"Auld Reekie," as it is fondly called, still raises its
smokiest chimneys and most weathered walls along the "hoary ridge of
ancient town" that culminates in the Castle Rock, looking across a long
central line of gardens to the farther swell of land on which stands the
New Town of Scott's day. But New Town now seems a misnomer, since the
cramped site of the old city, itself much sweetened and aerated by
innovations, is surrounded by newer towns expanding in other directions.
Southwards, of late years, Edinburgh has grown more rapidly up to the foot
of the hills that here edge the suburbs of Newington, Grange, and
Morningside. Westwards she spreads out towards Corstorphine Hill and
Craiglockhart. On the east her progress is barred by the mass of Arthur's
Seat, but round the base of this creep rows of tall houses that will soon
connect her with Portobello, that minor Margate of the capital, now
comprised within her municipal boundaries. Northwards, she goes on
"flinging her white arms to the sea," which she almost touches at Granton
and Trinity; and a long unlovely street leads to the Piraeus of this
modern Athens, Leith, still stiffly standing aloof in civic independence.
Including Leith, which refuses to be included, the Scottish metropolis
began the century with a population not far short of 400,000.
On high in the midst of these modern settings, the
charms of Old Edinburgh are thrown into becoming relief, as the medley
smartness of Princes Street is enhanced by its facing the grim backs of
the High Street "lands." Ruskin and other critics have said hard things of
the New Town's architects; but their strictures do not go without
question. What, at all events, must strike strangers is an imposing
solidity of the modern buildings, whether tall "stairs"—Anglicé
flats—or roomy private houses, nearly all built of a grey stone that seems
in keeping with the atmosphere; and this not only in the central streets
and squares, but in outer suburbs, innocent of brick and stucco. If a too
classical regularity has been aimed at, this is tempered by the unevenness
of the ground, breaking up the " draughty parallelograms," giving vistas
into the open country, and at night such long panoramas of glittering
lights displayed on slopes and crests. The place, says R. L. Stevenson,
who has so well caught the picturesque points of his native city, "is full
of theatre tricks in the way of scenery. . . . You turn a corner, and
there is the sun going down into the Highland hills. You look down an
alley, and see ships tacking for the Baltic." And if the city fathers have
been ill advised in the past, its municipality may claim the credit of
being first in the kingdom to take powers for disinfecting it against the
plague of mendacious and hideous advertisements that are too much allowed
to pock our highways and byways.
Edinburgh from "Rest and be Thankful"
A peculiar feature of the city is its "Bridges," by
which certain streets span others at different levels, physically and
socially. From the unique Dean Bridge, in the heart of the West End, one
overlooks what might be taken for a Highland glen but for the lines of
mansions that edge it above. When I came to Edinburgh as a homesick little
schoolboy, appalled by the "boundless continuity" of street, I devoted my
first Saturday freedom to an attempt at discovering the open country. This
was happily before the days of schoolboys being driven and drilled to
play. Striking the Water of Leith at Stockbridge, I turned along the path
leading into this glen that might well satisfy desires for a green
solitude. But on reaching the village of Dean, embedded below the bridge,
I climbed up to find myself beside the dome of St. George's Church, lost
deeper than ever in that bewildering city. Still, a little trimmed and
tamed, an oasis of wooded bank shuts in the rushing stream, now purified
and stocked with trout, where we were content to catch loaches and
sticklebacks.
What a loss to this city was the classically-minded
Gothicism or carelessness through which came to be rooted up so many noble
trees that once dotted the parks of Drumsheugh and Bellevue! But Edinburgh
has been well endowed afresh with open spaces and shrubberies, those that
separate the blocks of the New Town mainly private joint-stock paradises,
yet serving for public amenity. The Old Town is enclosed between the noble
stretch of the Princes Street Gardens on the north, and on the south the
open Meadows, with its "Philosopher's Walk" of Dugald Stewart's and
Playfair's days, rising into the Bruntsfield Links. Then the city is
almost ringed about by parks, more than one of them including grand
features of natural scenery. Philadelphia is the only city I know which
has such wild scenes at her very doors, in her case collected together in
the Fairmount Park, where miles of hill and river landscape have been left
almost untouched among the streets and suburbs, yet boasting no points so
noble as the head of Arthur's Seat, with its girdle of crags,
screes, and lakes.
