Back to Edinburgh

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Tuesday 17th June

Up at the crack of dawn to catch a 7:30 flight back to Edinburgh. It was windy and attempting to rain (pretty much permanent conditions in Orkney) when we caught our taxi to the airport. (We had time to have a quick breakfast as the aircrew also stay at the hotel so we could afford to arrive a little later than normal.) By the time we got to the airport there was consistent, persistent rain. On arriving I noticed that the airport has its name written in Nordic runes rather then English.

As is always the case at airports we had to sit around for a while. I was surprised when our flight was called and we got the metal detector and x-ray machine treatment. We have flown from a couple of the smaller Queensland airports that are about the same size as Kirkwall and no-one bothers; perhaps it's because the UK is higher profile regarding Iraq and London has suffered a couple of terrorist attacks.

The flight was smoother than Marion's wished for bus would've been, the only turbulence being a few minutes before landing. We'd been flying above the rain (total cloud cover below) but it had apparently been chasing us for as we disembarked a light shower began.

Total confusion reigned as we were unaware that there were two Long Term Car Parks at Edinburgh and we originally caught a bus to the wrong one. Fortunately we weren't silly enough to get off and just did the round trip.

After having eventually found our car we headed back to Edinburgh via the A8. We didn't have too much trouble finding a park outside Elaine's. We had been moved from the "African room" to a larger non-descript room. It was only non-descript in the fact that it wasn't decorated in any particular theme. Owen had an inflatable air bed, not your everyday lilo but a serious airbed, with the "air" part about half a metre high. I ended up referring to this room as the Scottish room because it had an excerpt from the Declaration of Arbroath in curlicue script framed on the wall.

Although by 1920 the English were effectively expelled from Scottish soil, they continued to mount attacks into Scotland and the Pope had not accepted Scottish Independence . Thus the Declaration of Arbroath was prepared as a formal Declaration of Independence. The part reproduced in English (the original was in Latin) on the wall was the most strident and patriotic section:

"For, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom -- for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself."

We busied ourselves moving the bulk of our luggage from Elaine's spare room to our bedroom and rearranging the contents of a number of the bags.

Then we drove into Edinburgh as we had booked a guided walk called "Secrets of the Royal Mile" run by Mercat tours.

Edinburgh castle is built atop a lava encrusted caldera of an inactive volcano. The main street of Edinburgh (which constantly changes its name from Castlehill to Lawnmarket to High Street to Canongate and finally Abbey Strand) runs down the centre of the main lava flow, from the now extinct volcano, down to Holyroodhouse at the bottom of the slope. This road has also been given the alternate name of "The Royal Mile". Most of the rest of the old (pre 1800) Edinburgh is built out to each side of this same lava flow and the 15th and 16th centuries was crammed full of people living in 10 and 12 storey tenement buildings..

By the time the tour was due to begin it was very cold and the rain had seemed to have blown itself away.

The tour started under a small tower where proclamations had been made in the years prior to mass communication. From there we moved to Parliament Square which is located to the south of Edinburgh's High Street and is hemmed between the houses of Parliament on three sides and the small church of St. Giles Kirk.

In the centre of the square is a statue of Charles II mounted on a horse. The statue depicts the ’merry monarch’ in Roman costume. Unusually, the statue is one of the earliest lead statues in Britain (c.1685), although it was probably made in the Netherlands. It is believed that the statue was originally to be of Oliver Cromwell, but after the reformists had lost control of parliament the Edinburgh council decided that this would not be politic; so just like the real Cromwell, the statue lost its head and was replaced with the head of Charles II. Unfortunately there was a fault with the joins in the upper part of the statue and as time went by water leaked in and its belly began to swell like a mare with foal; even though it was a stallion! This situation was saved by the simple expedient of drilling holes in the lead of the horse's abdomen to release the water.

But Cromwell wasn't the only rebel that was treated harshly by the burghers of Edinburgh. John Knox, another parliamentary reformer, is buried under car
parking space 15! (Actually almost the whole of the parliamentary courtyard used to be a yard belonging to the church.)

