Of the burning of old Major Weir and his sister on the Gallows Hill, near Edinburgh, in 1670, traditions still exist. Mr. Sinclair, a fatuous professor of philosophy at Glasgow University, thus describes the event: 66 'Major Thomas Weir was born in Clydsdaile, near to Lanerk, and he had been a lieutenant in Ireland long since. What way he came to get some publick command in the city of Edinburgh, in the year '49 and '53, we know not, but it seems he had always been called Major Weir since that time. It seems he had some charge over the waiters at the ports of the city, being, as it were, a check to them. Coming one day, as his custome was, he found some of them in a cellar, taking a cup of ale, neglecting their charge. After a gentle reproof, one of them replyed that, some of their number being on duty, the rest had retired to drink with their old friend and acquaintance Mr. Burn. At which word he started back, and, casting an eye upon him, repeated the word Burn four or five times; and, going home, he never any more came abroad till a few weeks after he had discovered his impieties. It was observed by some that, going to Liberton, he sometimes shunned to step over Liberton-burn, and went about to shun it. Some have conjectured that he had advise to beware of a burn or some other thing which this equivocal word might mean. If so, he had foreseen his day approaching. A year before he discovered himself he took a sore sickness, during which time he spake to all who visited him like an angel, and came frequently abroad again. "This man, taking some dreadful tortures of conscience, and the terrours of the Almighty being upon his spirit, confessed to several neighbours in his own house, and that most willingly, his particular sins which he was guilty of, which bred amazement to all persons, they coming from a man of so high a repute of religion and piety. He ended with this remarkable expresssion: 'Before God,' says he, 'I have not told you the hundred part of that I can say more and am guilty of.' These same abominations he confessed before the judges likewise. But after this he would never to his dying hour confess any more, which might have been for the glorifying of God and the edification of others, but remained stupid, having no confidence to look any man in the face, or to open his eyes. "When two of the magistrates came to his house in the night time, to carry him to prison, they asked if he had any money to secure? He answered, none. His sister said there was, whereupon, to the value of five dollars, in parcels here and there, were found in several clouts. His sister advised the two magistrates to secure his staff especially; for she also went to prison. After he was secured in the Tolbooth, the bailies returned, and went into a tavern near to Weir's house, in the West Bow, a street so called there. The money was put into a bag, and the clouts thrown into the fire by the master of the house and his wife, which, after an unusual manner, made a circling and dancing in the fire. There was another clout found, with some hard thing in it, which they threw into the fire likewise; it being a certain root which circled and sparkled like gunpowder, and passing from the tunnel of the chimney, it gave a crack like a little cannon, to the amazement of all that were present. "The money aforesaid was taken by one of the two bailies to his own house, and laid by in his closet. After family prayer was ended, he retired into the same closet (where I have been), during which time his wife (who is yet living) and the rest of the family were affrighted with a terrible noise within the study, like the falling of an house, about three times together. His wife, knocking, gave a fearful cry: 'My dear, are you alive?' The bailie came out unafrayed, having (as he said) heard nothing. The money was presently sent away to the other bailie's house, a great distance from Weir's, where, as was reported, there was some disturbance, but in broken expressions. "During the time of his imprisonment Weir was never willing to be spoken to, and when the ministers of the city offered to pray for him he would cry out in fury, Torment me no more, for I am tormented already.' One minister (now asleep), asking him if he should pray for him, was answered, 'Not at all.' The other replied in a kind of holy anger, Sir, I will pray for you in spite of your teeth, and the devil your master too,' who did pray, making him at least to hear him; but the other, staring wildly, was senseless as a brute. Another, who is likewise at rest, demanded if he thought there was a God. Said the man, 'I know not.' That other smartly replied, 'Oh, man, the argument that moveth me to think there is a God is thyself, for