This miniature Ben, imposing as it looks, is under 1000
feet high, and easily climbed. Those almost past their climbing days may
seek Blackford Hill on the south side, where Scott tells us that he
bird's-nested as a truant boy, and speaks of it as at a later day brought
under cultivation ; but it has relapsed again to its native wildness, laid
out as a rough park and as site for the squat domes of the new
Observatory. From this eminence one gets Marmion's view of the city, now
grown up to its foot, shut in between Arthur's Seat and the wooded ridge
of Corstorphine, and bounded to the north across the Firth by the heights
of Fife, above which, in clear weather, stand up the blue bastions of the
Highlands. Behind Blackford, one may keep up the wooded hollow of the
Hermitage, by a public path following the stream, and thus gain the Braid
Hills, overlooking the city a little farther back. Keeping along their
edge, at some risk from flying golf balls, one can hold on to the hotel
built between the old and the new south roads. Here, at the terminus of
suburban trams, looking to the Pentlands up the valley of the Braid Burn,
by which runs a field path towards Swanston, the country home of R. L.
Stevenson, one might hardly guess oneself so near a great city, but for
the lordly poorhouse and fever-hospital buildings to the back of
Craiglockhart Hill.
In the very heart of the city are view-points fine
enough to content hasty travellers, from the battlements of the Castle,
from the spire of Scott's Monument, from the slopes of the Calton
Hill, with its array of ready-made ruins and monuments with which
Edinburgh has sought to live up to her classical pretensions. This rises
beyond the east end of Princes Street, opposite the battlemented gaol, and
a little way past that Charing Cross of Auld Reekie, where its main ways
meet between the Post Office, the Register House and the tower of a new
North British Hotel looking down upon the glass roofs of the sunken
Waverley Station. At the other end of Princes Street, an opening before
the Caledonian Station may be called Edinburgh's Piccadilly Circus,
radiating into its Mayfair quarter. This end is dominated by the Castle,
suggesting to Algerian travellers a duodecimo edition of that wonderful
rock-set city Constantine. It shows little of the modern fortress, rather
a pile of ugly barracks which a Japanese cruiser could knock to pieces
from the Firth; but one understands how in old days its site made it a
Gibraltar citadel, that often could hold out when the town was overrun by
foemen taking care to keep themselves beyond range of the Castle guns.
Taylor, the Water Poet, who had seen something of war in his youth, judged
it "so strongly grounded, bounded, and founded, that by force of man it
can never be confounded." The King himself did not gain admittance on his
recent visit without a ceremony of summons by the Lord Lyon King of Arms;
but all and sundry, at reasonable hours, may stroll across its drawbridge
to lounge on the ramparts, to be conducted over historic relics by veteran
ciceroni, or to wait for the stunning report of the gun, which, fired from
Greenwich at one o'clock, brings every watch within hearing to the test.
From this "Maiden Castle," safe refuge for princesses
of the good old times, a conscientious tourist makes for Holyrood by the
long line of High Street and Canongate, bringing him past most of the
historic sites and monuments—the "Heart of Midlothian," the Parliament
House, the swept and garnished Cathedral of St. Giles, beside which John
Knox now lies literally buried in a highway, as was Dr. Johnson's pious
wish for him ; the restored Market Cross, the Tron Church, Knox's House,
which counts rather among Edinburgh's Apocrypha, and many another ancient
mansion, once alive with Scotland's proudest names, now degraded to an
Alsatia of huge dingy tenements, swarming forth vice and misery at
nightfall. The way narrows through an unsavoury slum as it approaches the
deserted home of kings, beyond which opens a park such as no king has at
his back door.
