Day 15 (4/5)
I met up with a wonderful girl from Pakistan who is studying in Vermont and doing an exchange program in Bath, in England. Before I left the states I joined a girl travel group on Facebook called GirlCrew Tips & Travel, and she posted that she would be in Edinburgh the same time as me. We got on rather well, and I'm going to stay with her in Bath, and hopefully hop over to Cardiff.
We did a 2 hour free walking tour of Edinburgh, as mentioned above, and it was so great. So. Much. Information.
Pictured below is where Mercat (market) Cross would have been. This was where royal proclamations were made, and still are. Now back in the day something would happen at the palace in London, usually a birth or death in the royal family, and before the internet news was a wee bit slower getting around. Some poor bloke had the job of hopping onto a horse, riding three days north to Edinburgh, and informing the higher ups there of whatever had happened.
Now, since Edinburgh loves keeping with tradition, they still dress up, the horns and trumpets play some ridiculous song down the royal mile, the crowds form, and a poor man has to stand in front of them to say something incredibly important such as "here ye, here ye, Princess Kate has given birth yet again." And the crowds shout back "we've been waiting for an hour to hear something we read about 3 days ago! Get out of here!"s
Mercat cross was also a place to punish criminals, usually thieves, while capital punishment was carried out in Grassmarket. The thieves, usually now single women trying to provide food for their children, would be brought in front of the crowd and their ear nailed to the cross. They would then be left for anywhere from 24 to 48 hours while people threw rotten fruit and spit at them. It was also customary for people to dump their chamber pots over the heads of these criminals.
If you could last your sentence you were set free, and people respected the fact that you carried your scar and served your time. If you could not, you had to rip your head away from the cross, usually leaving the ear behind, and try to escape to the Firth, where women would then become prostitutes, and men pirates, as they sailed around the North Sea. Syphilis was running rampant during this time so this was not a pleasant option.
This little gem is just to the right of St. Giles Cathedral. Inside St. Giles was a statue of an angel playing the bagpipes, however the statue was very small and photography was not permitted.
St. Giles was also the place where Jenny Geddes was so angered by the introduction of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and the idea of worshipping God AND the king, that she threw her prayer stool at the minister's head. This act sparked a riot within the church of Scotland, reputedly leading to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.
This heart, however, has nothing to do with her. This is the Heart of Midlothian. Upon this spot stood the doors to the Tolbooth prison. When it was erected, someone anonymously carved a heart into the door, and people would spit on it out of protest. Now they spit on the heart for good luck, and it is the only place in the UK where it is legal to spit in a public place.
This is the Writer's Museum. It once belonged to Lady Stair, and, in it's day, was considered the only mansion in the city. As Lady Stair had an incredible love of literature, when she died it was turned into a museum for the literary figures who are now a part of Edinburgh's history.
Some of you will be interested to know that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is from here, as is Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson, and J. K. Rowling. J. M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, also attended University here.
Back in it's hay day, Edinburgh was very crowded for being such a small town. The town walls ran a mile long, and only about a quarter mile wide. Because of this, the town was built upwards instead of outwards, leading to buildings that were sometimes 14 stories high.
During this time Edinburgh had no running water, so families used the aforementioned chamber pots. They would shout a warning out the window, "Guardez l'eau!" (where the English got the term 'the loo') meaning "watch for water!" The bucket would then be emptied out of the window and onto the street.
Eventually a law was passed so citizens could only empty their chamber pots twice a day at specific times. One of these being 7am, and the other was any time after 10pm. Now, another important event also happened around 10 each evening; it was closing time for the bars. People would be ejected from the bar stumbling drunk and hear a shout from the window above (guardez l'eau!). They would then look up, mouths agape, as the chamber pot was dumped on their heads. Apparently that is the history of the term "shit-faced."
On that positive note, I'll leave you now. The rest will have to wait for another day as it's time for a night out on the town.
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