy of clouds, and its picturesque
display of islets and steamers, and little smiling
boats on its waters, vies with the luxuriant lands
upon its shore to win the award due to beauty, is
indescribably delightful.?
C H A P T E R X I V .
PORTOBELLO.
Portolxll~The Site before the Houses-The Figgate Muir-Stone Coffins-A Meeting with Cromwell-A Curious Raae--Portobello Hut-
Robbqrs-Willkq Jamieson?s Feuing-Sir W. Scott and ?The Lay ?-Portobello Tower-Review of Yeomanry and H i g h d e w
Hugh Miller-David Laing-Joppa-Magdalene Bridge-Brunstane House.
PORTOBELLO, now a Parliamentary burgh, and
favourite bathing quarter of the citizens, occupies a
locality known for ages as the Figgate Muir, a once
desolate expanse of muir-land, which perhaps was
a portion of the forest of Drumsheugh, but which
latterly was covered With whins and furze, bordered
by a broad sandy beach, and extending from Magdalene
Bridge on the south perhaps to where Seafield
now lies, on the north-west.
Through this waste flowed the Figgate Bum out
of Duddingston Loch, a continuation of the Braid.
Figgate is said to be a corruption of the Saxon
word for a cow?s-ditch, and here ?the monks of
Holyrood were wont to pasture their cattle.
Traces of early inhabitants were found here
in 1821, when three stone cofiins?were discovered
under a tumulus of sand, midway between Portobello
and Craigantinnie. These were rudely put
together, and each contained a human skeleton.
?? The bones were quite entire,?? says the Week&
JournnZ for that year, ?and from their position it
would appear that the bodies had been buried with
their legs across. At the head of each was deposited
a number of flints, from which it is conjectured
the inhumation had taken place before the
use of metal in this country; and, what is very
remarkable, the roots of some shrubs had penetrated
the coffins and skulls of the skeletons, about which
and the ribs they had curiously twisted themselves.
The cavities of the skeletons indeed were quite
filled with vegetable matter.?
It was on the Figgate Muir that, during the
War of Independence, Sir William Wallace in 1296
mustered his zoo patriots to join Robert Lauder
and Crystal Seton at Musselblirgh for the pursuit
of the traitor Earl of Dunbar, whom they fought at
Inverwick, afterwards taking his castle at Dunbar.
In the Register of the Privy Council, January,
1584, in a bond of caution for David Preston of
Craigmillar, Robert Pacok in Brigend, Thomas
Pacok in Cameron, and others, are named as sureties
that John Hutchison, mirchant and burgess
of Edinburgh, shall be left peaceably in possession
of the lands ?? callit Kingis medow, besyde the
said burgh, and of that pairt thairof nixt adjacent
to the bume callit the Figott Burne, on the north
side of the same, being a proper pairt and pertinent
of the saidis landis of Kingis Medow.?
Among the witnesses is George Ramsay, Dean of
Restalrig.
We next hear of this locality in 1650, when it
was supposed to be the scene of a secret meeting,
?? half way between Leith and Musselburgh Rocks,
at low water,? between Oliver Cromwell and the
Scottish leaders, each attended by a hundred
horse, when any question the latter proposed to
ask he agreed to answer, but declined to admit
alike of animadversion or reply. A part of this
alleged conference is said to have been-
? Why did you put the king to death ?
?? Because he was a tyrant, and deserved death.?
? Why did you dissolve the Parliament ? I?
?? Because they .were greater tyrants than the
king, and required dissolution.?
The Mercurius CaZtdoonius of 1661 records a very
different scene here, under the name of the Thicket
Burn, when a foot-race was run from thence to the
summit of Arthur?s Seat by twelve browster-wives,
?all of them in a condition which makes violent
exertion unsuitable to the female form.? The prizes
on this occasiofi were, for the first, a hundredweight
of cheese and ?a budge11 of Dunkeld aquavite,
andarumpkin of Brunswick rum for the second, set
down by the Dutch midwife. The next day six
144 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [portobella
monly let to one of the Duddingston tenants for
zoo merks Scots, or LII 2s. z&d. sterling. Portobello
Hut, built in 1742, by an old Scottish seaman
who had served under Admiral Vernon, in 1739,
was so named by him in honour of our triumph at
that West Indian seaport, and hence the cognomen
of this watering-place ; but houses must have sprung
up around it by the year 1753, as in the Cowanf of
that year, ?( George Hamilton in Portobello ? offers
a reward of three pounds for the name of a libeller
who represented him as harbouring in his house
robbers, by whom, and by some smugglers, the
locality was then infested.
In the January of the following year the S o f s
Magazine records that Alexander Henderson,
~~
teen fishwives (are) to trot from Musselburgh to the
Canon(gate) Cross, for twelve pairs of lambs?
hanigals.?
The Figgate Bum was the boundary in this
quarter of a custom-house at Prestonpans j the
Tyne was the boundary in the other direction.
The Figgate lands, on which Portobello and
Brickfield are built, says the old statistical account,
consist together of about seventy acres, and continued
down to 1762 a mere waste, and were com-
Lord Milton, the proprietor, to Baron Muir, of the
Exchequer, for A1,500, and feuing then began at
t f 3 per acre; but the once solitary abode of the
old tar was long an object of interest, and stood
intact till 1851, at the south-west side of the High
Street, nearly opposite to Regent Street, and was
long used as a hostelry for humble foot-travellers,
on a road that led from the old Roman way, or
Fishwives? Causeway, across the Whins towards
Musselburgh. Parker Lawson, in his cc Gazetteer,?
says it was long known as the Shtpheyds? Ha?.
In 1765, Mr. William Jamieson, the feuar under
Baron Muir, discovered near the Figgate Bum a
valuable bed of clay, and on the banks of the
stream he erected first a brick and tile works, a d
master of a fishing-boat, on his way from Musselburgh
to Leith, was attacked by footpads at the
Figgate Whins, who robbed him of ten guineas
that were sewn in the waistband of his breeches,
12s. 6d. that he had in his pocket, cut him over
the head with a broadsword, stabbed him in the
breast, and left him for dead. His groans were
heard by two persons coming that way, who carried
him to Leith.?
About 1763 the Figgate Wins was sold by
THE eRAIGANTINNIE MARBLES.
