---

To-day's walk must be a short one, for, with the sea in front of us, and the rapidly increasing boundaries of Leith and Portobello on either side, there only remains a small space to be explored. Let us start from the Holyrood entrance to the Queen's Park, and walk towards St. Margaret's Loch. The iron-barred gate, which apparently leads to a vault in the hill-side to our right, guards the curious old well of St. Margaret. If we go close to the bars, in a few minutes our eyes become accustomed to the darkness, and we can clearly see the venerable arches, with the central pillar which supports the richly groined roof. A stone ledge runs round seven sides of the building, a little above the level of the water, which always flows there, clear and icy cold. The well formerly stood in a picturesque situation near the church of Restalrig, and very probably was the original fountain of St. Triduan, to which pilgrimages were made.[46] An ancient elder-tree with twisted branches overshadowed it; a tiny thatched cottage stood hard by; and the spot was the most sheltered and peaceful that could be imagined. When the North British Railway threatened to bury this curious well beneath its embankment, and eventually destroy it (as it destroyed the beautiful and venerable Collegiate Church of the Holy Trinity), Dr. Laing and other enlightened and energetic antiquarians of the day made a successful attempt to move the whole structure to the Queen's Park, where it was erected over what was known of old as St. David's or the Rood Well. It is now in safety, and presents its original appearance, though deprived of its former picturesque surroundings.

A little farther on, a steep path winds away up to St. Anthony's Chapel, passing the stone from which gushes the famous wishing-well. This well is mentioned in the beautiful and pathetic ballad of "The Marchioness of Douglas," which begins,

These melancholy lines were the lament of Lady Barbara Erskine, wife of the second Marquis of Douglas. Her husband deserted her in consequence of the base (and unfounded) scandal poured into his ear by his chamberlain, Lowrie. This man had formerly been refused by Lady Barbara; and, though he had since married Mariote Weir, the heiress of Blackwood, he hated Lady Barbara for her rejection of his suit, and tried to revenge himself as described in the ballad. Lord Mar took his daughter home, but Lowrie's treachery being discovered, Lady Douglas's fame was cleared. Her lord received her back, but too late for her happiness. Though the ballad mentions three children, only one son lived to grow up. He was the gallant young Lord Angus, who fell at Steinkirk in his twenty-first year, at the head of his regiment, the 26th Cameronians.

St. Anthony's Chapel, just above us, was also a hermitage, and tradition says that, besides being founded for the guardianship of the holy well, it was also a spot for watching vessels, the duties on which were part of the revenue of the Abbey of Holyrood. At night a light was hung in the tower to guide mariners in their progress up the Forth. The whole of this part of the Queen's Park is so beautifully and faithfully described in the account of Jeanie Deans's midnight meeting with the outlaw Robertson, that every other description must seem superfluous and uncalled for. In spite of the lapse of years since The Heart of Midlothian was written, the features of the spot have little changed. Muschat's Cairn still raises its ill-omened heap of stones close to the Jock's Lodge gate of the Park. The unhappy woman who was murdered here in 1720 was the wife of Nicol Muschat of Boghall, a surgeon, and a man of infamous character. His wife's only crime was that she loved him, and that he was tired of her. He tried various means of getting rid of her, and both he and one of his profligate associates, Campbell of Burnbank, made several ineffectual attempts to murder her. At last Muschat persuaded his wife to take a solitary evening walk with him towards Duddingston, and at this spot he cut her throat. She was found next morning quite dead, and covered with wounds received in the struggle. For this murder Muschat was hanged in the Grassmarket the following January, but, to mark the horror that his crime inspired, a cairn was raised on the spot where the bloody deed took place.

We now leave the park and pass the little roadside station of St. Margaret's, where the Queen always gets out of the train when she goes to Holyrood. To our right, on the slope of the hill, is Parson's Green, a small place, hardly more than a villa. A curious traditionary rhyme prevails among the children in this district, which they chant incessantly, whenever a lady passes them on horseback—

What the origin or the sense of these words is, I have never found any one to tell me, and it is curious that it is only on this side of Edinburgh that they are in common use.

We are now in the hamlet of Jock's Lodge. There is a vague tradition that the original Jock was a beggar, who built himself a hut on the lonely path that led to the Figgate Muir; but he must have lived very long ago, for in 1650, when Cromwell besieged Edinburgh, the place had already got the name. "The enemy," says Nicol, "placed their whole horse in and about Restalrig, the foot at that place called Jockis' Lodge, and the cannon at the foot of Salisbury hill." A toll-bar formerly stood where the road divides; that to the right leads to Duddingston, the other road, which we follow, runs past Piershill Barracks. On this spot there originally stood a villa, occupied by a Colonel Piers, who commanded a troop of horse in Edinburgh about the middle of the last century, and who gave his name to the house. It was pulled down in 1793, and the present barracks built in its place.

