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Updated: June 24, 2025
The policeman was disgusted and discouraged by three days of wet clothing, and he would have to go out into the rain again before he got dry. Nothing occurred to him to talk about but grievances. "Did ye ken the Laird Provost, Maister Chambers, is intendin' to knock a lang hole aboon the tap o' the Coogate wynds? It wull mak' a braid street ye can leuk doon frae yer doorway here.
Nevertheless the streets were not darkened, for there were then many begging-boxes, with images of the saints, and cruisies burning afore them, in divers parts of the High Street and corners of the wynds, insomuch that it was easy, as I have heard my grandfather tell, to see and know anyone passing in the light thereof.
These were processions of the members of benefit societies through the square and wynds, and all the women walked in white, to the number of a hundred or more, behind the Tillie-drum band, Thrums having in those days no band of its own. From the northwest corner of the square a narrow street sets off, jerking this way and that, as if uncertain what point to make for.
There was a time when I could not have answered that question, but that time had long passed. 'I suppose, mother, it was because you were most at home in your own town, and there was never much pleasure to me in writing of people who could not have known you, nor of squares and wynds you never passed through, nor of a country-side where you never carried your father's dinner in a flagon.
The lowest level was given over at once to the poor and to small trade. The wynds and closes that climbed the southern slope were eagerly possessed by divines, lawyers and literary men because of their nearness to the University. Long before Bobby's day the well-to-do had fled from the Cowgate wynds to the hilltop streets and open squares about the colleges.
To clear the snow from the narrow wynds and pends, however, was a task not to be attempted; and the Auld Lichts, at least, rested content when enough light got into their workshops to let them see where their looms stood. Wading through beds of snow they did not much mind; but they wondered what would happen to their houses when the thaw came. The thaw was slow in coming.
One night, twenty years after the beginning of my story, he was passing through the old town of Edinburgh, when a wild cry of "Fire! Fire! Fire!" arose on every side of him. "Where?" he asked of the shrieking women pouring from all the filthy, narrow wynds around. "In Gordon's Wynd."
The ridge fell away steeply, through rifts of wynds and closes, to the Cowgate ravine on the one hand, and to Princes Street's parked valley on the other. Mr. Traill turned into the narrow descent of Warriston Close.
It is a dreadful place, though much improved and possessing a deal of public spirit. Improvement is beginning to knock the old town of Edinburgh about, here and there; but the Canongate and the most picturesque of the horrible courts and wynds are not to be easily spoiled, or made fit for the poor wretches who people them to live in.
White faces looked into the night from barred windows or lofty dormers; and across narrow wynds and under dark Gothic entries men dragged huge chains and hooked them, and hurried on to where the alarm seemed loudest and the risk most pressing.
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