Holyrood was originally an abbey, founded by David I.
"in gratitude," says the legend, "for his miraculous deliverance from a
stag on Holy Rood Day, and prompted thereto by a dream." Similar stories
are told of many another prince less disposed to ecclesiastical
benefactions than David, that "sair saint to the crown"; even John of
England founded one abbey, at Beaulieu, as an act of grace prompted by
nightmare visions. Beside David's Abbey of the Holy Cross sprang up a
palace that, as well the sacred precincts, suffered much in the troubles
of the Stuart reigns, being frequently burned or spoiled by
Edinburgh Evening, from Salisbury Crags
English tourists of their period, on the last occasion
"personally conducted" by one Oliver Cromwell, who had small respect
either for palaces or abbeys. In Charles II.'s time it was rebuilt
somewhat after the style of Hampton Court, while the Abbey, devastated by
a Presbyterian mob, came to be refitted with a too heavy roof that crushed
it into utter ruin. The present building is thus modern, but for the ruins
behind, and the restored portion incorporating Queen Mary's apartments.
The name of the Sanctuary opposite was no vain one up till about half a
century ago, when impecunious debtors used to take asylum within its
bounds, privileged to issue free on Sundays, else venturing forth to feast
or sport only at the risk of thrilling adventures with bailiffs.
Everyone who has been to Edinburgh knows the sights of
this show place: the portraits of Scottish kings, more or less mythical,
"awful examples" as works of art, the whole gallery, it is said, done by a
Dutch painter of the seventeenth century for a lump sum of £250; the
tapestried rooms of Darnley; the Queen's bedchamber; and the dark stain on
the flooring where Rizzio is believed to have gasped out his life, after
being dragged from the side of his mistress. Every reader must know
Scott's story of the traveller in some patent fluid for removing stains,
who pressed the use of his nostrum on the horrified custodian. What every
stranger does not know is how this "virtuous palace where no monarch
dwells" is still used for functions of state. Annually, in May, the Lord
High Commissioner takes up his quarters here as representative of the
Crown in the General Assembly of the Church, when green peas ought to come
into season to make their first appearance on the
quasi-royal table. Ireland, that makes such loud boast of her grievances,
basks in the smiles of a Lord-Lieutenant all the year, while poor patient
Scotland has a blink of reflected royalty for one scrimp fortnight, during
which the old palace wakes to the life of levees, drawing-rooms,
and dinners, where black gowns and coats are more in evidence than in most
courtly circles. The Commissioner's procession from the palace to open the
Assembly lights up the old Canongate with a martial display; and more or
less festivity is held within the walls according to the wealth or
liberality of the Commissioner, who, like the Lord Mayor of London, should
be a rich man to fill his office with due eclat. But when King
Edward VII. recently visited Edinburgh, to the regret of the citizens, he
did not take up his quarters in the palace, pronounced unsuitable by the
prosaic reason of its drains being somewhat too Georgian, a matter that
has now been amended.
A more occasional function fitly transacted here is the
election of representative peers for Scotland in a new parliament. As
every schoolboy ought to know, our Constitution admits only sixteen
Scottish peers to sit in Parliament, most of them indeed having place
there in virtue of British peerages—the Duke of Atholl as Lord
Strange, for instance, the Duke of Montrose as Lord Graham, and so forth.
Of those left out in the cold, sixteen are "elected" by a somewhat
cut-and-dried process very free from the heat and excitement of
popular voting. As I have seen it, the ceremony seemed to lack
impressiveness. Some dozen gentlemen in pot hats and shooting jackets
assembled in the Picture Gallery before an audience chiefly consisting of
ladies, more than one of these legislators in mien and appearance
suggesting what Fielding says about Joseph Andrews, that he might have
been taken for a nobleman by one who had not seen many noblemen. Each of
the privileged order, in turn, wrote and read out a list of the peers for
whom he voted, usually ending "and myself." Certain practically-minded
peers sent in their votes by post. The most moving incident was the
expected one of an advocate in wig and gown rising to put in for a client
some unrecognised claim to a title or protest as to precedency, duly
listened to and noted down. The whole ceremony struck one as rather a
waste of time; but perhaps the same might be said of most ceremonies. One
thing has to be remembered about these unimposing lords, that they are a
highly select body in point of blue blood, all representing old families,
as the fount of their honour was dried up at the Union, and the king can
make an honest man as soon as a Scottish peer.
