The Tour of Ediburgh: Day 2 of Scotland

Wednesday, September 30th
The day before, Apryl discovered the existence of a free tour starting from in front of the Starbuck's on High Street (the Royal Mile) at 9:30 am. It was to be a three and a half hour long walking tour of Edinburgh. So, we arose early and gathered our things, had some breakfast in the lobby of the High Street Hostel (delicious croissants and jam!) and then walked up to the meeting place. We met our tour guide Fred, a young man of about 20, or there abouts, with dark hair and olive skin. He was very informative for everything I am about to type (and probably a lot I have accidentally left out) came from Fred.
First of all:
Starting from Starbuck's, our first stop along to tour was the City Chambers (Tattoo). Back in the old days (before 17-something), Edinburgh was known as "old Reekie" for it's terrible pervasive smell. The methane content in the air was said to be so bad, it would settle in small spaces and spontaneously ignite. All of this was because of the moat the old Edinburgh built for extra protection. In 17-something, the elite, wealthier class decided they had had enough of the wretched smell, and decided to build New Edinburgh. This improved the town greatly, and was from then on known more as a cultural mecca and less as a smelly sewer.
After visiting the City Chambers, we moved across the street, in front of St. Giles "Cathedral" to the spot where the medieval marketplace was held. In order to illustrate the punishment for theft, Fred asked someone to volunteer their friend. Yes, Apryl volunteered me. To which, Fred went on to explain, in Medieval times, if I were hungry and decided to steal some, let's say cabbages or cucumbers, and if I got caught, I would have my ear nailed to the public announcement stage for 24 hours. If I could not stand the public humiliation of having refuse thrown at me, and little kids kicking my shins, I would tear my earlobe from the door and be forever marked as a thief who couldn't take her own punishment. The funniest thing I thought in all of this was not that Fred grabbed my ear, but was the fact that, ironically, the two vegetables he named I would hypothetically steal are two of my favorite vegetables. Life is ironic. In Edinburgh, when King Charles the II was crowned King, he wanted to make the Scots love him (they hated his father for reasons later discussed) and so, got the brilliant idea to have free wine pour from the public announcement stage for 24 hours. Everyone was extremely happy at first, but blamed their horrible hangover on the king. Poor Charles II couldn't win for losing. Traditionally, the public announcement stage/pulpit was also used to announce the crowning of a new King or Queen to all of Scotland. In the antiquated past, it took exactly three days to ride on horse back from London to Edinburgh Scotland. And so, it will always be that in three days time someone will shout the name of the new King or Queen of England from the top of the stage. The Scots like tradition. I wonder who the next English Monarch will be?
Moving to the topic a few yards away, St. Giles "Cathedral", is not really a cathedral, because in order to be a cathedral, there must be a Bishop residing there, or in service there, or whatever. It was a cathedral for several years, and this brings up why the Scots hated Charles the I so much. Charles tried to implement the Catholic traditions of religion (putting a relay man between the congregation and God, and putting the King as a divine ruler) by rewriting the prayer books inserting Charles I wherever it said "God" and imposing a bishop at St. Giles. When the Scots drew up a Covenant protesting this intrusion into their religion, and only the intrusion into their religion (not the Kings taxes or anything else political), and they had hundreds of people sign the document, Charles I so graciously set out to hunt down and kill everyone with their names on the Covenant. The Covenanters they were come to be called. This is one of the reasons why Charles the II was nervous about being king. He wanted to impress the Scots so much, he had artisans make a statue of him. They made the statue out of lead, but made the naturally "wee" Charles II overly large for the statue horse. They also put him in Roman armor, to make him seem more powerful. So, when the Scots saw the statue, they saw Charles II going to a costume party riding a donkey. Every year, a pair of boys would climb the statue to place an iron crown on the statues head, celebrating the crowning of the King. The lead and iron chemically interacted and the iron eventually wore holes in the top of the head of Charles II. It started to fill up with water and the donkey began to look as if it were drunk, enhancing the ridiculous spectacle of the statue. They decided to drain the slumping statue by creating a hole... in the hind quarters. This didn't help Charles II. Finally, someone got the bright idea of plugging up the holes in the head. Charles II and his donkey were propped up and have been there ever since... except the donkey is starting to fall into the bad habit of "drinking" again. The car park in which this said statue was placed, was a graveyard for centuries, but the graves became so shallow with overcrowding, they bodies started to float to the surface. So they just removed them to outside the city except for one of a caretaker of the church, who is under carpark 23 marked only by a yellow rectangle and piece of glass in the church window.
