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as appears by the reception of Charles I. at Edinburgh, in 1633. He was welcomed on his arrival by the provost and baillies, clad in red robes well furred, and the "eldermen" and counsellers in black velvet gowns; these functionaries were seated upon "seats of deal for the purpose, built of three degrees." The provost, after a speech, presented to his majesty a bason of gold, valued at five thousand marks, "wherein was shaken, out of ane embroidered purse, one thousand golden double angels, as ane token of the town of Edinburgh their love and humble service." At the west end of the Tolbooth the royal pedigree of the Stuarts, from Fergus I., "delicately painted," was hung out to welcome his descendant. At the marketcross was the god Bacchus, who drank the king's health, all the spouts of the fountain in the mean time flowing with wine. At the Tron was a representation of Mount Parnassus covered with birch-branches, where nine boys represented the nine muses.

All this was dull enough; but this dulness must have been prodigiously enhanced by the merciless prosings of the civic dignitaries, for the king was obliged to endure the infliction of seven formal speeches before he got fairly sheltered = within the walls of Holyrood. A subsequent exhibition (it was a post-prandial one) in honour of the king was of a more lively description. After a rich banquet, the provost, baillies, and counsellors, linked hand in hand, and bare-headed, came dancing vigorously down the High-street, accompanied with drums, trumpeting, and all -kinds of music.*

The common people had their public masque=radings as well as the higher classes, and the pageant of Robin Hood was as great a favourite in Scotland as it was in England. The characters of this dramatic sport seem also to have been faithfully copied from the English. But in the first zeal of the Reformation laws for its suppression were enacted in 1561. This interference with a favourite pastime so incensed the citizens of Edinburgh, that they flew to arms; and, after robbing and maltreating passengers, rescuing a man condemned to death, and breaking the gibbet on which he was to have been executed, they imprisoned the magistrates until they had extorted from them an act of indemnity.† Robin Hood and his motley band were thus still enabled to defy the law; and so late as the close of the sixteenth century we find the general assembly complaining heavily of the profanation of the sabbath,

by the making of Robin Hood." The Abbot of Unreason, the principal figure of another festive sport of the Scots, was a personage somewhat resembling the English Lord of Misrule; and, attended by hobby-horses, morris-dancers, and the never-failing dragon, he commonly celebrated such ecclesiastical events as the anniversary of a saint or the election of a church dignitary. as this abbot acted in a sort of clerical capacity, his pranks were more reprehensible than those of Spalding's Troubles of Scotland. VOL. III.

+ Knox.

But,

a mere secular mime, consisting chiefly of parodies on the church service and religious ordinances in general.* On this account, the festival of the Abbot of Unreason bore a close resemblance to the Feast of the Ass, or the Festival of Fools, by which religion was burlesqued upon the continent during the licence of the middle ages.

The exhibition of miracle and moral plays had been common in Scotland as well as in England, and the chief author in this species of literature among the Scots was Sir David Lindsay of the Mount. His principal work, entitled The Three Estates, is a moral play, full of sarcastic matter mixed with moral admonition, the personages being a mixture of human beings and allegorical abstractions. This play occupied nine hours in acting; and not only the language, but in many instances the stage directions, are so gross, as to give us a very strange idea of a Scottish audience of the sixteenth century. These plays were commonly acted in the open air; the place set apart for the purpose was called the play-field, and there were few large towns in Scotland without such a provision for the public amusement.† At first, the drama did good service in the cause of the Reformation, by exposing the impostures and iniquities of the Romish clergy; but the " highkilted" muse of the North did not know where to stop, and she ran riot among the profligacies she exposed until she was infected with their spirit, so that the reformers were soon scandalized at the indecorum of their ally. In consequence, they first protested against the licentiousness of the stage; and when their influence increased they put down the acting of plays altogether. In the stirring political events that followed, the absence of the stage seems to have been little felt or regretted; but, when the period of calm succeeded, James VI., who was attached to the drama, applied to Elizabeth for a company of English actors, who were sent to Scotland at his request. This was an unpardonable enormity in the eyes of the Presbyterian clergy, and they preached against the abomination of play-going with great vigour, but little immediate success; for the Edinburgh theatre was crowded every night. But, at length, the stern predominance of ecclesiastical discipline over every other authority was more than a match for a poor handful of actors, and the drama in Scotland may be said to have perished in its infancy.