The tourist who comes in for any of such functions will
realise the truth of what R. L. Stevenson says for his native city:—
"There is a spark among the embers; from time to time
the old volcano smokes. Edinburgh has but partly abdicated, and still
wears, in parody, her metropolitan trappings. Half a capital and half a
country town, the whole city leads a double existence; it has long trances
of the one and flashes of the other; like the king of the Black Isles, it
is half alive and half a monumental marble. There are armed men and cannon
in the citadel overhead; you may see the troops marshalled on the high
parade; and at night after the early winter evenfall, and in the morning
before the laggard winter dawn, the wind carries abroad over Edinburgh the
sound of drums and bugles. Grave judges sit bewigged in what was once the
scene of imperial deliberations. Close by in the High Street perhaps the
trumpets may sound about the stroke of noon; and you see a troop of
citizens in tawdry masquerade; tabard above, heather-mixture trowser
below, and the men themselves trudging in the mud among unsympathetic
bystanders. The grooms of a well-appointed circus tread the streets with a
better presence. And yet these are the Heralds and Pursuivants of
Scotland, who are about to proclaim a new law of the United Kingdom before
two-score boys, and thieves, and hackney-coachmen."
Tourists are too much in the way of seeing no more of
Edinburgh than its historic lions and rich museums, as indicated in the
guide-books. I would invite them to pay more attention to the suburbs
straggling on three sides into such fine hill scenery as is the
environment of this city. Open cabs are easily to be had in the chief
thoroughfares; and Edinburgh cabmen have the name of being rarely decent
and civil, as if the Shorter Catechism made an antidote to the human
demoralisation spread from that honest friend of man, the horse. Give a
London Jehu something over his fare, and his first thought seems to be
that you are a person to be imposed upon; but I, for one, never had the
same experience here. I know of a stranger who took a cheaper mode of
finding his way through Edinburgh; he had himself booked as an express
parcel and put in charge of a telegraph messenger, who would not leave him
without a receipt duly signed at his destination. But the wandering
pedestrian is at great advantage where he seldom has out of sight such
landmarks as the Castle and Arthur's Seat. There is no better way of
seeing the city than from the top of the tramcars that run in all
directions, the main line being a circular
Craigmillar Castle, near Edinburgh
route from the Waverley Station round the west side of
the Castle, then through the south suburbs, and back beneath Arthur's Seat
to the Post Office. Public motor cars also ply their terror along the
chief thoroughfares. The trams are on the cable system, invented for the
steep ascents of San Francisco, but out of favour in most cities. The
excuse for its adoption here was that bunches of overhead wires would
spoil such amenities as are the city's stock in tourist trade. It has the
objectionable habit of keeping up along the line a rattle disquieting to
nervous people, while the car itself steals upon one like a thief in the
night; but it appears that accidents to life and limb are not so common as
hitches in the working.
The trams now run on Sunday, an innovation that shocks
many good folk, brought up in days when the streets of a Scottish city
were as stricken by the plague, unless at the hours when all the
population came streaming on foot to and from their different places of
worship. A few years ago, I felt it my duty to correct the late Max O'Rell,
who had gathered some wonderful stories supposed to illustrate the manners
of Scotland. As he related how, getting into an Edinburgh tramcar on
Sunday, his companion insisted on their riding inside not to be seen of
men, one was able to inform him that since the days of Moses no public
vehicle had disturbed Edinburgh's Sabbath quiet. It is not so now; and all
the old stories about "whustlin' on the Sabbath" and so forth will soon be
legends, so fast is the peculiar observance of Scottish piety melting
away.