Behind St. Giles, The "dirtiest place in Edinburgh". And it comes in the shape of a heart. Back in the day, the toll booth (used for collecting taxes) had a heart on it, where you would spit to show your contempt. Why a heart? I don't know. When the toll booth was gone, the city replaced it with cobblestone heart in the street. Technically, it is the only legal place to spit in Edinburgh. Since it is full of the disgusting germs of the human race, no real, traditional Scot would ever walk on the heart. When there's a football match, rivals in Edinburgh spit to show contempt for the Scottish team and the Scots spit for good luck. All good mucus all around!
We saw the oldest residence in Edinburgh, which had a Thistle above one window and a Fleur de Lis above the other. The alliance between France and Scotland is the oldest political alliance in Scotland, and was initially founded in a mutual contempt for the English. In a typical residential building, there would be the shop on the ground level, the shop owners on the floor above that, the elite on the next floor, and the workers/poor on the upper floors. They did this because people in the upper floors were less likely to survive one of the rampant fires that plagued Edinburgh (because of the methane from the dirty moat?).
Next place was Lady Stairs "close". A "Close" is the Scottish term for alley. Lady Stair's Close is where the most expensive place to live in Edinburgh. Traditionally, whoever lived there would have the close named after then, but after a while, with different people moving in all the time, they settled on Lady Stair, since she was the last person to live there before they made the change permanent. There was an exposed example of the trip step which acted as the burglar alarm for many households in Medieval Europe. Only the people living there would know where the trip step was located. The trip step is a shallow, irregular step, which, if stepped on unknowingly, will send the stair creeper falling down the stairs and crashing into some strategically placed pots at bottom of stairs. The house owner could then take the burglar and beat him to death (or near) and leave him outside for the police in the morning.
The Writers Museum in Lady Stair's Close is dedicated to Robert Burns, the Scottish poet. Poems about drinking and women and are therefore very popular in Scotland. Fred then busted out some IRN-BRU and declared it is illegal in the States. Apryl looked it up later and discovered it is illegal because of the dyes in it. It has that red dye that makes kids go crazy, or it causes cancer, or something. I'm rather uninformed about it. I just remember when they made it illegal. I think I was about 7 years old. Anyway, moving on.
Further down the close in the courtyard, Fred told us exactly why Edinburgh was "Old Reekie" the moat that was added for protection, then filled with all the refuse, and had a walkable crust of filth in some parts. Dis-gusting. When the chamber pots were dumped onto the street, dumper had to call out a warning, to which the walker below would say, "hold yer hand!". They had to start limited the times that refuse could be dumped so people wouldn't have to be dodging it all day, so 9am and 10pm became the set times. One ironic fact: the pubs closed at 10pm. Therefore, when the bars closed the people who were too drunk would get feces dumped on them if they weren't cognitive enough to call out, "hold yer hand". Can you think of an alternative saying used today of "fecal-visage" in reference to being drunk to obliteration? Yes, that is where the term comes from.
Next we walked by Edinburgh castle and learned about the witch burnings that were conducted there. Here are some of the criteria for a witch: If you were ginger and/or you had a birthmark. To test your witchiness, you were thrown into ye olde Reeky moat. If you drowned, then the devil was NOT holding you up and keeping you alive to finish his bidding (good for you, you died a true Christian death). If you did stay afloat (which was often the case thanks to that thick crust of grime previously mentioned), you were deemed a witch and often times your family had to pay for the wood for your burning. Ouch. Finally, in the 1970's, I think it was, there was a plaque erected for those that died in the witch burnings. Supposedly apologetic, it states: "They weren't all bad witches". There was also a historical story about 30 men defeating 400 knights at Edinburgh Castle because they found the man who knew the secret way up the castle, attacked at night, and killed many knights who were sleeping... I can't remember who that was...