what else moved thee to inform the world of thy wicked life.' But Weir answered, 'Let me alone.' When he peremptorily forbade one of his own parish ministers (yet alive) to pray, one demanded Sir, The major's poor old half-crazed sister came next to the gallows. She confessed various horrible crimes, which most probably had never been committed. She also owned that the Queen of the Fairies had helped her in spinning, and that her brother and friend, soon after the battle of Worcester, had driven to Dalkeith in a (most uncomfortable !) fiery chariot. On the scaffold the poor wretch tried to strip off her clothes, in order to die with the greatest shame possible, and the rough executioner had at last to fling her by force from the ladder. Her last words were true to the sect to which her brother had claimed to belong: if he would have any of the Presbyterian on, if by the lanthorn they could see what persuasion to pray. He answered, she was; but haste what they could, this you are now all alike to me.' Then said long-legged spectre was still before them, the minister to him, 'I will pray with moving her body with a vehement cachinyou.' 'Do it not,' said the other, 'upon nation a great unmeasurable laughter. your peril,' looking up to the beams of the At this rate the two strove for place, till house. But prayer was offered up so much the giantess came to a narrow lane in the the more heartily, because the company Bow, commonly called the Stinking Closs, about expected some vision. It is ob- into which she turned; and the gentleservable that, in things common, he was woman looking after her, perceived the pertinent enough; but when anything about Closs full of flaming torches (she could Almighty God and his soul's condition give them no other name), and as it had came about, he would shrug and rub his been a great multitude of people, stencoat and breast, saying to them, Torment toriously laughing and gapping with takies me not before the time.' When he was at of laughter." the stake to be burnt, the city minister called to a churchman there looking on, being one of that persuasion whereof Weir was formerly deemed to be, to speak to him; but no sooner he opened his mouth, than he made a sign with his hand and his head to be silent. When the rope was about his neck to prepare him for the fire, he was bid say, 'Lord be merciful to me !' But he answered, 'Let me alone, I will not; I have lived as a beast, and I must die as a beast.' The fire being kindled, both he and his staff, a little after, fell into the flames. Whatever incantation was in his staff is not for me to discuss. He could not officiate in any holy duty without this rod in his hand, and leaning upon it, which made those who heard him pray admire his fluency in prayers. Its falling into the fire with him (let others search out the disparity) minds me of this passage. In Shetland a few years ago a judge having condemned an old woman and her daughter, called Helen Stewart, for witchcraft, sent them to be burned. The maid was so stupid that she was thought to be possessed. When she had hung some little time on the gibbet a black, pitchy-like ball foamed out of her mouth; and after the fire was kindled it grew to the bigness of a walnut, and then flew up like squibs into the air, which the judge, yet living, attests. It was taken to be a visible sign that the devil was gone out of her. 66 Many," she said, "weep and lament for a poor old wretch like me, but, alas! few are weeping for a broken covenant." Sir Walter Scott, in his Demonology and Witchcraft, describes Major Weir's house, at the head of the West Bow, as then in the course of being destroyed. It was a gloomy, high-storied structure, with the usual outside stairs of the Old Town fortresses of poverty, and it had been alternately_a brazier's shop and a magazine for lint. In his High School days, Sir Walter Scott says, no family would inhabit the haunted house, and bold was the urchin who dared approach the gloomy ruin, at the risk of seeing the major's enchanted staff parading through the old apartments, or hearing the hum of his sister's necromantic wheel." "Some few days before he discovered him- In 1727, the last witch was burnt in self, a gentlewoman coming from the Castle Scotland. She was a poor, half imbecile Hill, where her husband's niece was lay- old Highland woman, near Littledean, in ing-in of a child, about midnight perceived Sutherland, who was accused of having inabout the Bow-head three women in win-duced the devil to shoe her lame daughter, dows, shouting, laughing, and clapping their hands. The gentlewoman went forward, till just at Major Weir's door there arose, as from the street, a woman above the length of two ordinary