R. L. Stevenson humorously called himself "a countryman
of the Sabbath," but this institution is not so clearly a native of
Scotland as has been taken for granted. John Knox played bowls on Sunday;
and the rigidity that came in later was due as much to English Puritanism
as to the thrawnness of Scottish revolt against Catholic practices.
Whatever its origin, Sabbatarianism once weighed heavily on human nature
north of the Tweed. "Is this a day to be talking of days!" was the
rebuke of the Highlander to a tourist who ventured to remark that it was a
fine Sunday. Not so many years ago, I have known a Highland farmer refuse
the loan of a girdle to bake scones for a breadless family, "not on the
Sabbath"; yet this orthodox worthy and his sons, living as far from a
church as from a baker's shop, seemed to spend most of the day of rest
lying by the roadside smoking their pipes and reading the newspaper. An
exiled Scot, in far distant lands, has told me how the shadow of the
coming Sabbath began to fall on his youth as early as Wednesday night. The
holy day was a term of imprisonment for juvenile spirits, its treadmill
two long services, chiefly sermon, sometimes run into one, or separated by
only a few minutes' interval, to economise short winter light in
which worshippers might have to trudge miles to church. It is in the
Highlands and other out-of-the-way parts, of course, that such austerities
linger, while the urban populations more readily adopt English compromises
on this head.
In Edinburgh one generation has seen a great thawing of
the Sabbath spirit. I can remember the excitement caused all over Scotland
by a sermon in which Dr. Norman Macleod proclaimed that there was no harm
in taking a walk on Sunday. The Scotsman, a paper that has never
much flattered its readers' prejudices, came out with a sly humorous
article headed "Murder of Moses' Law by Dr. Norman Macleod," and it is
said that some good people read this in the sense that the "broad" divine
had actually committed homicide. Even earlier, Edinburgh people had
tacitly sanctioned a walk to a cemetery, as echoing the teachings of the
pulpit. The story went that the present King, when at Edinburgh
University, was sternly denied admission to the Botanic Gardens on Sunday;
but he might unblamed have taken a stroll through the adjacent tombs of
Warriston. From the Dean Cemetery, the West End ventured on extending its
Sunday ramble as far as "Rest and be Thankful" on Corstorphine Hill; then
it was a fresh scandal when a very Lord of Session came to show himself on
this road in tweeds, instead of the full phylacteries that might attest
previous church-going. Of another judge living at Corstorphine it is told
that he once sought to mend the morals of a cobbler helplessly drunk at
his gate on Sunday afternoon, but was met by the hiccoughed repartee, "Wha's
you, without your Sabbath blacks?"
In my youth the police would put a stop to skating or
such like diversions on Sabbath; but now Sunday bicycles flit over the
country; the iniquity of a Sunday band is tolerated in the parks; while a
society is suffered to promote Sunday concerts and lectures indoors.
Another sign of the times is that Christmas in Edinburgh begins to be
almost as much observed as the national festival of New Year's Day,
whereas orthodox Presbyterianism once made a point of ignoring fasts and
feasts sanctioned by prelacy or popery. As for its own fasts, they have
long been transmuted into junketings; and the sacramental "preachings" of
large towns are now frankly abolished in favour of public holidays
answering to the English saturnalia of St. Lubbock, observed only by banks
across the Tweed. The Communion, in old days administered but once or
twice a year, and regarded in some parts with such awe that few ventured
to put themselves forward as participants, is now a frequent rite in
Presbyterian Churches, whose congregations are throwing off their horror
of ornament and ceremony, as may be seen in St. Giles. Old-fashioned
English rectors of the Simeon school have been known to shake their heads
at the services now read in the ears of descendants of that Jenny Geddes
who so forcibly testified against a prayer-book declared by ribald jesters
hateful to Scotland through its too frequent mention of "Collect."
