Braid.] THE LANDS OF BRAID. 41
the city on the south, and directly overlook
Morningside. Their greatest altitude is 700 feet
According to one traditional legend, these hills
were the scene of ? Johnnie 0? Braidislee?s ? woeful
hunting, as related in the old ballad.
exposed to more than one
military visitation from
the garrison in Edinburgh
Castle. Knox?s secretary
records that on the 25th
May twelve soldiers came
to Braid, when the laird
was at supper, and
rifled the house of the
miller. Braid appeared,
but was treated with contempt,
and was told that
they would bum the house
about his ears if he did
not surrender to Captain
Melville, who was one of
the eight sons of Sir lames
Melville of Raith, and his
lady Helen Napier of Merchiston.
Though called ? a
quiet man,? the wrath of
the laird was roused, and
he rushed forth at the
head of his domestics,
the north bank of the latter stream, which meanders
close to it, and which takes its rise in the bosom
of the Pentlands, near the Roman camp above
Bonally.
It is a two-storeyed villa, with a pavilion roof
CHRIST. CHURCH, MORNINGSIDE.
armed with an enormous two-handed sword, and
cut down one of the soldiers, who fired their hackbuts
without effect, and were eventually put to flight.
In the early part of the eighteenth century Braid
belonged to a family named Brown, and a great
portion of it in the present century had passed into
the possession of Gordon of Cluny.
between the Braid Hills and Blackford, stands the
beautiful retreat called the Hermitage of Braid, on
In a romantic, sequestered, and woody dell,
102
and little corner turrets, in that grotesque style of
castellated architecture adopted at Gillespie?s
Hospital, and is evidently designed by the same
architect, though built about the year 1780. It
was the property of Charles Gordon of Cluny,
father of the ill-fated Countess of Stair, the once
beautiful ?Jacky Gordon,? whose marriage was
annulled in 1804, after which it frequently formed
her solitary residence. It afterwards became the
property of the widow of the late John Gordon of
42 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Craiglockhart
Cluny (who died recently in London), Lady
Gordon-Cathcart of Killochan Castle, who has
since sold it out of the family.
On the hill above it, to the south, is the .farmhouse
of Braid, in which died, of consumption, in
1790, Niss Burnet of Monboddo, so celebrated
for her beauty, which woke the muse of Burns, as
his verses show.
Southward of Morningside lie the Plewlands,
ascending the slope towards beautiful Craiglockhart
Hill, now being fast covered with semi-detached
villas, feued by the Scottish Heritages Company,
surrounding a new cemetery, and intersected by
the suburban line of railway. Here was built
lately a great hydropathic establishment. The
new city poor-house, erected at a cost of Aso,ooo,
occupies, with the ground for cultivation, an area
of thirty-six acres, has accommodation for more
than 2,000 inmates, and is fitted up with every
modem improvement conducive to health and
comfort.
This quzrter of Edinburgh is bounded by
Craiglockhart Hill-the name of which is said to
have been Cra&och-ard, with some reference to
the great sheet of water once known as Cortorphin
Loch. It is 546 feet in height, and richly wooded,
and amid its rocks there breed the kestrel-hawk,
the brown owl, the ring-ousel, and the waterhen.
Among the missing charters of David 11. is one
to James Sandiland, ? in compensation of the lands
of Craiglokart and Stonypath, Edinburgh,? and
another to ? James Sandoks (?) of the same lands.?
On a plateau of the hill, embosomed among
venerable trees, we find the ancient Craig House,
a weird-looking mansion, alleged to be ghosthaunted,
lofty, massive, and full of stately rooms,
when in old times dances were stately things, ?? in
which every lady walked as if she were a goddess,
and every man as if he were a great lord.?
It is four storeys in height, including the dormer
windows j the staircase tower rises a storey higher,
and has crowstepped gables. On the lintel of the
moulded entrance door are the initials S. C. P.,
and the date 1565.
During the reign of James VI. we find it the
abode of a family named Kincaid, cadets of the
Kincaids of that ilk in Stirlingshire, as were all
the Kincaids of Warriston and Coates. From
Pitcairn?s ?? Criminal Trials,? it would seem that on
the 17th December, 1600, John Kincaid of the
Craig House, attended by a party of friends and followers,
?bodin in feir of weir,? i.e., clad in armour,
with swords, pistols, and other weapons, came
to the village of the Water of Leith, and attacked
:he house of Bailie John Johnston, wherein Isabel
Hutcheon, a widow, ?was in sober, quiet, and
peaceable manner for the time, dreading nae evil,
narm, or injury, but living under God?s peace and
3ur sovereign lord?s.??
Kincaid burst in the doors, and laying hands on
:he said Isabel, carried her off forcibly to the
Craig House, at the very time when the king was
riding in the fields close by, with the Earl of
Mar, Sir John Ramsay, and others. James, on
hearing of the circumstance, sent Mar, Ramsay,
md other of his attendants, to Craig House, which
:hey threatened to set on fire if the woman was
not instantly released. For this outrage Kincaid
was tried on the 13th January, 1601, and was fined
2,500 marks, payable to the Treasurer, and he was
dso ordered to deliver to the king ?his brown
horse.?
In 1604, Thomas, heir of Robert Kincaid, got
m annual rent of Azo of land at Craiglockhart;
2nd two years after, John Kincaid, the hero of the
brawl, succeeded his father, James Kincaid of that
ilk, knight, in the lands of Craiglockhart. In 1609
he also succeeded to some lands at ?Tow-cros?
(Toll cross), outside the West Port of Edinburgh.
By a dispute reported by Lord Fountainhall,
Craiglockhart seems to have been the property of
George Porteous, herald painter, in I 7 I I. The
house would seem then to have been repaired, and
the north wing probably added, and the whole was
let for a yearly rent of AIOO Scots.
In 1726 Craig House was the property of Sir
John Elphinstone, and in the early part of the
present century it belonged to Gordon of Cluny.
Prior to that, it had been for a time the property
of a family named Lockhart, and there, on the 5th
November, 1770, when it was the residence of
Alexander Lockhart, Esq., Major-General John
Scott of Balcomie and Bellevue was married to
Lady Mary Hay, eldest daughter of the Earl of
Err01 ; and their daughter and heiress, Henrietta,
became the wife of the Duke of Portland, who
added to his own name and arms those of the?
Scotts of Balcomie.
For some years prior to 1878, the Craig House
was the residence of John Hill Burton, LL.D.
and F.R.S.E., a distinguished historian and biographer,
who was born at Aberdeen in 1809, the
son of an officer of the old Scots Brigade, and who
died in 188 I at- Morton House. We are told that
his widowed mother, though the daughter of an
Aberdeenshire laird, was left with slender resources,
yet made successful exertions to give her children
a good education. After taking the degree of M.A.
