The Heart of the Midlothian by Sir Walter Scott

On the evening of the 7^th September 2016, I was smuggled up in bed getting to the “good bit” of The Heart of the Midlothian by Sir Walter Scott. A horde of angry Scots were rushing Tolbooth Prison in Edinburgh, seeking out the incarcerated Captain John Porteous, while the frantic man was trying to escape up the chimney of his prison cell. I turned to the page where a suspended figure can be seen “wavering and struggling” by “the red and dusky light of torches” in Cowgate and thought that would be enough for the evening.

The following day I looked up the Porteous Riots and discovered that, unbeknown to me, I was reading about the execution of the Captain of the Guard on the exact night it happened, 280 years ago.

A charming coincidence, or perhaps a spooky souvenir from one of the UK’s most haunted cities, I will never be sure, yet The Heart of the Midlothian continues to top any list for books about Edinburgh. Although I struggled again with the thick dialects for the characters – trying to do a Scottish accent in my head for 507 pages was a challenge –I still enjoyed walking the streets of the city in the eighteenth century and the book helped to stifle any holiday blues.

The Oxford University Press edition also comes with notes, from Sir Walter Scott and the editor, which expand the folklore and myths hinted at throughout the story. I now know that I did a “Silent Disco Walking Tour” during the Fringe around Grassmarket, once a place of public execution equipped with its own hanging tree, and fun fact, The Maggie Dickson pub in the square is devoted to a woman tried for infanticide who was also the inspiration behind one of the main characters in the novel.

Unfortunately, the long journey by the heroine Jeanie Deans is speckled with the coincidences often found in classic literature I find tedious (Jane Eyre conveniently turning up at her long lost cousin’s house is a prime example), yet the freaky concurrence of the opening pages, the notes on Edinburgh’s past was good payment for my long reading hours and made the book a better keepsake than any pricey Scottish yarn.