Blaeu Atlas of Scotland, 1654
| Name: | Buchanan, David, 1595?-1652? |
| Title: | Provinciae Edinburgenae descriptio |
| Pagination: | 6-7 |
| Zoom view: | Click on the image to view in greater detail |
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Translation of text:
Dalhousie Castle is ample and well fortified, scil. surrounded by a pinnacled wall of quite polished workmanship, also with a strong tower built at each angle. Borthwick Castle is a large tower, strong and of great height; and it is all, large as it is, inside and out of even more polished workmanship; its walls are more than fifteen feet thick. At the base of the tower an excellent spring flows up spontaneously without digging. There is there a house well lit with windows, and sufficiently fitted out with other requisites for habitation. Crichton Castle is a house of good and strong construction; its position is not without beauty, for it has annexed to it a wood and enclosed pastures. Calder Palace is a large and ample house, quite beautifully set on a hill, surrounded with streams on all sides. To it on the south is joined a spacious wood, from which one may look out over a lovely plain eight miles long, to the west. Hatton is a house of much strength and good structure, of quite polished workmanship, and is surrounded by a manteled wall. Here Roslin must not be passed over in silence; it occupies the summit of a steep rock on the edge of the North Esk in a spot full of pleasure, exulting in the beauty of the river flowing smoothly past and in the joyous prospect of the woods all around. No entrance leads to it, except by a drawbridge stretched from the top of both rock and house (for the height of each is the same) to the very end of the bridge of Roslin. As for the interior arrangement of the house, all its rooms, divisions and chambers, and the stairs by which one descends to each of them, are cut out of the solid rock, so that each room or chamber is made out of one piece of stone. Roslin Chapel, of all the stone buildings of this kingdom, is elaborated with the greatest care, so that hardly anywhere could you find a work in stone more beautiful to the eye or of more exquisite artifice. Not far from Roslin, but a little to the east, in the cave of Thorns lies a quite large tavern, divided into three chambers, each further in than the other; to it there is a single entrance, and that so narrow that it hardly exceeds a table in width. Those climbing to it from either side are struck by some fear and sometimes also vertigo from the river flowing below at a distance of 100 yards, which licks in its course the foot of the rock containing the cave. Near Liberton Church, but more to the south, at St Catharines Chapel, a spring bursts out that is worth mention, because along with its water in the morning it bubbles with oil, or rather a kind of viscose and fatty balsam. The owners of the neighbouring fields collect and preserve it for ten months of the year; for it is a customary medicine of use for curing dislocations, inflammations, bruises, burns, contusions, compressions and various other diseases. This province encompasses two presbyteries, Edinburgh and Dalkeith. Edinburgh Presbytery consists of the following parishes: viz. six within Edinburgh itself, which are served for divine ordinances by twelve Ministers; then the parish of the Canongate, or if you prefer of Holyrood; and twelve rural parishes, namely South Leith, North Leith, Duddingston, Liberton, St Cuthberts, Hailes, Corstorphine, Cramond, Currie, Ratho and Kirknewton. Dalkeith Presbytery is made up of fifteen parishes, which are: Inveresk, Newton, Dalkeith, Lasswade, Glencorse, Penicuik, Newbattle, Cockpen, Carrington, Temple, Heriot, Borthwick, Crichton, Cranston and Fala. Further, in addition to the listed parishes, these four are included in the area of this province: Calder Clear, East and West Calder, and Stobo; the last of these belongs to Eddleston Presbytery, the remainder to Linlithgow. This province is self-sufficient in everything needed for the use of the inhabitants: for it abounds in crops of all kinds, such as wheat, winter-wheat, barley, oats, etc. It is also not lacking in its own pastures, enclosures and meadows, in which apart from the flocks of sheep and herds of cattle necessary for agriculture and living, it rears very many pack-horses destined for conveying everyday produce for eating, drinking and selling from the neighbouring towns, villages and country-houses to Edinburgh. The [baculi] and carriers of Leith and Edinburgh also make very frequent use of them is carrying and drawing from Leith to Edinburgh all kinds of merchandise imported by sea, because the city of Edinburgh is more than a mile from the port of Leith, which it uses as its own. The more notable mountains of this province are first the Pentland Hills, which run over a long area from east to west and are prominent in the more southern parts of the province; then Calton Hill, and Corstorphine Hill. But most celebrated of all are Salisbury Crags, and sitting on them Arthur’s Seat, prominent near the area of the Cross or if you prefer the common name, Holyrood, within the royal park, which James V had surrounded during his reign with a stone wall more than four miles in circumference, for the use of his neighbouring palace at the aforesaid area of the Cross. This province also abounds all over with lime and coal mines, and is moderately planted with trees, especially around the castles of the nobility and dwellings of gentlemen. Finally it has woods full of beauty at Dalkeith, Newbattle, Dalhousie, Crichton, Roslin, Calder and Shank.
Description of Edinburgh.The capital of our kingdom was called by its most ancient inhabitants Agneda, or Ageda, or Agmeda, a compound word which means the same as ‘winged rock’. For Agne, or Age or Agme is ‘rock’, from the Greek ‘age’, or ‘agne’, or ‘agmus’, fracture, rupture, rock; and ‘agmoi’ are commonly to the ancients broken places, and Agnew among us in Galloway is a broken place, whence the name of the noble family. The origin is Greek ‘ago’ or ‘agnuo’, I break, rupture, from which comes our Ag, and with stronger aspiration Hag, rupture, divide into pieces. The second part of the compound is Eda or Eta, a word which means wing, feather to out ancestors. Its origin is from Hebrew ‘Ata’, I cover, shade, hide: we know that wings
