Food Feature: Haunted by history

On a night train from London to Edinburgh, I sleep most of the way, awakening only occasionally as the train jitters on its tracks. Sunlight gleams over the rambling, working-class suburbs of the city and darkness looms over the cloud-tipped hills that make the Scottish Highlands so famous.
My first view of Edinburgh is of the Edinburgh Castle, which appears above the train as we make our way around Castle Rock, the cliff that makes the base of the fortress. Edinburgh is built among the rocky crags of a blown-out ancient volcano. I open the window of my compartment to try to get a better look, squinting as the dark wind of night brushes past my face.
In the darkness the city looks positively menacing. Dark spires of black rise against the heavy nighttime sky. Fog rolls among the castle’s turrets. I had always thought of Edinburgh as a charming city, home of the world-renowned International Arts Festival. Little did I know of its dark and foreboding past.
In its day, Edinburgh was the quintessential medieval city. Between 1479 and 1722, more than 4,000 men and women were burned at the stake for witchcraft (that’s an astounding 16 per year — more than any other European city). Other court-sanctioned punishments included: piercing of the tongue for perjurers, public beheadings, hangings and being “broken upon the roww.” One punishment for rumor spreaders was to nail the offender’s ears to a wooden plank and allow locals to throw tomatoes at him.
In 1345 half the city’s population died during one outbreak of the Black Plague. Medieval conditions contributed to the spread of the disease: rats lived in the gutters and large families lived in small one- or two-room apartments. At 10 each evening a drummer would go through the streets beating his drum. This was the signal for households to throw their waste (“complete with the crunchy bits”) into the street. The locals knew the distinctive smell created by this habit as “the floors o’ Edinburgh,” or “the flowers of Edinburgh.”
Edinburgh is much cleaner now. A jewel of Gregorian and Victorian architecture, the city has more than 16,000 buildings listed as historically or architecturally significant. The magnificent Princes Street Garden rolls out beneath Edinburgh Castle, accenting the black limestone buildings and rocky volcanic crags with rain-soaked, vibrant greens.
The youth hostel where we’re staying is cozy and comfy. A perfect “come in from out of the cold” kind of place ... and it is damp and cold in Scotland during September. Young backpackers in rag-wool sweaters sip coffee and swap stories about traveling. Although it’s drizzling outside, we’re eager to get out and start exploring the city. When a French traveler pulls a rumpled flyer from his pocket advertising the city’s ghost tour, our plan for the night is set.
We meet under a lamppost in front of the Witchery, a restaurant built at the site of an old Scottish nunnery. We begin to laugh and mingle but are soon interrupted by the caped figure of deceased highway robber Adam Lyal . His first words to us are frightening: “Has anyone still to pay?”
Lyal is our guide on a trip that introduces us to many from Edinburgh’s lively past. As we walk among the twisted alleyways that wind below the massive Edinburgh Castle (the streets that inspired Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), Lyal tells us about a host of Edinburgh’s haunts.
Half-Hangit Maggie was put to the gallows on Sept. 2, 1724, for concealing her pregnancy and trying to hide the body of her prematurely born infant. She was pronounced dead after hanging, but as she was being taken to her final resting place in nearby Musselburgh, she recovered and went on to live another 30 years.
Elise Peat, an eccentric old lady who mumbled to herself, was burned at the stake in 1589 after being accused of being a witch. The “proof” was evident when she floated on the Nor Loch with her thumbs tied to her toes. If she had sunk and drowned she would have been declared innocent. A well now marks the spot on Castlehill where those accused of witchcraft were strangled and burned.
The most notorious in Edinburgh’s hall of shame are Burke & Hare. In the early 1800s the study of anatomy was extremely popular in Edinburgh. Students, including young doctors, lawyers, artists and “men of letters,” came from all walks of life. Unfortunately, each medical school was only allowed the body of one executed criminal per year, which did not meet the voracious appetite of the anatomy students. So arose the sinister trade of the “body snatchers.”
As we walk through the city’s rustic graveyards, Lyal tells us how, on dark moonless nights, figures could be seen flitting amongst these very gravestones, digging up bodies to “take part in class.” The practice so horrified the general public that watchtowers, protective walls and iron bars, many of which we could see in the moonlight, were constructed to protect the recently buried.
William Burke and William Hare were not hindered by these precautions. Their victims were the strays and waifs of the Old Town, vagabonds and travelers from other cities — people that wouldn’t be missed. “You would’ve been perfect candidates,” Lyal says pointing his cane at our group from the youth hostel.
Standing by the gates of the Old Town, Lyal tells us how visitors would be lured from the streets to their deaths, and then their bodies would be sold to science. To this day, nobody knows how many disappeared, but the estimates at the time ran somewhere between 13 and 30.
As Lyal tells the story, we hinge on his macabre descriptions. The air is tense as we stand on the very cobblestone streets where the abductions took place. Burke & Hare eventually went to trial and Burke ended up like his victims — on a stone slab in a medical classroom. His skeleton is still on display at Edinburgh’s Medical School, and a wallet made from skin taken from the back of his neck is on display at the Royal College of Physicians.
Just as Lyal tells us this, we’re startled by a bloodcurdling scream. We turn around to see the disembodied skeleton of William Burke running straight at us. As he comes in under the streetlamps we see it’s simply a man in costume, and the group bursts out laughing.
Burke’s skeleton is one of many “jumper ooters” we encounter on the trip. The Mad Monk of Cowgate jumps out at us at ... Cowgate, and at Fisher’s Close we’re greeted by the witch Agnes Fynnie, who throws a bucket of water at us (“the floors o’ Edinburgh?”). Both scare the living tar out of us.
As frightening as the “jumper ooters” are, nothing is creepier than the stories Lyal shares with us. He tells us of Major Thomas Weir, an ex-priest and known devil worshiper who lived in the 1600s. After claiming to have met the devil and admitting to hideous acts of bestiality, he was strangled and burned at the stake on April 14, 1670. The house he lived in stood empty for years before being burned in 1870. Nobody wanted to live there after inhabitants reported that objects moved around rooms and that a calf’s head was seen above the end of a bed.
We’ve got chills from the scary stories and goose bumps from the drizzling rain. After stopping at the youth hostel for dry clothes and sweaters, we spend the rest of the night dancing at an underground, rave-style disco, preferring the warmth of flashing lights to the haunting images and darkness that wait outside.
For more information about Edinburgh’s ghost tours, contact Adam Lyal at Witchery Tours, 352 Castlehill, Royal Mile, Edinburgh, EH1 2NF. Call 44 (0) 131 225 6745 or e-mail info@witcherytours.com for details.