PRINCES STEEET GARDENS 



quence of the good folk preparing supper, he would 

 say, 'It is time, noo, bairns, to tak the buiks and 

 gang to our beds, for yonder's Auld Reekie, I 

 see, putting on her nightcap/' And the nickname 

 was confirmed and made irrevocable by a later and 

 greater authority than James Durham. " Yonder 

 stands Auld Reekie," says Adam Woodcock to 

 young Roland Graeme, "you may see the smoke 

 hover over her at twentj^ miles distant, as the gos- 

 hawk hangs over a plump of young wild ducks/' i 



Of fresh air and light there is no lack in modern 

 Edinburgh. One longs to bring back Sir William 

 Brereton, were it but to cause him to recant the 

 harsh judgment he passed upon the city in 1636. 



" The sluttishness and nastiness of this people is such that 

 I cannot omit the particularizing thereof. . . their houses and 

 halls and kitchens have such a noisome taste, a savour, and 

 that so strong, as it doth offend you so soon as you come 

 within their wall ; yea, sometimes when I have light from my 

 horse, I have felt the distaste of it before I have come into 

 my house ; yea, I never came to my own lodging in Edinburgh, 

 or went out, but I was constrained to hold my nose, or to 

 use wormwood, or some such scented plant." 



Much more and worse has this stern old Puritan 

 to reproach the sanitation of Edinburgh withal ; but 

 that was more than two centuries before Sir 

 Henry Littlejohn appeared on the scene. 2 



1 The Abbot, chap. xvii. 



2 Sir Henry was chief sanitary authority in the city for forty-six years, retiring 

 under the Civil Service age regulations in 1906 with a remarkable record of good 

 work to his credit, and, it is to be hoped, many years of well-earned repose before him. 



55 