The tournament was greatly patronised by James IV. and James V., themselves redoubted knights, and skilled in all military exercises; and such was the splendour with which the tournaments of the first of these monarchs were held, that knights from every part of Europe flocked to compete at them. These, however, were the last, as they were the brightest, flashes of northern chivalry. Besides these grander exhibitions for knights and nobles, weapon-shaws for the people

• An admirable sketch of this riotous functionary is given by Sir Walter Scott in his tale of the Abbot. † Arnot's Edinburgh.

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coign of vantage" with these booths, that showed like swallows' nests about the Gothic edifice, while the sacred interior itself was crowded with those who bought and sold. As for the

were small unsightly buildings of loose stones, divided only into two apartments, called a butt and a ben, as is still the case among the poorest of the peasantry; and the generality of Scottish beds were a sort of wooden presses built into the wall, such as are still seen in the poorest northern cottages.† Even at the end of the present period we find that the beds of the young nobility consisted frequently of nothing but straw. On these they lay down with their weapons within reach, and were ready to start at the slightest signal.

were appointed by James IV. to be held four times a-year, at which all persons should assemble armed and accoutred according to the amount of their income. The active and military games practised at public or social meetings were, leap-country-houses, those belonging to the farmers ing, running, wrestling, casting the penny-stone or quoit, shooting at the papingo, and the usual trials of archery. In public military trials, James IV. stimulated the candidates by prizes, which generally consisted of silver weapons, such as the winners had excelled in. A great portion of the popularity of James V. was owing to the frankness with which he associated with the people in these sports, so that he was usually called the king of the commons.* Hunting and hawking were keenly pursued in Scotland in the sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth century, and to an extent which the improvement of English agriculture had now rendered impossible in the south. Tennis, hand and football, kayles, and golf, were among the outdoor games of Scotland; and dancing was a common in-door recreation. The sword dance appears to have been a favourite of the Scots during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The sedentary games, as among the English, were cards, dice, chess, draughts, and backgammon.

The old rudeness of the domestic life of the Scots began, before the close of the sixteenth century, to receive a sprinkling of refinement from imitation of their English neighbours. Handsome dwelling-houses and stately castles began to supersede the uncomfortable donjons that had formerly been the abodes of feudal pomp and beggarly discomfort. At the same time, services of gilt metal, or even of plate, began to be used by the chief nobles, instead of their former cups of pewter and platters of wood; and one of the greatest indignities to which Darnley was subjected by Mary, after he had fallen into disgrace, was the removal of his service of plate, and the substitution of pewter.† After the accession of James to the throne of England, the example of the South, and also its gold, which now flowed into Scotland, continued to raise the standard of living, and multiply the sources of domestic comfort. While this improvement pervaded the country in general, the capital in particular began to assume the appearance of a great city, and to be adorned by many stately mansions erected by the nobility and the heads of the church. But there was still the absence of a preponderating middle class, by whom the golden mean of domestic life might have been exhibited, and on that account, setting aside the civic palaces and country castles of the titled few, Scotland, even in the seventeenth century, was still a country of huts and hovels. Even the shops of comfortable tradesmen and substantial merchants in the metropolis were but sorry sheds of wood and thatch huddled up wherever the ground was convenient; and in this way the venerable cathedral of St. Giles was clustered at every corner and

• Pitscottie.

↑ Buchanan's Detection of the Acts of Mary Queen of Scots.

