In ‘Edinburgh Old Town – Journeys and Evocations’ Stuart McHardy and Donald Smith have woven a fine tribute to the late John Fee around some of Fee’s own stories and recollections.
A resident and informal chronicler of the Old Town for many years, the stories presented here cover both the recent and more distant past, taking in the well-known, such as the possibly as much confused as confusing figure of Major Weir, the self-proclaimed 17th Century warlock as well as the too easily-forgotten lively community life of the inter-war Old Town.
A recognised storyteller in his own right, this volume collects a number of stories Fee wrote out before his death, all of which attest to both his skills as a taleteller and bearer as well as the depth of his historical knowledge and unpretentious humanity.
Fee’s stories take him and his two companions, McHardy and Smith on extended rambles covering much of Edinburgh’s Old Town, but centring on the Royal Mile of Canongate and High Street and the many closes and vennals off them.
The tales themselves include, apart from Major Weir, some familiar ones, such as that of ‘Hauf hangit’ Maggie Dickinson, who revived after having been supposedly executed on the charge of having murdered her new-born child, and whose best-known monument was, until recent years, the name of a public house in the Grassmarket.
Although historical figures abound, few are the familiar figures of ‘elite’ history packaged for the benefit of the tourist trade; instead of Mary, Queen of Scots or even John Knox, Fee’s heroes are figures such as unemployed labourers trying to put together a deposit on a sedan chair business, the canny developer of an, as we might say, ‘well known’ beef extract product, or the social reformer, Thomas Guthrie.
Taken all in all, this is a delightful mixter-maxter of the unfamiliar and better remembered, both of the good and rather less so characters and incidents of one of the most historically rich and variously populated public thoroughfares in Europe, brought to glorious life by one of its master narrators, himself fully and joyously celebrated, as he deserves to be, by two of his surviving friends and colleagues.
‘Edinburgh Old Town; Journeys and Evocations’ is a welcome addition to the seemingly endless explorations in print of a city which continues to fascinate and inspire citizens and visitor alike, and which will doubtless appeal to both.
'Edinburgh Old Town; Journeys and Evocations' - John Fee with Stuart McHardy and Donald Smith Luath Press Ltd., £7.99 (pb) isbn 978-1-910021-56-9