females, and stepped forward. The gentlewoman, not as yet excessively feared, bid her maid step to serve as a horse on which to ride to witches' meetings. The poor old crone (and how pathetic the picture is!) is said to have sat by the fire prepared for her death warming herself calmly, while the wood was being heaped ready for the execution. In 1736, the cruel witchcraft Act was repealed, much to the anger of the more zealous Presbyterians. The last authentic witch-trial in England, according to Mrs. Linton, who has studied the subject, and written a most interesting book upon it, was in 1712, when Jane Wenham, of Walkerne, a little village in the north of Hertfordshire, was sentenced to death, but eventually, thanks to a humane judge, obtained a pardon. Yet still this wise and over self-satisfied century must remember that so conservative are folly and superstition, that only the other day an English labourer was brought before a magistrate for trying to disenchant himself by scoring a supposed witch "above the breath." ONLY A PASSING THOUGHT. That came o'er my mind like a ray of the sun If we knew but how to profit By wisdom dearly bought: Why should the nations fight, my friend, It seems to me, as I say to thee, There needs but the breath of love and faith To right the weary wrong, To right the weary wrong, my friend, But though only a passing thought, my friend, That thoughts have a fashion to grow to deeds Under the ripening sky. So pass it on; let it walk or run, Or fly on the wings of the wind, AMONG THE MARKETS. IN TWO PARTS. PART II. LET us stroll along Coventry-street, and across Leicester-square, that spot dear to the heart of the refugee-famous for its regular production of dead cats as some unworthy fields are for their regular crops of stones-and turning up a narrow court to our left, we shall find ourselves all at once in Newport Market. Struggling through a chaos of vegetables, we are in a long, narrow, paved alley, crowded thickly on either side with butchers' shops. "Buy! buy! what'e buy?" is the word. Brisk acolytes skirmish around us, brandishing formidable knives and truculent-looking cleavers. Joints, prime, middle, and common, hang about in sanguinary profusion; while a brisk business is going on in smaller pieces, scrag, sticking-piece, or those mysterious morsels of meat popularly known as "block ornaments." Hither come the proprietors of dingy restaurants scattered about Soho, where melancholy imitations of French dishes-alas! how different from the divine originals-are vended, at infinitesimal prices, to seedy men in strange attire-men full of schemes for the regene ration of mankind, but inappreciative of the virtues of clean linen-men skilled in many sciences and learned in various tongues, but ignorant, it would seem, of the chemical operation of soap and water when briskly applied to the human body. Hither, too, at the stroke of noon, comes the British artisan in quest of his simple, but wholesome, strength-giving dinner. Tom Painter walks up to the shop he most affects, and with a scornful glance at the odds and ends-heart, liver, and other "innards "—with an impatient push past leathern-faced old hags chaffering for block ornaments, turning over with unwashed hands, and even testing by the evidence of their olfactory organs the freshness of a doubtful morsel-T. P. selects a prime piece of beef, commands the butcher to cut him his half-pound of steak from that piece, and "just there," indicating with his finger the favoured spot. Having carefully wrapped his steak in a fresh cabbage-leaf, T. P. now hies him to the "pub" he " Ordering his pint of beer, and handing over his meat to the attendant sprite, Tom whiles away the time with the Morning Advertiser till his steak arrives hissing hot, and falling to with relish, the honest fellow heartily enjoys his well-earned meal. uses. Our friend Tom has probably consumed as much, if not in actual weight, certainly in money value, as would, laid out to better advantage, and aided by a little decent cookery, have provided a meal for his entire family; but Tom has an honest and thoroughly English horror of any piece of meat not distinctly traceable to the animal and portion of the animal whence it was hewed. "Likes to know," he says, "whether it's dog or whether it's horse," and abhors all messes and kickshaws as only fit for Frenchmen, who being brought up, and even weaned on frogs, of course know no C better. If his work be not too far off, T. P. indulges in "a pipe and half a screw,' and during his dinner-hour is a happy man. Perhaps the only comfortable hour out of his twenty-four is the one spent on the sanded floor of the Cantankerous Crocodile, for his home is not a very