In the article of diet the Scots had been gradually improving with the extension of their com merce, and by the sixteenth century many foreign luxuries were imported into the country. But this change was regarded by the government with a suspicious eye: they thought it a dangerous departure from the ancient simplicity, and severe laws were made to suppress it. Prohibitions were laid upon the use of drugs, confections, and spiceries brought from beyond seas, on the ground that their prices were still so high as to be ruinous to persons of ordinary means. Exceptions were made only in favour of prelates and peers, and such as were able to spend two thousand pounds (Scotch) annually.§

In a nobleman's establishment, though all sat down at the same table, the chief dainties were placed at the upper end of the board, for the exclusive use of the master and his more select guests. As for the menials of these noble households, they were dieted chiefly on corn and roots, with a very small allowance of animal food. The poorer knights and barons, though of great feudal importance, were as yet little chargeable with luxury, if we may trust to the following account given by Moryson:-"Myself was at a knight's house who had many servants to attend him, that brought in his meat with their heads covered with blue caps, the table being more than half furnished with great platters of porridge, each having a little piece of sodden meat; and when the table was served the servants did sit down with us; but the upper mess, instead of porridge, had a pullet with some prunes in the broth. And I observed no art of cookery, or furniture of household stuff, but rather rude neglect of both, though myself and my companion, sent from the governor of Berwick about border affairs, were entertained after their best manner." Moryson further in

Such was the term for an Edinburgh shop at this period.-Li of George Heriot. 8vo. Edin. 1827.

† Moryson's Itinerary. Fol. Lon. 1617. Extracts from the Household Book of Lady Marie Stewart. daughter of Esme, Duke of Lenox, and Countess of Mar. By Charies Sharp, Esq. 4to.

§ Stat. 113, Parl. 7 Jac. 6.

Even James VI. himself, while King of Scotland, had frequently a wretchedly supplied larder for royal entertainments, as appears from the following piteous application which he made to the Laird of Dundas, in 1600, on occasion of the baptism of his son, Prince

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forms us that the Scots used great quantities of red colewort and cabbage, but little fresh meat; and that they salted their mutton and geese, but not beef. This salting of geese is still common in the highlands and isles of Scotland. The cabbage and colewort was in all likelihood used, as it is now, in broths; the porridge was hasty-pudding made of oatmeal; and as for the pullet stewed with prunes, this still continues to be a favourite dish in many parts of Scotland. The reign of Mary added several French dishes to this simple fare; and, among other luxuries, she introduced marmalade, which since that period has continued to be the choicest Scottish confection.* The occupation of Scotland, after the civil war, by Monk and the English army, undoubtedly improved the style of living in the north, although not altogether to the extent that has been sometimes supposed. The Scottish gentry seem to have relished the accompaniment of music to a dinner; but for this purpose a harper, crowder, or ballad-singer was quite sufficient. The Scots had abundance of wine, and used it to such excess that they were accounted harder drinkers than the English. It would appear, too, from the testimony of Dunbar, as well as later authorities, that not only the men but even the women were frequently addicted to this species of excess: we are told that the latter drank largely of ale and malmsey when they could get it. In drinking wine the Scots did not sweeten it with sugar like the English, but with comfits like the French. One custom of Scottish hospitality was, to present to a guest a well-filled bumper on retiring to bed, under the name of a sleeping-cup. The higher classes dined at eleven, and supped at six o'clock.‡

An idea of the wild hilarity that, in the early part of the sixteenth century, still mingled with the ceremonious observances of the highest occasions among the upper classes may be formed from the details that have been preserved of the boisterous courtship of James IV. when he went to receive his bride. When Margaret (daughter of Henry VII.) had reached Newbattle, her royal lover darted into her apartment, "like a hawk on its quarry," and found her playing at cards. Having embraced her, he gave her a taste of his accomplishments by playing upon the lute and claricord; after which he vaulted into his horse's saddle without setting foot in the stirrup, and Charles:-"Right trusty friend, we greet you heartily well. The baptism of our dearest son being appointed at Holyrudehouse upon the 23rd day of December instant, whereat some princes of France, strangers, with the specials of our nobility, being invited to be present, necessar it is that great provisions, guid cheer, and sie other things necessary for decorations thereof, be provided, whilks cannot be done without the help of some of our loving subjects; whereof accounting you one of the specials, we have thought good to request you effectiously to propyne us with venisons, wild meat, brissel fow Is, capons, with sic other provisions as are maist seasonable at that time and errand, to be sent into Holyrudehouse upon the 22nd day of the said month of December instant; and herewithal to invite you to be present at that solemnity, to take part of your own guid cheer, as you tender our honour and the honour of our country."

