The ground beneath us hasn’t shifted but our city has, and will continue to do so, as we go Forth with 900 years of Edinburgh.
The River Forth has been at the heart of the Edinburgh story since dwellers first set up camp next to water to build a community.
And a church, and back in those days God mattered more to people.
The burghers of Edinburgh have, in fact, chosen the 900th anniversary.
Of the erection of St Giles Cathedral as the foundation date of the city.
Millions of Edinburghers, and tourists, have since filed past the Cathedral, and some inside.
Halfway up the Royal Mile from the Holyrood Palace to Edinburgh Castle.
Its place in the story of Edinburgh, Scotland and indeed Western Liberal Democracy (important in this week of weeks with a General Election) is fixed.
Because of the actions of of all people a female market-trader, Jenny Geddes.
Jenny from the back
Twas Jenny who threw the stool at the Kirk minister.
In objection to the first public use of the Church of Scotland’s revised version of the Book of Common Prayer, the 1637 Scottish Prayer Book.
And sparked what were to be known as the War of the Three Kingdoms (George RR Martin obviously paid attention in class) which involved England, Scotland and Ireland.
The results of which played out in Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth.
And the later parliamentary reforms which were transported overseas to the American colonies and the nascent United States of America.
That subject, of course, is for another day.
That day being Thursday with Independence Day in the USA, and we will mark it as we do every year.
Proper Charlies
But for the here and now and today, we note that the St Giles story and our commemoration of it this July 3, is a tale of two Charlies.
The first King Charles who because of the influence of his Catholic wife and his High Church leanings imposed his prayer book.
On the-then more puritanical Scots.
And the third King Charles, the one we have now… and yes, you and I are probably more directly related to him and King David I who founded St Giles than today’s monarch.
That apart and something for which we would probably be hoisted on the gibbet.
That stood across from St Giles Cathedral and hanged it is still worth noting.
Nowhere to Hyde
Now anybody who has been on a hop-on, hop-off bus will have heard the story of how that gibbet was engineered by one Deacon (or councillor) Brodie, the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson‘s Dr Jeklyll & Master Hyde.
Or drank and eaten at the Deacon Brodie’s pub opposite which helpfully has the tale written on the wall outside.
Brodie was, of course, an upstanding citizen by day.
But he took imprints in soap of keys at dinner parties by night before returning to rob the establishments.
Twas his fate then to be hanged on the very gibbet he built.
Soapy bubble
It is also Edinburgher tradition to spit down on the heart of Midlothian halfway up towards the Castle.
On the cobbles in disgust that in a more uncivilised age we hanged people.
Whether King Charles III dwelt on any of this as he received the honorary keys of Edinburgh today.
In a ceremony of great pomp and circumstance is doubtful.
But we do hope and trust that the organisers gave them a good scrub.
Before handing them to the monarch to remove any soap which might have gathered there.
