Edinburgh: whisky, haggis, Honest Abe & Frankenstein!
Plus a bit o’ Dublin
Hello ~ I’m Scott and welcome to your 5-Minute Vacation for Oct. 8th. I share these snippets of our travels in the hope that my photos and stories will allow you to go on a vicarious vacation and “get away from it all,” if only for a moment. I appreciate you inviting me into your inbox today.
Here’s the previous 5-Minute Vacation if you missed it.
Greyfriars Bobby was a Skye Terrier (or maybe a Dandie Dinmont Terrier) who became known in 19th-century Edinburgh for spending the final 14 years of his life sitting on his master’s grave.
At the beginning of July, we spent four nights each in Edinburgh and Dublin. We had a doggone good time exploring castles, whisky, cemeteries, monsters, and making chocolate. I dug up a few stories to share and some of them are earthy, so buckle up and let’s go.
Edinburgh is a short city.
That may seem to you like an odd thing to notice about a city. It seemed odd to me as I noticed me noticing that. But, Edinburgh does seem to be short, at least today, when most buildings are no more than seven stories tall. That wasn’t always the case, however; many buildings used to be as tall as 14 stories.
In addition to being taller, the buildings were also much closer together. The space between them was so narrow the alleys were called “closes.”
Tall buildings packed together imply population density. You’d hope a densely populated city would have good sanitation. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. The buildings pre-dated a sewer system, which poses a question: when you’re living on the second, third, etc. (you get the point) floor of a tall building that’s not connected to a sewer system, what do you do with your “business”?
The approved solution was to chuck it out the window.
Of course, there were rules to prevent passersby from being “doused.” Jettisoning hours were between 10 pm and 7 am and the jettisoner had to yell, “Garde de l’eau” (roughly translated as “watch out for water”) first. It’s thought that “garde de l’eau” became “gar de loo” which gave us “loo.”
As soon as someone heard “garde de l’eau,” they were wise to move out of the area promptly. But what if they were coming home from the pub? We all know that a successful night out transforms one’s reflexes from hare-like to those of a tortoise. And hearing gets worse. Instead of hearing and understanding “garde de l’eau,” the unfortunate passerby might only hear some garbled words and then stop to look around to investigate. If they looked up, trying to figure out what the noise was, they’d end up with a face full of somebody’s “business.”
And there we have the possible origin of “shit-faced drunk.”
That story was a bit “earthy,” so let’s change topics. Let’s talk about body parts.
One of our tours took us by the strip club The Burke & Hare (no, we didn’t go in). I guess the club must be pretty proud of their body parts because it was named after William Burke and William Hare, two 19th-century men who were infamous for their involvement with body parts.
At the beginning of the 19th century, just like today, medical training required cadavers. As a leading center of medical training, Edinburgh’s demand for cadavers was greater than the (legal) supply because Scottish law at the time stipulated that only the bodies of those who had died in prison, from suicide, or from foundlings (a type of child abandonment) and orphans, could be used for medical training.
With supply and demand out of balance, it was only inevitable that someone would seek to profit from the situation. Those someones were William Burke and William Hare.
William Hare owned a lodging house and he had a problem: one of his lodgers died before paying his rent. Complaining about his problem to his friend William Burke, they decided that the solution to this problem was to fake the burial and then sell the body for dissection.
The sale was made and Hare’s immediate money problem was solved. Thinking that they had discovered an easy way to make money, the two killed sixteen others and sold their corpses for dissection before being caught. Perhaps they got caught by trying to cut out the middleman.
Here’s where Frankenstein enters the story ~ at least tangentially. The crimes of Burke & Hare and other grave robbers (all known as “resurrection men”) prompted discussions of body snatching, dissection and political classes just prior to England’s Victorian era. Supposedly, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley made revisions to the 1832 edition of Frankenstein in light of those discussions.