Lady Mary Steward's Household Book.

The following item occurs in the Household Book of Lady Mary Steward:"To ane blind singer, who sang the time of dinner, twelve shillings" (Scotch).

Melvil.-Moryson.

galloped off at a rate that soon distanced his attendants. At the next interview, Margaret exhibited her musical skill in turn, while James gallantly listened on bended knee. When Margaret left Dalkeith for Edinburgh, a gay cavalcade of the king and nobles met her on the way, and a chivalrous pageant was played by Sir Patrick Hamilton, who, in the character of a rude losel, endeavoured to snatch a fair lady from a knight; her champion, of course, resisted, and this led to the exhibition of a mock combat. On arriving at the suburbs of Edinburgh, the queen descended from her litter, mounted soberly upon a pillion behind the king, and thus entered her future capital in royal state. The marriage ceremonies were concluded with entertainments, shows, and tournaments, in the last of which the king appeared in the character of a salvage knight, and carried off the prize from every competitor.*

Among the common people, the important concerns of courtship and marriage were conducted with at least as much glee and mirthful tumult poetry, piping, and feasting, formed the regular climax of wooing and winning; and when the liquor circulated too copiously, a rude skirmish of wit often warmed into a perilous interchange of blows, that only served to enhance the convivial enjoyment of the party. It was the custom, also, for each of the guests to subscribe a sum, nominally to defray the expenses of the marriagefeast, but, in reality, to furnish the young couple with something to begin the world. After the Reformation, these penny-weddings, as they were, and still are, technically termed, incurred the hostility of the kirk; but it was found impossible to suppress them, and all that was done was to limit the contributions of the guests to a very moderate sum. Thus, by an act of the session of Stirling, not more than five shillings Scotch were allowed to be levied upon each attendant at a penny-wedding; and similar restrictions were established in other parishes.†

In their funeral customs, the Scots were distinguished from the English by a practice common to themselves and the Irish only. As soon as life had departed, the friends of the deceased prepared to hold his lyke-wake, that is, to sit up with the body all night previous to interment. A cellar of salt was placed on the breast of the corpse, and lighted candles were set at the head and feet; but as the occasion partook more of festivity than sorrow, all the materials of feasting, drinking, and smoking, were plentifully provided for the watchers. This practice was at last so much abused that a person's lyke-wake was often as costly as his wedding. When the time of burial arrived, the coffin was carried to the grave on hand-spokes; and if the deceased had been of rank, the interment was frequently accompanied with the ringing of bells and discharges of muskets and artillery.

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The particulars we have hitherto mentioned of Scottish manners and customs are only to be understood of the more civilized parts of Scotland. The people of certain portions of the kingdom differed in their way of life from the Saxon population of the Lowlands as much as they did in lineage. The inhabitants of the isles, who were in a great measure of Danish and Norwegian origin, being separated, by tempestuous seas and an imperfect navigation, from the comparative civilization of the mainland, still retained a large portion of those rude characteristics by which their ancestors were distinguished. These islesmen lived chiefly by hunting and fishing. In preparing animal food for eating, they seethed it in the tripe or skin of the beast, which they filled with water. Their drink was the broth of sodden flesh, or whey kept for several years. In the morning they would eat a little oaten or barley bread, and content themselves with this till evening, after a day's hunting. The only beds in their houses were heather laid on the ground, with the tops or flowers uppermost, which was not only as soft as a feather-bed, but very refreshing and restorative after fatigue. Their weapons were an iron bonnet or skull-cap, a habergeon reaching almost to the knees, bows and forked arrows, and axes. Their musical instruments were harps, clarshoes, and bag-pipes. The richer people of these isles adorned their harps and clarshoes with silver and precious stones, and the poor with crystal; and the chief amusement of all classes was singing songs, recording the deeds and praises of the brave. Such, finally, was the healthiness of these insular climates, and the remarkable longevity of the inhabitants, that, according to a monkish authority quoted in Monipenny's Chronicle, they generally lived till they were quite weary of life.