The part of the parliamentary building that faced us was a total sham. A regal looking false facade was pasted on the front of the building. Although it is still called parliament house, parliament does not meet here. Parliament house now houses the law courts and offices for lawyers, however Parliament Hall is a magnificent room with rafters imitation the shape of a galleon's keel (upside down) with golden poles sporting intricate gold and black decorations vaguely resembling a spinning top. The other magnificent feature was a stained glass window depicting King James V presenting the charter of institution and confirmation of the Court of Session in 1532. The scene has a nice human touch as one can see a young lad on the leftmost area of the balcony helping himself to some fruit from a distracted chap's basket. Above and below this scene are shields representing the coats of arms of those who attended the session.

Our guide explained that the hall was left long an unfurnished so that legal advocates could walk up and down and discuss cases without fear of being overheard. While we were looking around the hall and she was talking a pair of gentlemen sauntered up and down for about 5 circuits, chatting to one another. Their brows were not furrowed and they seemed to be talking to one another without any outward sign of agitation, so I was not convinced that they were "working"; more likely discussing the weekend's soccer, the TV offerings tonight or their next post court dinner party. They were still pacing up and down when we left, so maybe the party was going to be a really big bash!

From parliament it was only a few steps to the cobbles west of St Giles Kirk where we saw brass plates marking the site of the old Tolbooth, immortalised by Sir Walter Scott in "The Heart of Midlothian". Used variously as a meeting place for the Town Council, a tax office, law court and prison, it was finally torn down in 1817. Sir Walter Scott was given permission to remove the door, which can still be seen at his old house in the Borders, Abbotsford.

The Tolbooth, as both prison and tax office, was despised by the citizens of Edinburgh, who used to spit on the door as they passed by. A heart shape in the stones where the door once stood still draws a good deal of saliva from locals seeking good luck.

From here we went to one of the closes. To enter a close you leave the Royal Mile via an archway, continue along a narrow covered passageway for a short time, and end up in a small, open courtyard. Some of the closes had only a single alleyway as both entrance and exit; the only other way out was via one of the ground floor doors leading to a residence. Others had numerous corridors leading into and out of the close.

All this was part of old Edinburgh and the buildings around us would've been 10 to 12 storey tenement buildings. The buildings were still around the same height but most of them would not be categorised as tenements today.

I found the closes reminiscent of the arcades and passages around Melbourne, except the closes were open to the sky very shortly after leaving the road, not just in the streets at the end of each arcade..

The first close we went to had overhanging balcony's and stairways built into the buildings to try to maximise the amount of open space.

On the way to the second close we were treated to the tale of Half-Hangit Maggie Dickson. Maggie Dickson was tried and convicted under the Concealment of Pregnancy Act of 1690. (She gave birth to a premature baby which died and she tried to hide the body - unsuccessfully.) She was found guilty of child murder and hanged on the 2nd of September 1724. Her relatives came and placed her body in a coffin which was loaded onto a horse and cart to transport her remains to her home town of Musselburgh for burial. About half way home there were muffled noises and banging coming from the coffin. They opened it up to find that Maggie wasn't dead but had only be incapacitated by her "hanging".

Her very, kind (?) relatives turned the cart around and took her back to the jail. (Seems to be taking "obeying the law" a bit too far to me. Glad I'm not related to them!) Her salvation from the brink of death became the talk of the town and almost the sole topic of gossip. But the lawyers and judges were having a completely different sort of conversation: "Should she be re-hanged?".

On the one-hand her sentence had been carried out and the magistrates had pronounced her dead. On the other hand the magistrates had obviously made a mistake and the sentence had not been fully "executed". (horrible pun intended!).

In the end it was decided that she should be allowed to go free. She lived for another 30 years, and no-one from that time through to the present day has been able to explain how she survived the hangman's noose. Because she was only "half-hanged" everyone referred to her as Half-Hangit Maggie.

The next close was much larger and there were a couple of trees planted within earth-filled concrete rings. The whole close was paved with large flat slabs. There were a large number of alleys and paths that debouched into the close. The close was also oddly shaped with many nooks and crannies but still surrounded by tall buildings on all sides.

