Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
While the humbler spies pursued their inquiries by wynd and changehouse, Maister Gawin Douglas, the bishop, went out to see what he could discover of the real state of affairs if it was true that the westland lords had held a secret meeting and resolved that Angus should not leave Edinburgh now that he had put himself in their power and "if he could find any gude way betwixt the two parties."
"A public, in a puir way," replied Blane, looking round at his own superior accommodations, "a sour browst o' sma' ale that she sells to folk that are over drouthy wi' travel to be nice; but naething to ca' a stirring trade or a thriving changehouse." "Can you get me a guide there?" said Morton. "Your honour will rest here a' the night?
Giles's a cluster of parish churches, even its distinctive name no longer used: and when the citizens clustered about the Cross of afternoons no longer to see the heralds in their tabards and hear the royal proclamations, but to tell and spread the news from London and discuss the wars in the Low Countries, and many a witty scandal, gibes from the Bench and repartees from the Bar, the humours of the old lords and ladies in their "Lodging" in the Canongate, and the witticisms of the favourite changehouse is as great a leap as if a whole world came between.
It was merry laughter and broke in strangely on the tense air of the room. "Lovel," he cried, and there was an Irish burr in his speech. "Lovel! And that fool Jobson mistook it for Lovat! I mistrusted the tale, for Simon is too discreet even in his cups to confess his name in a changehouse. It seems we have been stalking the cailzie-cock and found a common thrush."
An "Elegy on Maggie Johnstone," mistress of a convenient "public" at Morningside, then described as "a mile and a half west from Edinburgh," a suburb on "the south side," though now a part of the town which would lie in the way of the members when they took their walks abroad, and no doubt formed the end of many a Sabbath day's ramble was almost the first of his known productions; and we may well believe that the jovial shopkeepers were delighted with the sensation of possessing a poet of their own, and held many a discussion upon the new verses brimful of local allusions and circumstances which everybody knew over their ale as they rested in the village changehouse, or among the fumes of their punch in their evening assemblies.
"A public, in a puir way," replied Blane, looking round at his own superior accommodations, "a sour browst o' sma' ale that she sells to folk that are over drouthy wi' travel to be nice; but naething to ca' a stirring trade or a thriving changehouse." "Can you get me a guide there?" said Morton. "Your honour will rest here a' the night?
He was able to believe that the Queen, when retired into her private apartments with her ladies, indulged in "skipping not very comelie for honest women," and that all kinds of brutal orgies went on at court incidents certainly unnecessary to prove her after-guilt, and entirely out of keeping with all the surrounding associations, as if Holyrood had been a changehouse in "Christ Kirk on the green."
The swarm of the wild Highlanders that took sudden possession of street and changehouse, the boom of the cannon overhead vainly attempting to disperse a group here and there or kill a rebel, and the consciousness which one would think must have thrilled through the very air, that under those turrets in the valley was the most interesting young adventurer of modern times, the heir of the ancient Scots kings, their undoubted representative how could these things fail to affect the mind even of the most steady-going citizen?
"There is a road," it cried, "which leads to the Moon and the Great Waters. No changehouse cheers it, and it has no end; but it is a fine road, a braw road who will follow it?" It is the song which the birds sing on the moor in the autumn nights, and the old crow on the treetop hears and flaps his wing.
Word Of The Day