Those who dwelt on top had no desire to spend their strength in carrying down the corkscrew stairs matter which would descend by the force of gravity if pitched from the window or door; so the wayfarer, especially after dusk, would be greeted with cries of 'Get oot o' the gait!' or 'Gardy loo!' which was in the French 'Gardez l'eau,' and which would have been understood in any language, I fancy, after a little experience.

The streets then were filled with the debris flung from a hundred upper windows, while certain ground-floor tenants, such as butchers and candlemakers, contributed their full share to the fragrant heaps.

As for these too seldom used narrow turnpike stairs, imagine the dames of fashion tilting their vast hoops and silken show-petticoats up and down in them! That swine roamed at will in these Elysian fields is to be presumed, since we have this amusing picture of three High Street belles and beauties in the Traditions of Edinburgh:-- 'So easy were the manners of the great, fabled to be so stiff and decorous,' says the author, 'that Lady Maxwell's daughter Jane, who afterward became the Duchess of Gordon, was seen riding a sow up the High Street, while her sister Eglantine (afterwards Lady Wallace of Craigie) thumped lustily behind with a stick.' No wonder, in view of all this, that King James VI., when about to bring home his 'darrest spous,' Anne of Denmark, wrote to the Provost, 'For God's sake see a' things are richt at our hame-coming; a king with a new-married wife doesna come hame ilka day.' Had it not been for these royal home-comings and visits of distinguished foreigners, now and again aided by something still more salutary, an occasional outbreak of the plague, the easy-going authorities would never have issued any 'cleaning edicts,' and the still easier-going inhabitants would never have obeyed them.

It was these dark, tortuous wynds and closes, nevertheless, that made up the Court End of Old Edinbro'; for some one writes in 1530, 'Via vaccarum in qua habitant patricii et senatores urbis' (The nobility and chief senators of the city dwell in the Cowgate).

And as for the Canongate, this Saxon gaet or way of the Holy rood canons, it still sheltered in 1753 'two dukes, sixteen earls, two dowager countesses, seven lords, seven lords of session, thirteen baronets, four commanders of the forces in Scotland, and five eminent men,'-- fine game indeed for Mally Lee! 'A' doun alang the Canongate Were beaux o' ilk degree; And mony ane turned round to look At bonny Mally Lee.
And we're a' gaun east an' west, We're a' gaun agee, We're a' gaun east an' west Courtin' Mally Lee!' Every corner bristles with memories.