cheerfulness. This hunger-compelling scent proone, poor fellow. The "missis" does her best, good soul, but the "kids" are always teething or having the measles, and as soon as Tommy gets over the croup, Jenny is barking her poor little heart out with the hooping-cough. of "the double," dined gloriously upon the same, assisted only by a lump of bread, a pinch of salt, and a pint of "aff-naff." Late on certain evenings the nostrils of the wanderer in Newport Market are assailed by an odour of exceeding savouri Large baskets, resting on the stalwart arms of stout Frenchwomen, come to Newport Market, and are certain to be stored with the cheaper pieces of meat, not forgetting bones for soup-making, eggs, and endless onions, mighty carrots, and crisp heads of celery, peering cunningly from beneath the half-opened basket lid. All this carefully assorted vegetable matter will Jonvert the humble shin of beef into the savoury dishes denounced by our friend T. P. as "messes." ceeds from a singular dish called "faggots," all hot-round lumps compounded, it is believed, chiefly of the interior organs of animals, highly seasoned; the faggot is, indeed, a sort of degenerate Southron imitation of the Scottish national dish, haggis. Hungry children crowd round the steaming dishes of brown and savoury spheres, greedily inhaling the delightful odour, while those happy in the accidental possession of "browns," rush to gratify their appetites in more substantial fashion. Under the flaring gas-lights slipshod girls, carrying basins hidden under their pinafores, bear off triumphantly their supper to the poor home, where probably even such slender meals as faggots" afford are somewhat scarce. The swine-savoury food of the Saxon- Hidden away in the dingy regions of Finsis well represented in Newport Market. bury is a small market, the site whereof is For roasting or boiling, either to be served now advertised for sale. The huge board brown and crisp with toothsome crackling, announcing the approaching sale and deor seethed to serve as an humble hand-molition of the entire institution would in maiden to the delicate capon or lordly itself produce a depressing effect were it turkey. Sausages in endless rows tempt not at once evident that the market has prothose admirers within whom faith is not bably nearly abolished itself. If any busidead; tripe, and eke cow-heel, excite the ness were ever done there it must have all gastronomic propensities of the boys who been done with long ago. There appears hail from "Brummagem." On Wednes- to be very little meat for sale at Finsbury days and Fridays there is a brisk trade Market, the wealth of its wares seeming doing in tripe. Wholesome and tender rather to consist of stray bunches of attripe is a decided favourite, owing, possibly, tenuated-looking carrots, forlorn turnips, to its elastic properties. Deftly prepared pale with rage at their excessive distance with onions and milk, it yields to no from anything resembling a leg of mutton, food in the world for lightness and digesti- and hopeless potatoes, evidently wishing bility; fried in batter, it makes a more that the sack were closed over their eyes, ostentatious dish, while, if cheapness be weary with looking for the customers who the main object to be attained, it can be never come. eaten, by a hungry man, cold, as purchased in the tripe-seller's shop. Many years ago, I knew a foreign gentleman (slightly at issue with the powers reigning on the continent of Europe at that time, in consequence of a benevolent project he had once entertained for blowing the Germanic Diet into the air), who generally commenced the day (about two P.M.) with a light repast consisting of a cup of coffee, a cigarette, and a game of chess at a neighbouring cigar-shop, preserving, by this temperate breakfast, an unimpaired appetite for dinner. On tripe days, at the canonical hour of six P.M., he visited the tripe-shop, and selecting a choice morsel On mature reflection I have come to the conclusion that the market is only kept open through downright English adherence to obsolete forms, that the merchants expose a few vegetables for form's sake only, and then consume the dusty carrots, forlorn turnips, and gritty salads themselves. The whole neighbourhood has a weary and seedy air, as if it were tired of the sham, and would be heartily glad of the advent of some newer and stronger organisation. Let us go on through some sleepy-looking streets till Curtain-road is at last reached, and here it seems at the first blush as if the entire population were about to undertake the operation known as "shooting the moon." Furniture in the roads, furniture in the pathways, furniture in passages. Everywhere nothing but chairs