"AULD REEKIE."

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 164, 13 July 1929, Page 16 (Supplement)

"AULD REEKIE."

CELEBRATES A FEW

CENTURIES.

CHANGING BUT STILL

ROMANTIC,

EDWIN'S ANCIENT BURG AND ITS

CHARTER,

A certain amount of confusion

likely to arise from the fact that Edinburgh observed the 600 th anniversary of the grant of its charter on May 28 last, but the confusion may easily be cleared away if it is borne in mind that the anniversary is no more than that of the grant of its charter. Edingurgh has been a burgh, in other words a municipality, for 600 years. It is essential that this should be made absolutely clear, for any vagueness on 'this point might easily give rise to the idea that the Athens of the North is itself only 600 years old.

Its mere name "is more than twice <fts old as that, and there must have been a castle of seme sort on its acropolis long before the little cluster of thatched huts down the hog's back acquired its name of Edwin's burg. Even, its castle is notfas old as its legendary Arthurian site, the lionlike hill known as Arthur's Seat, the highest of thef seven craggy hills which enthrone the, fine Edinburgh of to-day. Nobody knows when the first shaggy towering Scot set up his rude tent on the acropolis and began pretending that he enjoyed the east wind. As the site of a settlement, the place is older than recorded history. It is 'only its charter which is as young as 600 years. Its charter date, however, is important as the only available date from which to reckon the richly fruitful story of a city whose Athenian achievement has given it a peculiar glory of its own. Hence the small boys who have chalked

"600 years" 011 the pavements of the esplanade. Hence the throngs—and not all of them tourists, either—who are climbing up to the lordly old castle to hang over the parapet and gaze in fits of absent-mindedness on the gray and green of Edinburgh coiling round the knobs and crags below. ■ Packed with Charm and History. It is possible that there is room for difference as to whether the view from the castle is not the most romantic town view to be found anywhere in the world. The great ravine -which slashes the city's core and masks the railway with broad, sloping carpets of green# the stately modern Athens which lies on one side of it with the Parthenonlike national monument crowning the Calton Hill, the old Edinburgh of the

university, of the Candidate and the Cowgate, Auld Reekie itself, which lies on the other side with Arthur's Seat towering above the natural battlements of- the Salisbury crags—all make up a view which, if it is not the most roman-

tic in the world, is ac least very romantic. .

Being a sombre Northern capital, drenched far morejjthan most capitals with the history and romance of its Northern country, it is perhaps seen Under more harmonious skies during the autumn, when the east wind whips up the dead leaves and the Firth is a sheet of leaden gray in the distance. But at any time of the year its famous castle

view no more than hints at the peculiar charm of its streets. You must descend from the castle to savour the . alluring unexpectedness of its constantly changing levels. Nowhere else does dignity comport itself with such caprice. Nowhere else is a stately and busy street so likely to drop from beneath your feet or to rise in front of you in a steep upward slope, for no very apparent reason except to make you stop and contemplate an irrelevant fragment of old gray machicolated jvall with which it turns the climbing street into a cul-de-sac.

And where is there another town walk which holds so much history as that from the castle to Holyrood— through the Lawnmarket, past the Parliament buildings and the noble Cathedral of St. Giles, where John Knox was "sa actif and l vigorus that he was lyk to ding that pulpit in blads. and llie oot of it," through the wider ajid worldlier High Street and into the wynds and closes of the fascinating Canongate, where authors, mathematicians, preachers, philosophers, historians, orators and lawyers have rubbed shoulders on the narrow turnpike stairs and the candle-lights have gleamed rosy on the claret in low-ceiled upper-storey rooms ' with carvings in old Scottish dialect on the oaken panels? The Ghosts of Holyrood., As for Holyrood itself, it reduces to nothingness every ghost, that walks the wynds of Auld Reekie. The ghosts of Cavaliers and Covenanters,, of gentle John Knox, who rose up .to make a few remarks on the subject of Popery before he disappeared beneath the little metal plate, in Parliament Square, dwindle to distant whispers. The crowding ghosts of the castle, the nobles of great Scottish houses whose struggles against their kings and against each other ended in murders most foul within the castle walls, the witches who were burned there, the guards who were murdered there and' whose bodies were thrown into the fire "to broil and frizzle in their armour like tortoises in their shells," are but pale shadows.

ghosts of the modern city, of old David Hume, for whom some wit named St. David's Street; of Kobert Louis Stevenson, who was driven into lifelong exile by the east wind, even the ghost of Scott, the great Sir Walter himself, the most beloved native son who has ever lived, are no more than ghosts compared to the lull-bodied memory which inhabits Holyrood. History has imposed its inexorable logic on Scotland. The Stone of Destiny lies beneath the coronation chair in Westminster Abbey and a Windsor is now King pf Scots. The House of Stuart remains the greatest" of the Scottish lost causes, and the small, gloomy, Bastilelike' Palace of Holyrood, tucked away in the vale below Arthur's Seat, remains a monument to Mary Queen of Scots and her. children's children.

Such is the royal heritage which in the last 600 years has fashioned the Edinburgh of to-day. Ever since the Act of Union was signed in a High Street cellar, the Scottish capital has been only a semi-capital. But what it lost by the union it has made up in another direction by its intellectual distinction. It still has its slums, and downright slums they are, but most of the Auld Reekie of history has been "improved" away. Water no longer has to be carried up its odorous stairs in barrels on the backs of men-and boys, and bucketfuls of refuse no longer descend into its filthy wyiute with warn-

ing shrieks of "gardy-loo!" from upperstorey windows. The claret, of course, is still the finest in the world, but four bottles are no longer regarded as an essential preliminary to the -day's work. A Northern Grande Dame. The facade of the new town is the matchless terrace of Princes Street which-has no equal anywhere in Europe. From Princes Street you look across the green sweep and dip of che gardens to the lofty mass of the castle and the fine skyline of Auld Reekie on the other side. As a civic composition, it is an oft : sung mas'terpiece. ' An Edinburgh which has achieved so fine a picture has a civic sense as splendid as that of any more full-bodied capital. Neither London nor Paris has a surer touch.

There is, indeed, more than a trace of tire grande da'me in Edinburgh. Despite her cheerless northern skies, she prefers the ways of Bath, of Mentone, of Flanders, but she is capable of stooping to more modern ways and there are. even some who say, they discern suggestions of New York in parts of the Princes Street of to-day. When she does stoop to modernities, it is with an air of patronage as if she were merely showing what she might do if she really cared to. Her society still consists of her. three learned professions, the kirk, the. law and medicine. Nowadays ifc is hardly as exclusive a society as it was when her Bohemians, chuckling in their dingy cellars, flung "Snoblesse oblige" at it. It may be that it is no longer as grimly Victorian as it is currently reputed to be. Perhaps it is beginning to mellow a little. But there i 3 still enough Scottish hardness left in it to take a very high polish.

One or two of her dignified elders, instead of rejoicing in. her mellowing, bewail what they .describe as her slackening. . They say that a new era is being opened up before her by the coal mines and factories which are closing in upon her and they want to know what she is going to do to harmonise the Athenian city of the past with the partly industrial city of the future. The glories of Princes Street, they say, have already gone. It should have preserved a magnificent regularity with which to confront the picturesque irregularity of Auld Reekie beyond the gardens.- Instead, its old formality has been allowed' to slip away unnoticed.