Tuesday, June 29, 2004 (Grassmarket & Greyfriars Bobby / Royal Mile Tour)

This morning I got a little bit earlier to school, then we had a new group and we didn't know in which building school woud start. So the lessons began for the last four days and we were a small group of 6 people. The level was upper-intermediate and the teachers name was Andrew.

With our new book Clockwise from Oxford Publishing ISBN- 0-19-43082-1 we started with “flattery”. We told each other that they were brilliant, beautiful, important, accomplished and good – it’s known as lying. :-) The whole group was very good in practising it, but everyone didn’t like it in “real life”. With the themes like making contact, party talk and social exchanges we had a lot of things to talk about. I think in this small group everybody began to flourish and to practise using our larger vocabulary in English.

After a break we had Kirsty for the next lessons again. She trained us in listening and pronunciation “assimilation”. It gave us a little bit more the feeling for the language. For example I like light blue, spy does and spiders, blue eyes, law and order, try again, etc. For homework we had to search for a minimum of three words which were difficult to pronounce. What do you think about; cantankerous, surreptitiously, indecipherable and idiosyncrasies?

During lunch I wrote the homework for Andrew – see the next note. Uihhh … I needed a lot of time just to write the few paragraphs, so I was just in time and arrived with the other students at the St. Giles Cathedral for a Grassmarket & Greyfriars Bobby walk. We were a very big group, so Andrew and James had to shout that we could understand their words. I helped Roger, also from Switzerland and an English beginner, to understand the information from the teachers. I read, listened and listened again to three different stories about the people who were buried … but I liked this walk. Unfortunately it was a little bit too little for me but for the other group members, just enough.

James told us the story of Half-Hangit Maggie. The Grassmarket pub ic called Maggie Dickson’s, just opposite the point where the gallows used to stand, commemorates a woman who was hanged in 1724 for the crime of concealing the death of her illegitimate child. Her corpse was taken down from the gallows, placed in a casket and put on a cart, for the journey back to her home. But then a noise was heard coming from within the coffin. The rope had not done its job properly and Maggie had revived. Maggie Dickson made a full recovery and legal opinion was that someone who had already been pronounced dead could not be hanged again.

After the tour I had still enough time to sit in a pub and hear some more stories from the people there. Now I thought that every place had a dark side with some ghosts, witchcraft or both. There are some darker chapters in Scottish history, which are not for faint-hearted human beings.

At the western end of Grassmarket, a narrow close called The Vennel leads up steeply up to one of the few surviving fragments of the Flodden Wall, the city wall that was built in the early 16th century as protection against a feared English invasion. Beyond it is the Telfer Wall, a later extension that continues to Lauriston Place. East of the wall is George Heriot’s School one of the most impressive buildings in the Old Town. It was built in the 17th century with funds bequeathed by George Heriot – goldsmith and banker to King James VI, and popularly known as Jinglin’ Geordie.

Back at Royal Mile – after dinner at home, a small group of us met Liz, Calum and Stuart outside the Castle for the Royal Mile Tour with the theme Royalty and Religion. We heard a lot about interesting places and they showed us some special places and details. I liked the sing-song in Calum’s language, it was more like he sing then talked. Sometimes it was hard to follow his speech then my concentration was more on following the melody of his voice then his words. I also heard this from different people but I didn't ask them if it they had a Gaelic background or from where it came …
At the end of the walk by the Palace of Holyroodhouse we made an agreement to drink a beer in The World’s End. So named because this part of High Street once lay next to the Old Town limit – part of the 16th century Flodden Wall can still be seen in the basement. Another story was told about a vanished and murdered person who was last seen in this pub. In the pub, unfortunately, the students from the same countries stayed together, so they didn't speak English with each other. After a beer and changing from the Swiss to the Spain group – the interests and the impressions were different in this groups – we went to the next pub.