tails in a tow to dry their stocking soles, and let them know what hanging was.” Villon had long before sung on a near prospect of the gallows— “Or d’une corde d’une toise Saura mon col que mon cul poise.” But you are sure Patrick had never heard of François, and the same dismally ludicrous idea had occurred independently. [Illustration: ALLAN RAMSAY, POET, From an Engraving after William Aikman] Certain picturesque figures or rather classes of men lent a quaint or comic touch to the streets of old Edinburgh, but all are long swept into Time’s dustbin. One of these consisted of the chairmen. The Old Town was not the place for carriages; cabs were not yet, and even to-day they do not suit its steep and narrow ways; but the sedan chair was the very thing, you could trundle it commodiously up and down hill, and narrow must have been the close through which it could not pass. The chairmen who bore the burden of the chair were mainly Highlanders, who flocked to Edinburgh as the Irish did afterwards, and in early days formed a distinct element in city life. They are reported as of insatiable greed, but their earnings probably were but small and uncertain. Still such was their reputation, and it was once put to the test to decide a wager. Lord Panmure hired a chair and proceeded a short way down the Canongate. When he got out he handed the chairman a guinea. Millionaires were not yet in the land, possibly the chairman imagined he had found a benevolent lunatic, or he may even have smelt a wager. “But could her honour no’ shuist gie the ither sixpence to get a gill?” The coin was duly handed over, then Donald thought he might do something for his companion and preferred a modest request for “three bawbees of odd change to puy snuff.” But even the chairmen had another side. Among them was Edmund Burke, who died in 1751. He had been an attendant on Prince Charlie, and had as easily as you like netted £30,000 by treachery, for such was the handsome price fixed for the young chevalier, “dead or alive”; but it never crossed his mind to earn it!