The Highlanders, although they lived more in the neighbourhood of improvement, and constituted a more important part of the Scottish population, were not superior in knowledge and refinement to the islesmen, while they were much more sanguinary in character. They were governed by the patriarchal system in its worst of forms; their fierce, though paltry wars of clanship, as effectually secluded them from the civilization of the Lowlands as the storms of the northern seas could have done; and when they descended into the plains, it was only by hurried visits, and for hostile purposes. This character became so permanent that the following description which John Eldar, a clergyman and a native of Caithness, gave to Henry VIII. of life in the Highlands, was equally correct nearly two centuries later. Their chief occupation (when they were not cutting each other's throats, or plundering the Lowlands) was hunting; and their principal amusements were running, leaping, swimming, shooting, and throwing darts. The Highlanders were called Rough-footed Scots by the English, and Red-shanks by the Lowlanders, from

Quoted in Pinkerton's History of Scotland, ii. 396, from the author's MS. in Bib. Reg. 18 A. 38,

the shoes they wore, and which were made in a very summary fashion. When the red deer was killed, and the hide flayed warm from the animal, the person wanting a pair of shoes placed his foot on the skin, and cut by that measure a sufficient quantity of hide to cover the foot and the ancle. A few thongs were then pared from the same material to lace up the shoe, and holes were pricked in the sole to let out the water. Even this extemporaneous buskin, however, seems to have been a luxury, and the Celt, unless the weather was very cold, generally went barefoot. As the Highlanders sowed little corn, and despised the unwarlike occupations of husbandry, animal food composed their chief subsistence; and, in addition to the sheep and beeves which they lifted from the Lowland pastures, they had abundance of all kinds of game. When hunting, we are informed, they dressed their venison by pressing the raw flesh between boards or hazel-rods until the blood was wrung out, after which they devoured it without further cookery.*

Besides these Norse and Celtic races, there were the Borderers, an equally distinct community, at least as far as their mode of life marked them out from the bulk of the nation. These people, living upon the edge of the kingdom, and always exposed to the first brunt of an English invasion, resembled more the forlorn hope of an army than a settled population, and not only their habits, but their sports were imbued with the recklessness and ferocity of such a military position. As they found it useless to build regular houses, which the first onslaught of the enemy would demolish, any temporary wigwam contented them; and as it was equally a waste of time to sow their fields, they reaped with the sword the fields of the neighbouring English counties. Sometimes, however, they found the opposite border so well guarded that a sheaf of arrows rather than one of corn was ready to welcome them. In this case the Scottish borderers did not greatly perplex themselves about ways and means: they turned and fell upon the fields and cattle of their own countrymen, and thus supplied their wants at the expense of the inland farmers. This plundering of friend and foe they softened with the gentle name of "a little shifting for their living," and many of the border chiefs found the practice so profitable that they reduced it to a regular system. They gathered troops of needy and dissolute fol lowers, built strong towers in some situation of difficult approach, and either swept both sides of the border without distinction or obliged the landholders to compound for immunity by the payment of an annual black-mail. The kings of Scotland were seldom powerful enough to repress these disorders; nor was the bold adventurous life of the borderers without its use in raising and preserving a hardy militia for the defence of the national outposts. But James IV. and his successor, who saw the permanent evils entailed by

Brantome, Vie de Chartres.

such a system, commenced an unsparing warfare against these robber chieftains, and either drove them across the border or hanged them over the gates of their own castles. In their justiciary progresses, which were conducted under the show of a hunt, or party of pleasure, these sovereigns were attended, not only by knights, judges, and guards, but also by hunters, falconers, and morrisdancers, and thus the thieves were unaware of the real purpose of the expedition until they were surprised in their dens. On one of these occasions, as James V. was making a progress, John Armstrong of Gilnockie, a celebrated border chief and border freebooter, presuming upon the services he could render to the king, advanced to meet him at the head of a train of forty-eight gentlemen, whose dress and equipments rivalled those of a royal following. James, astonished at the glitter of this approach, imagined that some English or foreign prince was at hand; but when he discovered that it was only an over-proud caitiff, whom he had outlawed, and vowed to punish, his rage burst forth in the following couplet,

