About the time referred to in this volume, the central line of street between the West Bow and Nether Bow was the chief place of merchandise in Edinburgh, the Cowgate and Canongate being more specially the residence of the nobility, gentry, and great ecclesiastics. There were two chief classes of goods dealt in, each mainly confined to a particular section of the street. What was called _Inland Merchandise_, or _Inland’sh Goods_—namely, yarn, stockings, coarse cloth, and other such articles made at home—were, by a charter of 1477, ordained to be sold in the upper part of the street, then without a special name, but which is subsequently referred to as the _Land-market_—apparently an abbreviation of _Inland Market_, from the description of goods sold in it. Down to recent times, such goods continued to be chiefly sold there, by people occupying _laigh shops_, and on a certain day exposing their wares by ancient privilege on the open street. The remainder of the High Street was chiefly devoted to a superior class of traders, calling themselves _Merchants_, dealers in imported wares of various kinds, and each occupying a booth or shop, besides whatever other warehouses in more retired situations. Wholesale and retail dealers alike passed under this name, as is still, indeed, the case to a considerable extent in Scotland, where it has always been remarked that there was a peculiar liberality or courtesy in the distribution of names and titles. We frequently hear in the journalists and chroniclers of the old time, of the _Merchants Buithes_, or shops. The only other kind of shops in those days was the kind called _krames_, generally very small, made out of mere angles of property, or insinuated between the buttresses of St Giles’s Kirk, and chiefly devoted to the sale of toys and other petty articles. We often hear of _krames_, of _kramers_ (that is, krame-keepers), and _kramery_ (that is, small wares sold in krames) in the familiar histories of that age, and in old titles. Dunbar, the early Scottish poet, describes these shops very aptly as ‘Hampered in ane honey-kaim,’