Here we heard about the horrors of the plague. The first plague struck in 1530. The area to the north of the central part of the Royal Mile (to the north of the lava flow that had created the ground the close was built upon) had become a large fetid lake (or loch perhaps?) into which all the town's excrement was tipped. When the plague struck, corpses were added to the mix. Not a pleasant place to be! There was a second "milder" outbreak in the 1650s, but the reaction of the authorities were similar to the city father's reactions more than a 100years ago; and the result was no more hygienic.

We moved a little way down a very short alley. This, it appeared, was the next close which I had originally assumed to be still part of the previous one we had just left. One of the doors from here led into the Jolly Judge Tavern (you will hear more about this particular establishment in a couple of blogs time). The Placard showed a fully wigged and robed judge with a champagne flute (still partially filled) in his hand.

Apparently this was a reflection on the way the Scottish courts had been run in the 1500s. At the beginning of the day two large bottles of Port and biscuits were placed alongside the judge,. During the course of a trial the judge would polish off a bottle of Port "to the great envy of the parched throats in the gallery" . Obviously Edinburgh was not the source of the adage "as sober as a judge".

A little further down the road we entered a close via an alleyway whose end abutted a set of scaffolding being used to repair the face of one of the buildings. Although this was open to the sky, it wasn't the close as we immediately dived into another covered alleyway. It opened onto another very large close.

Towering buildings on all sides suggested that this close, like most of the others, rarely, if ever, saw the sun. There were a few concrete rings containing somewhat stunted trees trying to eke out an existence here. In one corner there was a recent (about 30 years old) memorial to a young girl who had died in one of the buildings surrounding the close. The memorial was a basket shaped bird bath with a parrot bathing, but doing so by hanging upside down grasping the basket handle by its beak and talons. The statuette was cast in a dull, silver coloured metal.

This close was named "Brodie's Close" and here we were told about the notorious Deacon Brodie. The Deacon was a very rich man in the 1780s, well-respected and above reproach. He was somewhat dandified and always sported a smart hat and a decorative cane. Brodie was a member of the town council as well as the exclusive Cape Club which only Edinburgh's leading citizens were invited to join.

But it has been suggested that Deacon Brodie was the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde"; for at night Brodie's dark side came to the fore. He gambled on cock-fighting, he womanised (having two mistresses and numerous illegitimate offspring) and he burgled. During his daily work he was often able to obtain impressions of his client's keys. He paid them a return visit a night or three later.

He performed a succession of spectacular robberies, each more audacious than the last. Whether he had gambled away most of his fortune and was using his illegal activities as the main way of retrieving it, or if, instead, it was the edge of danger and the thrill of the enterprise is unknown, but he recruited three accomplices and moved onto even more impudent and daring heists.

They stole the Edinburgh University Silver Mace and, in a separate theft, a huge quantity of very valuable silk. Eventually they over-reached themselves and made a bungled job of attempting to rob the excise office of Scotland. Although one of his accomplices turned informer, Brodie was not at first implicated. Seeing the writing on the wall however the Deacon fled to Holland where he booked passage on a packet-steamer. He was arrested before he could board, returned to Scotland, tried, convicted and hung in the close which now bears his name.

We were shown a couple of other closes and then returned to the proclamation tower where the tour had begun.

We retrieved our car and again had difficulty finding a convenient park near our B&B. As we had an early start again tomorrow, we had a light dinner and retired early.

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Photos

Kirkwall Airport
Kirkwall Airport has viking runes above the entrance - a nice touch.

Royal Mile
A photo showing some of the royal mile.

Oliver Cromwell
This statue was at one stage to be Oliver Cromwell, but was changed to be Charles II.

Edinburgh Castle
A view of Edinburgh castle from one of the hills in the royal mile.

Royal Mile
On our tour of the Royal Mile, we saw many courtyards off the main streeet, filled with housing.

Deacon Brodie
Deacon Brodie was an Edinburgh magistrate by day...

Deacon Brodie
...but a burglar by night!

Alleyway
A view from an alleyway leading off the Royal Mile.