lemakers, contributed their full share to the
fragrant heaps. As for these too seldom used narrow turnpike stairs,
imagine the dames of fashion tilting their vast hoops and silken
show-petticoats up and down in them!

That swine roamed at will in these Elysian fields is to be presumed,
since we have this amusing picture of three High Street belles and
beauties in the Traditions of Edinburgh:--

'So easy were the manners of the great, fabled to be so stiff and
decorous,' says the author, 'that Lady Maxwell's daughter Jane, who
afterward became the Duchess of Gordon, was seen riding a sow up the
High Street, while her sister Eglantine (afterwards Lady Wallace of
Craigie) thumped lustily behind with a stick.'

No wonder, in view of all this, that King James VI., when about to bring
home his 'darrest spous,' Anne of Denmark, wrote to the Provost, 'For
God's sake see a' things are richt at our hame-coming; a king with a
new-married wife doesna come hame ilka day.'

Had it not been for these royal home-comings and visits of distinguished
foreigners, now and again aided by something still more salutary, an
occasional outbreak of the plague, the easy-going authorities would
never have issued any 'cleaning edicts,' and the still easier-going
inhabitants would never have obeyed them. It was these dark, tortuous
wynds and closes, nevertheless, that made up the Court End of Old
Edinbro'; for some one writes in 1530, 'Via vaccarum in qua habitant
patricii et senatores urbis' (The nobility and chief senators of the
city dwell in the Cowgate). And as for the Canongate, this Saxon gaet
or way of the Holy rood canons, it still sheltered in 1753 'two dukes,
sixteen earls, two dowager countesses, seven lords, seven lords of
session, thirteen baronets, four commanders of the forces in Scotland,
and five eminent men,'--fine game indeed for Mally Lee!

'A' doun alang the Canongate
Were beaux o' ilk degree;
And mony ane turned round to look
At bonny Mally Lee.
And we're a' gaun east an' west,
We're a' gaun agee,
We're a' gaun east an' west
Courtin' Mally Lee!'

Every corner bristles with memories. Here is the Stamp Office Close,
from which the lovely Susanna, Countess of Eglinton, was wont to issue
on assembly nights; she, six feet in height, with a brilliantly fair
complexion, and a 'face of the maist bewitching loveliness.' Her seven
daughters and stepdaughters were all conspicuously handsome, and it