The honest stranger, then, has nothing to fear from the
austerity of Scottish morals, not even the supposed risk of being married
by mistake. It will be his own fault if he fail to find a welcome across
the Tweed. Effusive manners are not the Scot's strong point, and he may be
accused of a certain suspicion of offence, kept sharp by the careless and
not ill-natured insolence of southrons who are so free with their jovial
jests about "bawbees" and such like, well-worn and rusty pleasantries
coined in the days of Bute's unpopularity and Johnson's bearish dogmatism.
Among the baser sorts of Scots are still current inverse sarcasms against
English "pock-puddings," conceived as fat and greedy; but they would have
to be fished up from a low social stratum by the travelling gent who
cannot understand that, however little disposed
Linlithgow Palace
Sandy may have been to hang his head for honest
poverty, he ill relishes its being flung in his face. "A sooth bourd is
nae bourd," says the old proverb; but now, what with tourists, and trade,
and Scotsmen who come back again, bringing the spoils of the world with
them, the reproach of poverty ceases to be so sore a one.
Though in the eyes of busy Glasgow Edinburgh may pass
as a retired capital, living on its means of attraction, it has; in fact
several industries from which to earn a livelihood. Along with the lodging
and amusing of strangers, it must do a good business in the tartans,
pebbles, silver-work, and other showy wares displayed in Princes Street
shop windows. "Edinbury Rock," done up in tartan wrappers, is much pressed
upon the notice of tourists; the same indeed, being sold in other towns
under their own name. As for shortbread, scones, biscuits, and other
manufactures of the "Land of Cakes," these have invaded London, where
every baker not a German is like to be a Scot. It will be noted by Cockney
revilers as a proof of Scotch thriftiness, which might bear another
interpretation, that what costs a penny in a London baker's shop is here
sold for a halfpenny. Well known to strangers are the Princes Street
confectioners' shops, several of them extensive restaurants like that one
which, crowning its storeys of accommodation, has a roof garden looking
upon the Castle opposite.
The staple trades of Edinburgh have come to be printing
and publishing, and, as the nettle grows near the dock, brewing and
distilling. The great Scottish publishing firms have of late years shown a
tendency to gravitate towards London; but more than one still keeps its
headquarters here, beside some of the largest and best printing
establishments in the kingdom. It must be confessed that what is spoken of
as "the trade," is whisky, too much consumed about the premises, as
visitors are apt to note. The worst shame a Scotsman need take for
Scotland is on account of what Englishmen specially distinguish as
"Scotch." I never heard sadder jest than the laughing comment of a group
of Dundee lasses, as they passed a braw lad wallowing in the gutter
at mid-day—"He's having his holidays!" Yet as to this reproach, something
might be said in plea for mitigation of judgment. Something to the purpose
was said by that experienced toper who explained how "whusky makes ye
drunk before ye are fu', but yill makes ye fu' before ye are drunk." The
whisky drunk by the lower classes here is a demon that takes no disguise.
It seems that, while there is more brutal intoxication in Scotland, there
may be less toping sottishness than in England. Men seen so helplessly
overcome at the ninth hour of a holiday are perhaps of ordinarily sober
habits, all the more readily affected by occasional indulgence in fiery
spirit. A woman frequenting public-houses implies a lower depth of
degradation. In the north, a larger proportion of the population
are abstainers; young people and the class of domestic servants for
instance, drink water where in English families they would expect beer. In
all classes, there are still too many Scotsmen religious in the worship of
their native Bacchus, vulgar and violent deity as he is; but every year
adds to the number of Protestants against this perverted fanaticism. By
the Forbes Mackenzie Act, all public-houses are
The Bass Rock - A Tranquil Evening
closed on Sunday, when, however, if all stories be
true, a good deal of shebeening or illicit drinking goes on in the
cities. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the austerity of Scottish
Sabbatarianism has driven many into vicious indulgence; and much is to be
hoped from the churches taking an interest in honest amusement as a help
and not a hindrance to religion. But a sneer often thrown out by strangers
against the supposed hypocrisy of Scotsmen, only shows ignorance of a
country where those most concerned about Sabbath observance have long been
the deadliest enemies of drinking habits.