Burke and Hare is a good story but reading the 1832 edition of Frankenstein and trying to discern how body snatching, dissection and political classes intersect sounds like a lot of work. Instead, Wikipedia has a good summary of Burke and Hare here. Or, you could go to their website (yes, amazingly, they have one) here. Or, you could watch the 2010 movie with Tom Wilkinson, Tim Curry, Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis.
Whew ~ after these last two topics, you might need a drink before continuing (if you drink). So let’s talk about a well-known Scottish product, whisky.
One of our tours (the same one that took us to The Burke & Hare!) took us to The Scotch Malt Whisky Society. The Society was created to sell single-cask, undiluted, unadulterated whiskies. Each bottling has a unique flavor and is a one-time product ~ since they’re bottled from a single cask, once they’re gone they’re gone forever.
The unique flavors are honored with unique names. Our first tasting was from a bottle named, “A Utopia of Bananas and Muffins.” I wouldn’t describe it as “utopian” but it was heavenly. I wish we could’ve tasted these bottles, too:
Tarred and Re-feathered
A Polar Bear’s Birthday Cake
Riding a Duck Bareback Up Mt. Etna
Skinny Dipping in the Baltic Sea
Glory Be to the Patisserie
The Finesse of a Fragrant Furnace
Oh Behave!
Another day, we went for a more conventional experience at the Scotch Whisky Experience. This well-produced, high-tech experience included a scratch ‘n’ sniff card:
The scratch ‘n’ sniff card. The idea was that each of the ovals would have the characteristic aroma of the respective whisky region. It was a fun idea but I found the card only moderately successful. The overall experience, however, was very good.
Edinburgh Castle, home to the Stone of Destiny.
Whisky is a Scottish national treasure. Another Scottish national treasure is the Stone of Destiny.
For something so important to the Scots, our first introduction to the Stone was this woeful sign outside the building housing it and The Honours of Scotland (also known as the Scottish Crown Jewels):
Seeing this sign, with no context, made me want to refer to the stone as the “Stone of DESTINY!!!!” (You have to say it like a major league baseball announcer announcing the next batter: stoooooooone uv DESSSSTINNNNEEEEEEEEEEEEEE). The stone is 26 in x 16.7 in x 10.5 in (66 cm x 42 cm x 26.7 cm) and it weighs approximately 335 lbs. (152 kg). Although you wouldn’t know that from this sign.
However, the Stone of Destiny (formally known as The Stone of Scone) is so important to Scotland that England’s King Edward I stole it in 1296. Four Scottish students stole it back in 1950. Wikipedia has a decent summary here and there’s a decent movie about the 1950 theft on Amazon Prime and FreeVee.
Scotland and America have been intertwined since before 1651 (when one of my ancestors arrived in present-day New Hampshire), so we weren’t surprised to stumble upon a couple of references to the U.S.
Edinburgh Castle was sometimes used as a prison. During the War of 1812, an imprisoned American seaman made this carving of a ship flying the American flag in one of the prison’s doors. It’s a bit hard to make out but the left part of the carving is the American flag in the now-familiar “Stars and Stripes” design.
In an old, overgrown-with-weeds cemetery on the opposite end of the Royal Mile from Edinburgh Castle and the carving of the American flag, we came across a statue of Honest Abe. A plaque by the statue gives a few facts and many implications: the statue honors the Scottish soldiers who fought in the American Civil War and Margaret King McEwan. Margaret requested a war widow’s pension and to receive it, she and her children had to emigrate to America.
Another plaque tells the story of how Marion Laurie Sunderland was buried in this same cemetery one and a third times. Seems she lost her leg (Amputated from illness? It somehow just ran off in the night? Again, the plaque was short on the details) and she buried it here. Twenty-three years later, she died and was reunited with her leg.1
After four lovely days in Edinburgh, we flew to Dublin.
Dublin, lovely city that it is, is also a short city, just like Edinburgh. But not as hilly.