We then meandered to Victoria Street where Burke and Hair lurked and became known as the "body snatchers". They are thought to have killed about 30 people (prostitutes, tourists, and homeless people). It all started when Burke's girlfriend was crying over the fact that the man upstairs owe her four pounds (a months wages in those days). To put it in perspective, a pint of beer cost 1 penny. In the old system, there are a lot of pennies to a pound! They got a bright idea and sold the man's body to the medical school, and made 7 pounds. They thought it was a good way to make money and started dragging the unwanted dead off to the medical school. But, they got greedy and the people weren't dying fast enough for them, so they started killing people. 15 of the deaths couldn't be solidly proven, although Burke and Hair were strongly suspected. To make it seem natural, they squeezed the air from their lungs after getting them drunk, then smothered them. Made it look like a natural death. This went on for months until a medical student recognized one of the bodies to be a perfectly healthy young woman alive only a few days before. The police began to be very suspicious, but it wasn't until they had eyewitness proof that they were confronted by police. Burke pointed the finger at Hair like a good friend and got him hung. Burke ended up running away and living a poverty-stricken life somewhere in mainland Europe. Didn't come to a good end. After that, the city began to give hundreds of bodies to the medical institute a year, rather than forbid any support of it (although there was a special legal clause, as in the case if the dead corpse owed money) to discourage this body selling, and the grave robbing.
We walked down the stairs to the Grass Market and passed some kids shooting nerf pellets at a little Oscar Award statue taped to the cobble stones... that as interesting. It is called the Grass Market because they sold Grass there. Duh.
This is also where they held public hangings. One famous story is of Maggie Dickson's pub. Maggie was married and then her husband left her. The law at the time said "til death do you part" in other words, you were married to someone until you, or they died. If you were deserted, it was pure shame and there was no work or anything to be had except disgrace. So, Maggie decided to run away and she went and worked in secret in another town as a barmaid, met and fell in love with the Bar owner's son, but couldn't marry him because she was already married. She became pregnant (according to the Pregnancy Law, if you became pregnant without telling anyone, you would be killed), so she hid it as "weight gain" for 7 months, then had a miscarriage, was discovered and sentenced to death because of the Pregnancy law (still in effect, not punishable by death, obviously). She was hung in the Grass Market in Edinburgh until "pronounced dead". On the way out of the marketplace in a coffin, the driver heard a banging and discovered a live Maggie Dickson. He took her back to the square, but she had already been pronounced dead and could not be hung twice for the same crime, so she was no longer married to her previous husband (til death do us part), married the son, and had a long happy family life. When she was older, she bought the pub across from the hanging spot and told all the people crying that they would be alright, she had been through the same thing and she turned out alright (gruesome). It has been known since as Maggie Dickson's Pub and is a famous one now.
Today, the Grass Market is a popular destination for stag and hen parties (bachelor and bachelorette parties) and is the only place in Scotland where someone was arrested for drunken debauchery at one in the afternoon. Although, while we were there, it was very quiet.
The Scots love deep fried everything. They will deep fry anything for three pounds, and consequently have the highest rate of heart disease in the UK. It was time for a break for Lunch, so Apryl and I wandered around the Grass Market and looked at various eating places and decided to visit the deep fried shop. I bought a deep fried Mars Bar and deep fried Haggis, and IRN-BRU (described by Fred as "Cream soda on crack"). "I'm so proud of you guys," said Fred.
The deep fried Mars bar was delicious and gooey. Haggis was also surprisingly tasty, despite knowing the ingredients (everything in the sheep but the meat, fat, and bones... yes, this includes the brain). But like Fred said, "ever have a frankfurter? Yeah, at least we KNOW what is in Haggis". It was very good, actually, but it was very heavy and I couldn't eat all of it. I think it would have been more enjoyable on a sandwich or with some rice... it had sort of a disturbing texture to it which was kind of unpleasant, but on some bread or rice, it would be unnoticeable. However, like I said, very good. Had lots of herbs in it.
After lunch went to the Greyfriars Abbey (where they signed the Covenant against Charles I) The Greyfriars Abby is home to the Greyfriars (there is not mysterious origins of words or locations in Edinburgh). The abbey is/was proud of the fact it was finished the same day the Pilgrim landed on Plymouth Rock in America. When excavating the graves of medieval times, it was discovered that most coffins had fingernail scratch marks on the inside, indicating that many people were buried alive. The doctors weren't very good at telling if people were dead. Most people drank from lead tankards, so this often put people into a deep coma, and were thought to be dead. To keep people from being buried alive, they started tying a string to the finger of the dead person and attaching it to a bell, above ground: "saved by the bell" in case the person woke up. They also set a relative on watch for every hour of the day and night for two weeks to see if the bell would ring and also to protect the body from grave diggers long enough until it was decayed enough to be useless to them. This is where the term "graveyard shift" came from.
