"Fie! away wi’ him to the Papists’ pillar! Gar douk him in the loch! Harl him awa’! Gar douk! gar douk and droun!"
A shout of assent greeted this new proposition. The inanimate form of Konrad was raised on the shoulders of a few sturdy fellows, who bore him along the street with as much speed as its crowded state would permit; and closing, like a parted sea, the mob collapsed behind, and followed in their train. They bore him up the Lawnmarket, then encumbered by innumerable sacks of grain and wooden girnels, farm horses, and rudely constructed carts; for at that time the meal, and flesh, and butter markets, were held there. Turning down Blyth’s close, under the lofty windows of the palace of Mary of Lorraine, they hurried to the bank of that steep lake which formed the city’s northern barrier, and the vast concourse followed; the arch of the narrow alley receiving them all, like a small bridge admitting a mighty river.
The rough and shelving bank descended abruptly from the ends of the lofty closes, which (when viewed from the east or west): resembled a line of narrow Scottish towers overhanging the margin of the water, which was reedy, partly stagnant, and so much swollen by the melted snows of the past winter, that, on the northern side, it reached an ancient quarry from which the Trinity Church was built, and on the southern to the Twin-tree, an old double-trunked thorn that overhung the loch, and had for centuries been famous as a trysting-place for lovers, as it was supposed to exercise a supernatural influence on the pair who sat between its gnarled stems.
"Fie! gar douk!" cried the vast concourse that debouched from all the adjoining wynds and closes along the sloping bank. "To the pillar—to the pillar! Truss him wi’ a tow to the Papists’ pillar, and leave him there to rot or row;" and this new proposal was received with renewed applause.
The Papists’ pillar was a strong oak stake fixed in that part of the loch where the water was about five feet deep. It had been placed there by the wise bailies of Edinburgh at this time, when certain ablutions were much in vogue, and considered so necessary for witches, sorcerers, scolding wives, and "obstinate papists;" for in every part of Europe ducking was the favourite penance for offences, against morality; and nothing afforded such supreme delight and intense gratification to the worthy denizens of the Lawnmarket, and their kindly dames, as the sousing of an unfortunate witch, a "flyting wife" of the Calton, or a hapless Catholic, in the deep and execrable puddle that was named the North Loch—and so frequently were exhibitions of the latter made, that the stake was unanimously dubbed _the Papists’ Pillar_.