After passing them, and crossing the railway, we perceive a gigantic tomb, standing in a field to the left, which immediately strikes the beholder with a feeling of astonishment. Built in a classic style that recalls the sunny skies of Italy, and enriched with a beautifully carved marble frieze, representing the Song of Miriam, and the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea, it seems singularly out of place in the neglected corner of a large grass field, with weeds and nettles growing round it. It covers the remains of the late Mr. William Miller of Craigentinnie, a great antiquarian, and the owner of a fine library. His father, another William Miller, was a wealthy seedsman in Edinburgh during the last century. It was at his shop in the Canongate that Prince Charles's army procured five hundred shovels for trenching purposes in 1745. By his own exertions, and those of his father before him, he accumulated a large fortune, part of which he laid out on the lands of Craigentinnie. He was a member of the Society of Friends, and was well known for his charity and benevolence. About 1780, when in his ninetieth year, he married an Englishwoman who was nearly fifty. They went to London, and then to Paris, from whence they returned with a son and heir, the late Mr. Miller. It was often thought that he was a suppositious child, and some people believed him to be really a woman, from his weak voice, slight figure, and absence of beard. Be this as it may, no one but those immediately interested in him were allowed to touch his body after death, and, as by his own commands he lies in a grave dug forty feet deep beneath this massive monument, his secret lies buried with him. His large fortune was for some years the subject of a lawsuit, but eventually it passed into the hands of a distant relation, the late Mr. Christie Miller, M.P.

The land on either side of us once formed part of the Figgate Muir, through which flowed the Figgate Burn, as the lower reaches of the Braid Burn were called. It was a wild, desolate expanse, covered with whins and heather, and bordered by a broad, sandy beach. The Fishwives' Causeway, which ran across it, was a remnant of one of the roads formed by Queen Mary, soon after her return from France, for the improvement and civilization of her more barbarous kingdom. It is said to have been made on the site of an old Roman road. It was formerly the favourite way for the fishwives to carry their wares into Edinburgh, and they remained faithful to it long after the present road was made.

As we reach the sea, Portobello lies to our right. It has been called the Brighton of Edinburgh; and, with the adjoining village of Joppa, it presents a labyrinth of villas and lodging-houses, which in the summer-time are generally full. The origin of the name is that the first house built here was erected in 1742 by an old seaman, who had served under Admiral Vernon, and who called his house Portobello Hut, in honour of the triumph of the British flag at Portobello, in the West Indies. By degrees more houses sprung up round this humble cottage, and the discovery of a bed of clay by the Figgate Burn started the manufacture of Portobello ware. This pottery, which has not been made for many years, was almost identical with that made at Prestonpans and Bo'ness, and resembles very rude Staffordshire. The earthenware was coarse, and the colouring crude, but the Toby-jugs and figures were often well modelled. Specimens can still be picked up, but they are more often objects of curiosity than of beauty.

We shall not explore Portobello further, but turn to the left, and follow the road that runs parallel to the railway to Leith. On one side of us is the sea, breaking on a narrow, shingly beach; and beyond, there is nothing to stop the eye till it reaches the distant shores of Fife, but the rugged outline of Inchkeith, with its lines of fortification gleaming white in the sunlight. Before we have gone very far, we see a level crossing and a signal-box on the railway beside us; and, taking advantage of our privileges as pedestrians, we pass safely and unquestioned through the narrow posterns, while it might require some persuasion to get the heavy gates unlocked and opened for a carriage to enter them. We now find ourselves following a straight path leading across the flat green meadows, which stretch far away on either side, their expanse being only broken by narrow watercourses. With the level rays of the afternoon sun glancing over them, gilding the tips of the grass, and imparting an air of Dutch-like prosperity and peace, it comes upon one rather as a shock to be told that these quiet pastures are the great sewage farm of Edinburgh, an experiment on a large scale which has turned out successfully. We presently come to high walls, behind which stands the old house of Craigentinnie, long the inheritance of the Nisbets, a younger branch of the Nisbets of Dean. As we have already said, it was bought in the last century by the father of the late Mr. William Miller. The latter added greatly to the house, and built steep roofs and turrets in the style of a French chÂteau, which has altered it very much from the old Scotch house that originally stood there.