There was actually a Grave Robber Guild in effect until the later half of the 19th century. If you could afford it, cages were employed for those with money to lock up the graves from the top to the bottom of the grave.
In the far corner of the Greyfriars graveyard, stands Bloody George McKenzie's Black Mausoleum. Bloody George McKenzie killed hundreds of Covenanters (the people that signed the petition against the religious impositions of Charles I). The Black Mausoleum has been particularly famous since 1995 when a homeless man "awoke" Bloody George, and a resulting 400 poltergeist reports from unrelated witnesses ensued. The last report was of a man found in 2002(?) in a coma outside the Black Mausoleum. I am uncertan of the date. It is said to be the most haunted place in Edinburgh. There are more paranormal reports and incidences recorded around the Black Mausoleum than any other haunted place in Edinburgh. A little way along the wall stood the gates of the open prison where Bloody George tortured 400 of the Covenanters. He would let them go if they signed a piece of paper that would say they were wrong and Charles I was the head of the church. Not one of them signed it. There were a variety of torture tactics: they were forced to sleep face down, and if they moved in the night, the comrades around them would be shot; they were hung by their wrists, had their fingernails ripped out, and all of this to make them to admit they were wrong. The open prison flooded often and many drowned rather than move during the night, so afraid to be the harm of their other inmates. A dark time for Scotland. In the end, it is said a total of 80 survived.
Somewhere in here, the one o-clock canon went off from the top of the Edinburgh Castle. To which, if you are a true Edinburgh Scot, you calmly check your watch, make sure it is one o'clock and calmly carry about your business. Tips to blend in are a good thing to have in your purse of disguises. For while the Scots are nice people, they hate the English, and they hate tourists, especially English tourists, but any tourist that doesn't cross the road properly (they hate this). I wouldn't want to upset a Scot, so I tried my best to blend in. And did a pretty good job, I guess. No one shouted at us or anything. A lot of people kept looking at me and looked as if they were going to burst out laughing, to which I turned to Apryl and asked, "I don't look particularly funny right now, do I?"
Greyfriars Bobby, the groundskeeper's dog lived for 12 years after his master's death and sat on his grave for those 12 years. He was and is a legend of canine obedience and devotion and many people from all over the world come to see his tombstone, but his grave is beneath the streets outside the Abbey's gates. Today, there is a sign that says, no dogs allowed. People leave weird things for Bobby, but mostly sticks at the memorial tombstone put up in his honor (since he wasn't determinably Christian or human). The weirdest thing was an envelope full of unused train tickets to various places with, "Bobby, come to London" or something like that written on the back of all of them. Weird.
J.K. Rowling sat in the Elephant Cafe, which is across from Greyfriars Abbey and George Hosier's school. From the grave yard she took some names for the characters (I didn't see any, although there is a stop on the London train called "Flitwick" which was the Charms professor... Oh, I am a geek), and the George Hosier's school was her inspiration for Hogwarts. At the Elephant Cafe, she wrote the first three books. They are very proud of this, they have a sign that says, "birthplace of Harry Potter" on the front window.
We left the Abbey and walked past the library and Scottish National Museum.
A good, sturdy kilt cost about 600 pounds, which includes the stockings, shoes, shirt, hat, band, pocket/pouch thing, everything. The whole getup.
I talked to Fred about the main Scottish Church, which is Protestant or Presbyterian. He didn't know how to pronounce Episcopalian, which was kind of funny. I told him about Charleston, S.C., he didn't know much about the Revolutionary war either.
We told him about how cool the Scott's monument was (he had never climbed it). Then we walked down to Princes Street and he told us the story about the Stone of Destiny, which is basically a rock that holds a prophecy, "Wherever this stone is is where the King of Scotland reigns". It was in Westminster Abbey for 300 years before being stolen by a college student John Hamilton and his friends. It was missing for four months before turning up at an Abby in Edinburgh only to be taken to Westminster Abbey again. It was finally, and hopefully permanently brought up to Edinburgh Castle again in 1996 sanctioned by Queen Elizabeth. And with this, the tour ended. The actual story was much longer and elaborate, and Fred put a great deal of vim and vigor into the account, but it is a little tedious to write.
