a white cloth carried before them on a staff, perambulated the city, adding the terror of man’s justice to the fear of God’s visitation.  The dead they buried on the Borough Muir; the living who had concealed the sickness were drowned, if they were women, in the Quarry Holes, and if they were men, were hanged and gibbeted at their own doors; and wherever the evil had passed, furniture was destroyed and houses closed.  And the most bogeyish part of the story is about such houses.  Two generations back they still stood dark and empty; people avoided them as they passed by; the boldest schoolboy only shouted through the keyhole and made off; for within, it was supposed, the plague lay ambushed like a basilisk, ready to flow forth and spread blain and pustule through the city.  What a terrible next-door neighbour for superstitious citizens!  A rat scampering within would send a shudder through the stoutest heart.  Here, if you like, was a sanitary parable, addressed by our uncleanly forefathers to their own neglect.

And then we have Major Weir; for although even his house is now demolished, old Edinburgh cannot clear herself of his unholy memory.  He and his sister lived together in an odour of sour piety.  She was a marvellous spinster; he had a rare gift of supplication, and was known among devout admirers by the name of Angelical Thomas.  ’He was a tall, black man, and ordinarily looked down to the ground; a grim countenance, and a big nose.  His garb was still a cloak, and somewhat dark, and he never went without his staff.’  How it came about that Angelical Thomas was burned in company with his staff, and his sister in gentler manner hanged, and whether these two were simply religious maniacs of the more furious order, or had real as well as imaginary sins upon their old-world shoulders, are points happily beyond the reach of our intention.  At least, it is suitable enough that out of this superstitious city some such example should have been put forth:  the outcome and fine flower of dark and vehement religion.  And at least the facts struck the public fancy and brought forth a remarkable family of myths.  It would appear that the Major’s staff went upon his errands, and even ran before him with a lantern on dark nights.  Gigantic females, ’stentoriously laughing and gaping with tehees of laughter’ at unseasonable hours of night and morning, haunted the purlieus of his abode.  His house fell under such a load of infamy that no one dared to sleep in it, until municipal improvement levelled the structure to the ground.  And my father has often been told in the nursery how the devil’s coach, drawn by six coal-black horses with fiery eyes, would drive at night into the West Bow, and belated people might see the dead Major through the glasses.