We now come to the little village of Restalrig, or Lestalric, as it used always to be called. For centuries it was famous all over Scotland as the burial-place of the blessed virgin St. Triduana. "She is said," writes Dr. Laing, "to have come from Achaia in the 4th century in company with St. Regulus, and to have died at Restalrig in the year 510, in the reign of Eugenius III., the 8th of October being held as her festival day. Although no precise date can be assigned when a church or chapel was first erected and dedicated to this saint, whose bones for many centuries were held in high veneration, or when it first became the parish church of Leith, we can trace it back at least to the 12th century."[48]

St. Triduana's name is unknown in the Roman breviary, but tradition says that, with two companions, she devoted herself to a recluse life at Roscoby. Her great beauty attracted the attentions of Nectan, a Pictish chief; and she fled to Dunfallad in Athole to escape him. His emissaries still pursued her, and as she discovered it was her eyes which had entranced him, she plucked them out and sent them to him transfixed on a thorn.[49] She then withdrew to Restalrig, where she died. Henceforward she became the patron saint of those whose eyesight was defective, and many a pilgrimage was made to her well. She was frequently painted carrying her own eyes on a salver, or on the point of a sword.

The church, which in its restored form we should hardly recognise as being of great antiquity, was erected into a collegiate church by James III. in honour of the Holy Trinity, and was endowed by the two succeeding monarchs. James V. placed here a dean, nine prebendaries, and two singing boys. It was John Sinclair, Dean of Restalrig, that married Queen Mary to Lord Darnley in Holyrood Chapel in July 1564. By that time the building itself had suffered sadly from the effects of the Reformation. It was demolished by order of the General Assembly in 1560, and many of the stones were taken to build the new port or gate just inside the Netherbow, which was erected during the siege of the Castle of Edinburgh in 1571. We have no description, plan, or representation to furnish us with any idea of what the collegiate church was like. Such ruins as remained were restored in 1836; and the eastern window and wall of the present church formed part of the old chancel. The huge mound resembling a mausoleum, which stands on the south side, though generally called the family vault of the Logans, was undoubtedly attached to the church, either as a chapter-house, or as St. Triduan's Chapel. It has internally a beautiful groined roof, springing from a single pillar in the centre. Of late years it has certainly been used as a burial-place, and some of the Logans, as well as the Balmerinos, their successors, lie here. Among them is "Lady Janet Ker, Lady Restalrig, quha departed this life 17th May 1526." The tomb now belongs to Lord Bute; and Wilson in his Reminiscences quotes an incident told him by Charles Sharpe respecting it, which shows how often political animosity outlives the grave:—"Application was made to him (Lord Bute) to allow Miss Hay, whom I well knew,—daughter of Hay of Restalrig, Prince Charles's forfeited secretary,—to be buried in the vault. This was refused; and she lies outside the door. May the earth lie light on her! old lady, kind and venerable." In the last century Restalrig churchyard was a favourite resting-place of the non-juring Scottish Episcopalians, as the burial service was then forbidden to be read in the city burial grounds. Several bishops of the Scottish Church lie here.

After leaving the church, we turn first north, then eastwards, along a road running between very high walls; and pass a tall gloomy-looking villa called Marionville. It was built in the last century by the Misses Ramsay, whose milliner's shop was on the east side of the old Lyon Close. There they made a fortune, out of which they built Marionville. It was locally known as "Lappet Ha'," in derision of their profession. In later years it was the residence of Captain Macrae, whose unfortunate duel (in 1790) with Sir George Ramsay of Bamff on Musselburgh Links, and its fatal consequences, made him an exile for the remainder of his life.[50] Beyond Marionville a road to the right leads to a small sheet of water called Lochend.

The modern villa, standing among trees immediately behind Craigentinnie, is now called Restalrig House, but the old castle of the Logans crowned the rocky bank which rises abruptly from Lochend; and parts of it may still be distinguished in the more recent building which has been engrafted on it. These powerful barons possessed Restalrig from the 14th century. They came to an end with Robert Logan, who was mysteriously mixed up in the Gowrie Conspiracy. He had before that been deeply involved in the treasonable projects of Francis, Earl of Bothwell; but his share in the Gowrie Conspiracy remained unknown till nine years after his death, when the correspondence between him and Lord Gowrie was discovered in the possession of Sprot, a notary at Eyemouth. Their intentions had been, after seizing the king's person at Gowrie House, to hurry him into a boat on the Tay, and carry him by sea to Logan's inaccessible fortress of Fast Castle (which he had acquired by marriage with the heiress, a Home), and there await the decision of the other conspirators as to his ultimate fate. It is a matter of history how completely their schemes failed; but every one who had been concerned in the plot, to the smallest degree, suffered for it. Sprot was executed merely for possessing the treasonable letters. Logan's dead bones were brought into court, to have the following sentence passed on them: "That the memory and dignity of the said umqle Robert Logan be extinct and abolisheit, his arms riven and deleted from all books of arms, and his goods escheated."[51]

The lands of Restalrig next passed into the hands of the Elphinstones, Lords Balmerino. They lost them from too faithful a devotion to their exiled king. The Hays followed them in acquisition and forfeiture, and now the property is all broken up. We are now close to the outskirts of Leith, so we will turn back and take the first road to the right, which soon brings us out on the London Road, not far from Abbeyhill.

---