Just like Edinburgh, Dublin has a connection to fictional monsters. Abraham “Bram” Stoker was born in Dublin. He was married here at St. Ann’s Church, Dawson Street, in 1878. A taxi driver told us Stoker’s birthplace is now a tourist attraction. “Dracula,” however, was written after he had moved to England.
Just like Scotland, Ireland is also famous for its whiskey. Irish whiskey used to outsell Scotch, according to our guide at the Irish Whiskey Experience, until Great Britain’s conflict with Ireland and America’s Prohibition destroyed much of the market for Irish whiskey.
I know that many of you dear readers are eagle-eyed grammarians and proofreaders, so you’ve undoubtedly noticed that I’ve referred to Scotch as whisky but the Irish version as whiskey (the plural of whisky is whiskies and that of whiskey is whiskeys). The difference in spelling is only one difference between the two beverages. Other important differences between them are:
Irish whiskey is usually made from unmalted barley and Scotch is made from malted barley2
Irish whiskey is typically triple distilled while Scotch is typically twice distilled. Irish whiskeys’ extra distillation usually provides a lighter, smoother taste.
Perhaps the biggest difference, and the one most familiar to anyone who’s tried Scotch, is Scotch’s famous flavors of tar, smoke, rope, and other strong (some would say overpowering and pungent), earthy tastes. These flavors come from using peat3 to dry out and promote germination in the malted barley. Since Irish whiskey is made from unmalted barley, it won’t have these flavors.
And what about food? A vacation can’t claim to be a good vacation unless some good and/or interesting food is involved.
Haggis, chocolate and pizza are interesting…
Scotland is also known for haggis, so you might wonder if I had some while we were there. Yes, I did. I had the original version and a vegetarian version. Both were quite good. Vegetarian haggis, you might ask? Yep. I even saw vegan TexMex haggis on a menu. I’m sorry now that I didn’t try it.
Edinburgh has The Chocolatarium, a store and workshop where chocolate hounds like us can make their own chocolate bars. Inspired by our visit to the Scottish Honours, I named mine The Bar of DESTINY. And yes, when I told Rosemary this, I pronounced the name just like a major league baseball announcer announcing the next batter.
For dinner one night we had … a Pizza Hut pizza. For my American friends, a Pizza Hut pizza probably evokes a response of “So what?”. The context here is that European pizzas are predominantly thin crust and we have always preferred thicker crusts. At the end of a good (and long) day walking miles and miles through Edinburgh’s old town while dodging the other tourists and the rain, comfort food like a pan-crust Pizza Hut pizza was a most welcome respite.
Whew ~ that’s a lot. And we didn’t even talk about how we learned to make a proper Irish coffee, or the Guinness distillery, or Dublin’s jail, or Arthur’s Seat. Hopefully, today’s 5-Minute Vacation has inspired you to someday take your own IRL vacation to Edinburgh and Dublin.
Let me leave you with a parting shot:
Vikings began raiding Ireland in the 9th century. These Vikings, while quite high-spirited driving around Dublin in a duck boat, were quite civilized by comparison.
Until next time ~
Tschüss!
If you are new to my photography, you can see more at scottgilbertson.com.
For those 23 years, I can’t help but wonder if she was on the receiving end of a version of that old children’s joke: Did you hear about the woman with one leg named Marion? No. What was the name of her other leg?
According to Whiskyride.com, “Malted barley, or malt, is barley that has been allowed to germinate (or sprout) by being soaked in water. By doing this to the grain, the starches are converted into fermentable sugars. The process ensures that starch in the grain can be made into alcohol. This process is known as malting, an important step in the process of producing whisky as well as beer.”
According to The Whisky Advocate, “…peat is the decomposed remains of grasses, moss, sedges, and reeds that have been compressed over centuries in the oxygen-starved, waterlogged conditions of bogs in the colder climates of countries at higher latitudes.”
I enjoy vicariously enjoying the places you visit! We loved Scotland and Ireland when we went 36 years ago - your descriptions make me want to go back! Thank you!
Thank you Scott. 😁