and sofas, ready packed for travelling. On closer inspection, however, it turns out that all this furniture is entirely new, and that furniture is the staple product of this remote region. Shoreditch Church now heaves in sight, and a little beyond it is a very imposing pile of building in the Italian Gothic style. This is Columbia Market, built at an immense expense by the Baroness Burdett Coutts, and by that munificent lady presented a few weeks since to the corporation of the City of London. London is famous for its surprises: elegant churches buried in reeking slums, and ambitious mausoleums rearing their heads in the back yards of dismal, gauntlooking warehouses, are common enough, but the traveller is scarcely prepared for so rich an architectural apparition as Columbia Market in the dreary regions of Shoreditch. Its construction came about in this wise. Some few years ago, during the reign of Sir Richard Mayne, that autocrat issued a ukase, decreeing the virtual abolition of the costermonger. The kerbstone business was henceforth to cease. The coster himself was to share the fate of the Charley," and such like old world entities, he, his fur cap, his highlows, his plush waistcoat, glittering with pearl buttons, his short-pipe, his "kingsman," his "Whitechapel brougham" and his "Jerusalem pony," were to be relegated to the limbo of extinct institutions. The Baroness Burdett Coutts at once extended her warmest sympathy to the poor fellows who were to be suddenly deprived of the only livelihood they were capable of earning. 46 Much marvelling "where the poor donkeys lived," this charitable lady decided on building a market, which should, by removing the kerbstone traffic to one central spot, enable the poor itinerant retailer to sell his little stock of rabbits, fish, or vegetables without falling under the ban of the police. The present site was selected, a network of dirty streets and noisome alleys disappeared as if by magic, and the new market was commenced in earnest. No sooner was that market fairly begun than, with the consistency and steadiness of purpose so eminently characteristic of our police magnates, the late czar rescinded his severe edict, and the costermonger, endowed with a fresh lease of life, knotted his kingsman round his brawny throat, hitched his much-enduring donkey to his barrow, and proclaimed the excellence of his wares in louder and hoarser tones than ever. Meanwhile the designs for the market assumed grander proportions, and a stately structure astonished the eyes of the natives of Shoreditch and Bethnal Green. The original benevolent purpose of the noble founder being rendered abortive, the building was continued on a more ambitious scale than had been intended, and the present handsome structure was opened as a general market, on April the 28th, 1869. A large quadrangle for the wholesale dealers was enclosed by handsome Gothic houses, shops for retailers, and pretty arched colonnades, with abundant stone benches, probably for the accommodation of "loafers" generally. The market was opened, it is true, and only required two elements to insure success, that is, buyers and sellers. Nobody took anything there to sell, and if he had done so nobody would have gone there to buy it; the costermonger preferred, as an astute man of business, his regular beat, regular customers, and certain profits; the few adventurous spirits who had speculated to the extent of taking shops or stands, gave it up as a bad job, and in too many cases skedaddled," in defiance of the laws of landlord and tenant. Proving an utter failure as a retail market, the Columbia building was re opened as a wholesale fish market, on February the 21st, 1870, and dragged on a languid existence till a short time ago, when the generous baroness handed over the entire property, costing little less than three hundred thousand pounds, to the corporation, engaging herself to build, at a further cost of sixty thousand pounds, a tramway to the terminus of the Eastern Counties Railway. It is not altogether impossible that when the tramway is com pleted (within two years hence), Columbia Market, in the hands of the City authorities, will become a formidable rival, if not the absolute successor of Billingsgate. The railway connexion with Harwich being made perfect, fishing-sloops will be able to discharge their cargoes at that port into railway cars running straight from Harwich into the market itself, thus saving all the time occupied in the tedious voyage up the Thames. The great bogy, Vested Interest, will rear his head on high, fight his hardest to defeat this project, and raise innumer able difficulties, according to custom, but the direct communication with Harwich |