Great Scot! pt. 2/5

Down the Royal Mile

The first thing Bonnie and I did on the Sunday was take a walking tour of Edinburgh. The tour company is called Sandeman’s and operate all over Europe. They were a free tour option and in 2.5 hours were able to speak about the history of the city and some of the history of the country. Our tour guide Sabela was wonderful and she really made the history of the city come to life.

At a close

The tour started with the history of the country from a geological perspective before getting into the people that have influenced Scotland. This part of the tour explains the formation of the Highlands that happened because Scotland collided into England. It also talks about the 7 hills of Edinburgh, most of which are dead volcanoes.

The prison

This portion of the tour also gave us the history of the people who have lived in Scotland. It started with the Picts, who were the reason that the Romans didn’t stay very long and built Hadrian’s Wall to the south. These picts painted themselves blue and fought in practically nothing, their descendants still claim residence in Scotland and apparently can be identified because they will forgo the warm clothing as winter draws in. Then north of Hadrian’s wall the country belonged to the Picts, the Scots, Vikings and the Irish, all of which eventually became united under a common enemy to the south.  

Skip forward many years Scotland is then left without a monarch and so they go to England asking Edward I what they should do. He then picks a fairly weak leader who will be his puppet. However from this the people of Scotland are not happy, and up come their great hero William Wallace (Braveheart). I will go into more detail about him when I talk about my visit to Stirling Castle, the area where he won the battle of Stirling Bridge. After William Wallace the next person to take charge of the country was Robert the Bruce and he was the true hero that saved Scotland from English rule.

 

Edinburgh castle

The tour starts on the Royal Mile, so called because the street is capped at one end by Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace at the other end. This road also serves at the spine of Old Town Edinburgh. With numerous small closes running down either side

St. Giles

We found ourselves outside of St. Giles Cathedral (which really can’t hold cathedral status because it doesn’t have a bishop, but the name has stuck) and heard the story of the battle of the stools. Which a hilariously Scottish story of a woman who was sitting in mass when she noticed that the service was different and from a new religion that she got so angry she picked up her stool and hit the priest in the head with it. The rest of the congregation then followed her move and nearly killed the priest.

Merat Cross Pediment

At the corner of St. Giles there is also the Mercat Cross pediment, which is where the new from England would be announced 3 days later (the time it took to get from London to Edinburgh). Also to preserve that tradition when Prince George was born the news was announced from there 3 days after his birth.

One of the most common sights in all of Scotland and at the top of the Mercat Cross is a unicorn with chains around its feet and a crown around its neck. This is because the national animal of Scotland is the Unicorn – proving to not let drunk Scots vote on their own national animal. The choice of this animal also draws back to their history of being untameable and wild. The crown and chains represent the English who put it on all the unicorns to show that they could capture the Scots, however the fact that they remain on the unicorns show that it does take all that strength to keep the Scots.

Skyscraper

Edinburgh is also one of the first cities to have skyscrapers. Not in the sense of New York or London, but that the houses that were originally built were called skyscrapers. This is because the city was walled in from the Castle down to World’s

End. So having nowhere to build but up, which is what the people did.

Near the Mercat Cross on the ground is a heart. This heart is a little bit odd, that is because it has nothing to do with love or something good. It is known as the Heart of Midlothian and marks the place where public executions used to take place. Currently it is the only place in Edinburgh where it is ok to spit on the ground, apparently you can tell locals from tourists by how they react to the heart. Locals will spit and avoid the heart, where tourists think it is something cute and pose beside.

Heart of Midlothian

From there we walked up towards the castle and got a good view down the Royal Mile. We also got a story about the city in medieval era. When the city had been walled in the waste was just tossed out of windows. There had been some much of it and it was constant they told people that they could only toss it at night. When they were tossing it they would shout out of the windows: “Gardyloo” which comes from the French: “Garde a l’eau” meaning ‘beware of the water.’ So people out at night after a few drinks would be walking in between the narrow alleyways and hear that being shouted so they would look up just in time to see the waste hit their face. This they say gave birth to phrase: “SHITFACED” for being drunk.

One of the most significant things about Edinburgh is that it is the literary capital of the world. This is because the city was home or the birthplace of some of the world’s most famous writers. The most celebrated in the city is Sir Walter Scott, but there are quite a few others as well. Sir Walter Scott does have his own monument and it is the world’s largest monument dedicated to an author. The other famous authors that have ties to Edinburgh are Arthur Conan Doyle who was born in the city, Irvine Welsh, J.M. Barrie and probably the most famous J.K Rowling who wrote Harry Potter in Edinburgh and currently lives in the city.

In fact there is a lot of reference to things in Edinburgh that are seen in the Harry Potter series. There is a road that does run on a diagonal, and most likely inspired Diagon Alley. There is the George Heriot School, which has four houses and looks like a palace, obviously inspiring Hogwarts. Finally there is a cemetery that has graves with the names Moody, McGonagall and there is one to Tom Riddell (which is Lord Voldemort’s real name).

Before we finished the tour we saw what is Edinburgh’s most famous statue. That of Bobby the skye terrier. It is a dog that was made a citizen of Edinburgh because of what he stood for. He was the dog of a night police officer, who when he passed away Bobby would sit on top of his grave everyday and he did that for 14 years until his own passing.

This has been a very wordy blog post, but I did learn a lot about the city and its history on the walking tour. I wanted to share some of that knowledge. There is still more that I have to say and it will appear in the next few blogs.