Whisky, as well as golf, has now so masterfully invaded
England, that this can no longer be called "Scottish Drink," as it was not
by Burns. In his day, home-brewed beer was the Lowland beverage, of which
a Cromwellian soldier complained as more like brose for its thickness. Up
to our day "Edinburgh Ale" made the capital's chief contribution to the
heady gaiety of nations. Whisky came in from the Highlands, its name a
contraction of uisgebeatha, "water of life," which Burns and Scott
write usquebaugh, the Celtic word for water being the same that
appears in so many river names Esk, Usk, Exe, Axe, and so forth.
Even in the Highlands, this mountain dew would seem to have supplanted
beer within historic times; and old writers admire the temperance as much
as the honesty and courage of Highlanders. Both Highland and Lowland
gentlemen preferred brandy, in the days when, as Lord Cockburn tells us,
claret was hawked about the Edinburgh streets in a cart, a jug of any
reasonable size being filled for sixpence.
Firm and erect the Caledonian stood,
Old was his mutton, and his claret good.
Let him drink port! a beef-fed statesman cried.
He drank the poison and his spirit died.
The preference for French wine and spirits before the
days of Hanoverian fiscalities, relates to the old alliance with France,
which has left its mark also on Scottish speech. That warning cry "Gardy-loo"
(gardez I'eau), which gave such scandal to early English tourists,
was of course a survival of a far-spread practice in cities before the
days of drainage or even of ash-buckets (baquets). Many French
household words are used in Scotland at this day, as "caraff" (carafe),
"ashet" (assiette), a "jiggot" of mutton (gigot), a
"haggis" (hachis); and Burns's "silver tassie" was of course a
tasse. A "cummer" (commère) "canna be fashed" (sefacher)
to step out to the "merchant's," who may be "douce" or "dour" and an
"honest" man (honnete), though sharp in his bargains. "Ma certie
(certes), that's a braw (brave) vest!" quoth a lass to her lad,
a word here used like the French garcon or gars, while
gosse will be distinguished as a "laddie," who grows to be a "young
lad" in spite of orgies on sour "grozers" or "grozets" and "gheans," which
in France are groseilles and guignes, but in England
gooseberries and wild cherries. French names too have taken root in
Scotland, Janet (Jeannette) being very common with one sex, as Louis or
Ludovic is not unknown in the other. For the matter of that, one might
string together instances of how the well of Old English flows undefiled
by time in the north.
Then brought to him that maiden meek
Hose and shoon and sark and breek.
These words are used to this day in every Scottish
cottage, as once in the stately style of an early southron minstrel.
Shakespeare and the Bible show many picked phrases which are now wild
flowers in the north; and high example might be found for the shalls
and wills that here run loose from the enclosures of modern
grammarians. But as Mr. David MacRitchie suggests in an interesting
pamphlet "to doubt that one is colded and can't go to the
church" seem rather specimens of French idioms transplanted during the
three centuries or so that Capets and Stuarts stood together against the
Plantagenets.
Protestantism availed to draw Scotland from the arms of
France into those of England; then Prelacy and Presbytery set the near
neighbours again at odds. For some generations, the young Scotsmen who had
once sought the Catholic schools of the Continent, were more in the way of
finishing their education at Dutch or German Universities. Scotland had
also an old connection, chiefly in the way of trade, with Scandinavia and
Poland, in both of which countries Scottish family names are naturalised,
as Swedish Dicksons and Polish Gordons. Scots students of our day still
look to Germany, under whose professors they are apt to forget the Shorter
Catechism for the categories of Kant and the secret of Hegel. The Union
was not fully consummated till Macs began to make themselves at home in
Oxford and Cambridge, while for a time the renown of Scottish philosophy
drew some of the promising English youth to Edinburgh, whose medical
school kept up the attrac
