One other Edinburgh figure of the seventeenth century must be mentioned, the notorious Major Weir, whose story is said to have suggested the character of _Manfred_ to Byron. He lived in “the sanctified bends of the Bow,” which was, at the end of the seventeenth century, a nest of pharisaical fanatics known as “Bow-head saints.” Of these Major Weir was one. He had “a grim countenance and a big nose”; he wore a black [Illustration: THE MARTYRS’ MONUMENT IN THE GRAVEYARD OF GREYFRIARS’ To the left of the spire of the Tolbooth Church, in the centre of the picture, and next the city wall, stands the Martyrs’ Monument, in front of which is the figure of a girl; above the figure appear some houses in Candlemaker Row. The low building on the extreme left of the picture is the old guardhouse. The duty of the guard was to prevent the stealing of bodies from the graveyard. The elaborate monument on the right of the picture is one of many erected in this graveyard during the early part of the eighteenth century.] cloak and carried a black staff; he was “notoriously regarded among the Presbyterian strict sect”; and “at private meetings he prayed to admiration.” In short, he was a pattern of sanctity, and was known among the “Holy sisters” of the Bow as “Angelical Thomas.” Alas! Angelical Thomas was not what he seemed. He never broke the Sabbath, but then he broke every other commandment in the Decalogue. When he was nearly seventy a severe illness led him to confess a long list of peculiarly horrible crimes. Perhaps, in this more prosaic age, the Major’s form of religion, his illness, his crimes and his confessions would all have been attributed to the same cause, and have landed him comfortably in an asylum for the insane. As he lived in the good old times, he was strangled and burnt between Edinburgh and Leith; whilst his sister Grizel, in deference to her sex, was gently hanged in the Grassmarket. Round the names of Major Weir and his sister a hundred gruesome legends sprang up, and “fearsome sichts were seen” in the West Bow; and the house that he had occupied there remained uninhabited and haunted until 1878, when it was pulled down.