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Updated: May 27, 2025
He stood now before the Gothic entrance of the ancient prison, which, as is well known to all men, rears its ancient front in the very middle of the High Street, forming, as it were, the termination to a huge pile of buildings called the Luckenbooths, which, for some inconceivable reason, our ancestors had jammed into the midst of the principal street of the town, leaving for passage a narrow street on the north; and on the south, into which the prison opens, a narrow crooked lane, winding betwixt the high and sombre walls of the Tolbooth and the adjacent houses on the one side, and the butresses and projections of the old Cathedral upon the other.
Far from it, as you would speedily see if he had thrown into the novel a police report of the occurrences at the Tolbooth before art had shorn it of its irrelevancies, magnified its effective and salient points, given events their proper perspective, and the whole picture due light and shade.
A deep pause of a minute ensued, when Wildfire added, in a more composed tone, "Make your peace with Heaven. Where is the clergyman?" Butler, who in great terror and anxiety, had been detained within a few yards of the Tolbooth door, to wait the event of the search after Porteous, was now brought forward, and commanded to walk by the prisoner's side, and to prepare him for immediate death.
There were riots; the rioters were imprisoned in the Heart of Midlothian the Tolbooth the crowd released them; some of the crowd were feebly sentenced to the pillory, the public pelted them with white roses; and had the Chevalier de St. George not been a child of twelve, he would have had a fair chance of recovering his throne. The trouble was tided over; William III. died in 1702.
While these stirring events were going on, our friend Andrew Black and Ramblin' Peter were languishing in the unsavoury shades of the Tolbooth Prison. One forenoon Andrew was awakened from an uneasy slumber. They bade him rise.
Accordingly, with respect to the fairs of pious origin, I, without expounding my secret motives, persuaded the council, that, having been at so great an expense in new-paving the streets, we ought not to permit the heavy caravans of wild beasts to occupy, as formerly, the front of the Tolbooth towards the Cross; but to order them, for the future, to keep at the Greenhead.
Had he lived when Johnnie flourished, there might indeed have been two Armstrongs equally famous. As it was, Willie spent his days at constant feud with the law, and even the strong walls of Gilnockie were not for him always a secure shelter. Once it befell that the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, the Earl of Traquair, visiting Jedburgh, there found Willie lying in the "tolbooth."
After I had partaken with my wife and son of some refreshment which they had brought with them, and tasted of the wine that Provost Reid's lady had sent, we heard the bolts of the door drawn, and the clanking of keys, at which Willie Sutherland came forward from the corner where he had stood during the whole time, and lifting the lamp from the floor, and wetting his fore-finger with spittle as he did so, he trimmed the wick, and said, "The time's come when a' persons not prisoners must depart forth the tolbooth for the night; but, Master Gilhaize, be none discomforted thereat, your wife and your little one will come back in the morning, and your lot is a lot of pleasure; for is it not written in the book of Ecclesiastes, fourth and eighth, 'There is one alone, and there is not a second; yea, he hath neither child nor brother? and such an one am I."
It may be questioned if the book's famous scenes the attempted breaking into the Tolbooth, or the visit of Jeanie to the Queen would not have gained greatly from a dramatic point of view had they been more condensed; they are badly languaged, looking to this result, not swift enough for the best effects of drama, whereas conception and framework are highly dramatic.
"And it wad far better become ye, Mr. Saddletree," continued his helpmate, "since ye say ye hae skeel o' the law, to try if ye can do onything for Effie Deans, puir thing, that's lying up in the tolbooth yonder, cauld, and hungry, and comfortless A servant lass of ours, Mr. Butler, and as innocent a lass, to my thinking, and as usefu' in the shop When Mr.
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