Edinburgh Castle ©

Before the New Town was built in the latter half of the eighteenth century, the ‘Royal Mile’ — the cobbled stretch between the Castle and Holyrood Palace — was Edinburgh’s main thoroughfare. During this period the city spawned many sons, a number of whom became famous throughout the world.

Yet there were others, perhaps less well known, such as the poet Allan Ramsay, whose octagonally-shaped house on the Castle Hill was given the name ‘Goose Pie’ by locals. Over time, the property was added to and became Ramsay Gardens — an eclectic mix of architectural styles named for the original owner.

Ramsay was born in Lanarkshire in 1684 and moved to Edinburgh in 1700, where he began writing his poems and was one of the founders of the ‘Easy Club’, a meeting place for those sympathetic to the Jacobite cause. It was rumoured that, during the 1745 uprising, Bonnie Prince Charlie’s troops fired on Edinburgh Castle from the rooftop of Ramsay’s house — a claim for which there appears to be no basis in fact. Ramsay’s support for the Stuart cause, however, is much evident in his work.

Mons Meg (15th century siege cannon at Edinburgh Castle) ©

Ramsay’s fame spread in 1725 when he wrote The Gentle Shepherd, a hugely successful pastoral play that was performed as a ballad-opera. In the years that followed he began one of the first circulating libraries in Scotland, and opened a theatre in Carrubers Close for the performance of dramatic plays, which met with stern disapproval from the city’s Calvinist clergy. Ramsay answered by penning a number of humorous poems attacking their hypocrisy.

On one occasion, however, the odd shape of his house led to Ramsay himself being on the receiving end of the humour. Soon after completion Ramsay gave his friend, Lord Elibank, a tour of the property. Elibank remarked that locals had already likened it to a goose pie. Then, alluding to the fact his host had recently put on weight, added: “Indeed Allan, now I see you in it, I think the wags are not far wrong.”

A short walk from Ramsay Gardens leads to Lady Stair’s House, which is located in Lady Stair’s Close in the Lawnmarket (now a museum to three of Scotland's greatest writers — Burns, Scott and Stevenson). The museum displays a collection of their artefacts, and was gifted to the city by Archibald Primrose, the 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847-1929) in 1907.

Lady Stair is herself an intriguing figure. Her first husband was Lord Primrose, a drunkard given to violent rages. Soon after their marriage he attempted her murder, and she narrowly escaped by leaping out of a window. Primrose left for the continent soon afterwards, and for months his whereabouts remained a mystery.

A year or so later, however, Lady Primrose was persuaded by a friend to consult a visiting clairvoyant, renowned for his powers of insight. When she asked what had become of her husband, the man led her to a mirror in the room, in which she saw the altar of a church and a bride and groom about to be married. The psychic asked her to take a closer look. She did so, and to her astonishment, realised the groom was in fact her husband. She then saw the priest ask the couple to join hands. Suddenly, a man Lady Primrose recognized as her brother — who was abroad at the time — stepped forward and brought the proceedings to an abrupt end. At this point the vision became indistinct, after which it vanished completely.

Lady Primrose sought out her brother on his return to Edinburgh and told him about her visit to the psychic. He confirmed the scene she’d witnessed in the mirror had actually occurred some weeks previously. He was in Rotterdam on business when he learned from friends that a ‘Scottish gentleman’ was about to wed the heiress of a wealthy merchant. Curious, he attended the ceremony only to discover that the bridegroom was his own brother-in-law. Although the ceremony was underway when he arrived, he was in time to spare the bride-to-be the ignominy of spending the remainder of her life with a fortune-hunting bigamist.

On Primrose’s death in 1706, Lady Stair took that name after her marriage to the Earl of Stair. She hadn’t sought the title, however. Her ill-fated marriage to Primrose had decided her against a second trip to the altar and, when the Earl asked for her hand, she declined. Undaunted, Stair came up with a devious plan to make her change her mind.