The free tour is based on tips at the end and how well you think the guide did. It is the Edinburgh branch of Sandeman's New Europe educational tours: www.neweuropetours.eu I though I would give it a little plug because it was fun and informative.
Fred recommended some sights to see the next day and we parted ways. He was a cool dude. Very knowledgable and upbeat.
Putting our new found Scottish ways into action, on the way back to the Hostel, Apryl and I spit on the heart and totally frightened this tourist. Haha! It was funny to watch her jump. I didn't spit on her. But she was standing on part of the heart. I was happy to see I was not the only person who had spit there, there was plenty of mucus in the center besides my own.
We walked back past the Scott's monument and it was about 1:30pm. We walked up Cockburn Street where I got a satchel bag (I needed one, the little purse or the huge backpack weren't doing to right job and Apryl had been carrying my stuff around all day). So, we ate something, I think, I can't remember, and then we walked all the way down the Royal Mile to the Holyrood Palace (the Scotland residence of the queen) but we didn't go inside, we just took a look at it and the strange looking parliament building across the street and kept going. We made our way up the Salisbury Craigs (crags) and all the way to Arthur's Seat. The highest point in Edinburgh. We had the most awesome view, and we could not have asked for a more perfect day. The skies were mostly clear with light clouds flying by and the wind was so strong and refreshing, especially after such a long climb. It was not too warm, but not too cold. We looked down on Edinburgh. Oh, what a sight! To attempt mere words for expression is folly. I will only say I did my best not to spoil the moment by speaking at all.
On the way back down, we took a different path to a park and walked back along the park path. But not before laying in the soft grass of the hills of Scotland and looked at the clouds. Apryl rolled part of the way down the hill. It was so much fun. Apryl kept remarking how green the grass was. We walked back to the City of Edinburgh and walked/climbed up the hill to the National Monument, which was supposed to be a Parthenon type building (Edinburgh is known as the "Athens of the north") but they ran out of funds halfway through, so it looks like an ancient Roman ruin, or something. But it isn't. More monuments to writers and some nice buildings. A super old Canon. We had a lot of fun climbing around everything. You have free reign in Edinburgh. There are so many parks and historical sites you can climb around. It's so much fun. I want to go back. By that time, I'm pretty sure we had walked several miles, so we walked back over the North Bridge to the Hostel. I went to take a shower and realized I had no soap, and no shampoo. I had forgotten I had left it in the shower the other day and I guess they threw it away. So Apryl was nice enough to let me borrow hers.
We met a guy named Pete from Baltimore and had a long discussion about culture differences. Especially about the whole violence thing. How people in America really don't want to fight because someone could very well may die, whereas here, they just like to slug each other (this is from Pete's point of view). He was a construction worker currently in a bit of a slow time in construction and took six weeks off and was traveling around Europe. He was born in 1969. He was a very nice man, very talkative and sweet. We gave him some directions around Edinburgh and what we did that was really fun (such as the Scotts monument, but I warned him that he might have to squeeze through at the top, the staircase being barely wider than my hips).
We went down into the lobby again and I had some hot chocolate, looked at some really outdated books about Shastacovich (1953) and Astronomy (1987). And also found out that in Russian, the "P" character actually the "Err" sound.... there was a "Learn Russian" book, which was pretty cool. But I was so tired, it was really heavy reading. So I looked at the maps of the stars in the Astronomy book. They were screening "Transformers" for the movie of the night, and nothing against Shia LeBeouf, but those movies are so stupid. He's good in them, of course (I think he's a great actor), but Megan Fox isn't a very good actor. Really pretty, but not very good at acting. And all the animation and action scenes... it just bores me to tears, so I completely ignored it (wasn't very hard). Apryl wrote in her journal and charging her phone while I was reading (I probably should have written in my journal as well, but I didn't). Then we played a REALLY long pool game that took way more time than it probably should have (we were both doing terribly, I think because we were so tired). But we were very happy, although exhausted. It was awesome. We went to sleep early (around 9) and decided we would go see Edinburgh Castle in the morning. End of Scotland day two. Phew.