What wants this knave That a king should have?

and he immediately ordered John and his merry men to be hanged without further ceremony. The Regent Murray was one of the sternest suppressors of the border moss-troopers, whom he caused to be hanged or drowned by dozens; but, after his death, they again became as unruly as ever. James, on his accession to the English crown, ordained that no borderer of England or Scotland should wear any kind of weapon, offensive or defensive, except a knife of no more than a certain length, with which to cut his victuals, and keep no horse, gelding, or mare, above the value of forty shillings. By this act the occupation of a border thief was gone, as he was effectually dismounted and disarmed; and the border itself, in consequence, at last became as peaceable as any other part of the British dominions.*

The Reformation of religion in Scotland was the commencement of a new era in the manners and customs of the people. The Protestant clergy, in beginning their warfare against the ancient national faith, had idea of compromise or gradual change, like their brethren of England; instead of this they laid the axe to the root, and, after demolishing churches and monasteries, they waged the same war of extermination against every practice, custom, or ceremony that was in any way identified with the hostile creed. As soon, therefore, as they had proscribed the tenets, and banished the ceremonies, of popery, the victory was followed up by an irresistible attack upon masques, pageants, and plays, merry meetings and festivals,

p. 226.

Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.-Stow.-Pitscottie,

and all kinds of cheerful music and dancing, which last amusements the leader of the Scottisa Reformation had contemptuously branded by the names of "fiddling and flinging."* The ground being thus cleared, Presbyterianism became paramount, and then every church court and parish session was a sort of inquisition, before which not only greater offenders were cited, but all those who came short of certain qualifications which were thought essential for true professors of the gospel. Thus the anathema of the church was levelled against all who had a crucifix or popish painting in their possession, all who were guilty of excess at a feast, all who spent too much at a wedding, all who held or attended cheerful processions, or mingled in promiscuous dances, as well as against adultery, sacrilege, and murder. But this was not enough. Domestic life was invaded and its privacies explored, while every corner and cranny was rummaged in which sin could be supposed to find shelter. Even nonattendance on church, rashness in speech, an unadvised word, were all matters of ecclesiastical inquest. The kirk-session, also, soon became almost as powerful to punish as they were vigilant to detect. Besides having the sackcloth garment, the pillar of repentance, and the branks + under their entire control, as also the power of fining adult and scourging juvenile offenders, they could deliver a culprit to the secular arm with a recommendation (which was tantamount to a positive command) that he should be pilloried, imprisoned, whipt, or banished disgracefully by beat of drum. Gaiety and mirth of every kind were soon sobered by this ghostly domination, and the land was pervaded by a general gloom. The political events of the seventeenth century only tended to impress this character more deeply upon the nation. The Scotch, on the transference of their king and court to England, clung the more eagerly to their church having lost for a time their national politics, theology was adopted to fill up the void. On the subsequent attempts of the court to make Episcopacy paramount in Scotland, the people regarded the degradation of their kirk as an attempt to annihilate their national independence, and in that spirit they rallied round the Covenant with tenfold ardour. In the struggle that followed, the Scots, as might have been expected, only became more strictly Calvinistic and Presbyterian than ever, and a stern brow and austere demeanour were cultivated, as evidences not only of sound religion, but of true patriotism.

Knox's History of the Reformation.

The brauks was an instrument used for the punishment of scolds. It was a sort of head-piece, composed of iron hoops, and furnished with a gag of the same metal; and when the head of the culprit was secured, and the tongue made fast, the whole was closed by a padlock, by which a painful silence was inflicted for any giver. time. Some of these instruments, though long disused, are still preserved in churches. A representation of one of them, which the author was shown at Newcastle, in 1787, is given by Lackington, the bookseller, in his Memoirs of his Life, 8vo. 1791, p. 285.

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