He tapped at the door late one evening and bribed her maid to hide him in a cupboard in the prayer room, the window of which faced the street at ground level. The next morning he was observed by passers-by parading naked in the room, a display calculated to malign her ladyship’s reputation. It worked: she realised marriage was the only possible way to save face, and accepted his proposal.

Immediately next to Lady Stair’s Close is James’ Court, built between 1725 and 1727. A few decades later James’ Court became the residence of two other notables — The philosopher David Hume and James Boswell, Samuel Johnson’s biographer. Hume moved there in 1762, but spent most of the next seven years as secretary to the Earl of Hertford at the embassy in Paris.

The attractions of the French Court held no appeal for Hume, however, as he was often homesick and longed to be back in Edinburgh. He wrote to a friend: “I am sensible that I am misplaced, and I wish twice or thrice a day for my easy-chair and my retreat in James’s Court.”

When Hume moved to the New Town soon after his return to the city, one of the first leaseholders of his house in James’ Court was James Boswell. Samuel Johnson stayed with his friend there shortly before both left on their Hebridean odyssey.

During his stay Johnson held court and was paid homage by a number of the city’s literati. Johnson is said to have been his usual caustic self with the men of letters he met at that time.

In contrast, though, he had nothing but praise for his host’s accommodations. In a letter to a Mrs Thrale, he commented: “Boswell has very spacious and handsome rooms, level with the ground on one side of the house, and on the other four stories high.”

Another gentleman with a haughty demeanour was High Court judge Lord Coalstoun, whose pomposity was pricked — metaphorically and literally — one morning in 1757 before he left home to take his place at the High Court. It was Coalstoun’s habit to dress in gown, wig and cravat at his house in the High Street before the short walk to chambers at nearby Parliament Square.

Coalstoun breakfasted early before leaving for the courts, after which he would open his window and lean out to discuss the day’s news with fellow advocates in the apartments at the opposite side of the alleyway.

The bewigged judge stuck his head out of the window that morning at the same time as two girls, who lived in the floor above, were playing with a kitten.

In Traditions of Edinburgh (1868), Robert Chambers relates what happened next: “In thoughtless sport, they had swung [the kitten] over the window by a cord tied round its middle, and hoisted it for some time up and down ... his lordship popped his head out of the window directly below that from which the kitten swung ... down came the exasperated animal at full career on his senatorial wig.

“No sooner did the girls perceive what sort of landing-place their kitten had found than, in terror and surprise, they began to draw it up; but this measure was now too late, for along with the animal up also came the judge’s wig, fixed full in its determined talons. His lordship’s surprise on finding his wig lifted off his head was much increased when, on looking up, he perceived it dangling its way upwards, without any means visible to him by which its motions might be accounted for ...”

A sculpture of a three-legged stool within St Giles Cathedral is a memorial to another of the city’s unforgettable characters. Here, on 23 July 1637, vegetable-seller Jenny Geddes’ outburst began a riot that lead to the English Civil War and the eventual conquest of Scotland by Oliver Cromwell.

Jenny Geddes' Stool ©

The protest was in response to Charles I’s insistence on introducing the much-hated English prayer book, which was thought by post-reformation Scottish Presbyterians to border on Roman Catholicism.

When the Dean of Edinburgh, John Hanna, began reading the Collects, part of the prescribed service, Jenny stood up, threw her three-legged folding stool at him, and shouted: “Deil colic the wame o’ ye, fause thief — daur ye say Mass in ma lug” [“May the Devil pain you in your stomach, false thief; how dare you say the Mass in my ear”].

It is said Jenny later regretted what had happened that day. The diarist Andrew Nicol noted when Charles II arrived in Scotland in 1650 that, “The poor kaill-wyves [cabbage-sellers] war sae overjoyed, that they sacrificed their standis and creelies, yea, the verie stoollies they sat on, in ane fyre.”

In light of her previous actions, however, it is wondered if Jenny was among their number.

To be continued (watch this space) ...