"In 1937 I discovered a third way to kill."
That is what it should say on the notice beside my book rest.
George IV's latter days and I was a blank sheet, an empty vessel. I could have had great arguments in Law writ upon my body, to be sought
out eagerly in the years ahead, but my innocent skin was stamped upon with - '
Accounts'. The kiss of coins was to be my lot; instead of '
Case Carried' I would proclaim '
Carried Forward.' Amidst Edinburgh's finest minds I would be handled by 'little' men of no talent and less ambition. It stung and I made the clerks' lives as uncomfortable as might be contrived – pens spluttered, nibs broke; once, I wrenched myself from lax fingers to land, corner down, on slippered feet and felt the bone crunch satisfactorily beneath my weight.
I was already notorious when Jamie came to Wiggie's Wynd. The senior clerks smirked, thinking they had passed 'tha' bluidy beuk' to an innocent, but his hand was sure upon my hide and he took me about Auld Reekie as debts were pursued, accounts settled. Our principal looked satisfied and young James might have prospered.
The New Town was cold and high. Jamie and I favoured the warmth and shadows of the old taverns. I was pressed against the heat of his body, hidden beneath his short cloak. This night in Hunter's we lingered over porter and his fingers ran down leaves filled with long-forgotten names. He seemed much taken with
Messrs. Cameron &MoodyI was puzzling this when he stabbed me through…a fine pin from his lapel pierced me beneath the first
M. It was a tiny hole but the pain poured across the page…and again…and twice more. I would have wept with shame, but his fingers caressed me and across the violated leaf spelt out
M a r y.
On the opposite page, as the noise of the tavern flowed about us, he wrote a verse of love between the lines of commerce. There were no hesitations, no words crossed out – he had borne these phrases in his heart for this moment - and with as good grace as I might, I bore his ministrations.
I had imagined I
knew the lovesick, had suffered by their neglect before, but Jamie seemed, in the following weeks, to be a man possessed. Into the night, he would sit and run his fingers over her name and then, abruptly, turn the page at random and leave me splayed open upon the desk. Once I might have feared the sharp teeth of mice, but I was made strong by his touch and they found me bitter.
In a slate-grey morning, I heard the other clerks talk about the maid dumped in Candlemaker's Row and her name. That night Jamie added the pricks above the line for her surname – Esson.
He seemed peaceful now and we resumed our nightly wanderings about the Old Town, until he was peaceful no more.
So the hunt began, back-and-forth across the Bridges, in-and-out the flare of gas lamps – a fishwife, a seamstress, a whore and, as good as, a dancer from Shakespeare Square. He never let me hear them gasp, but I knew each besom's name before ever it was cried in the streets, laid myself open to each of their songs.
And I knew that not one of them was so fine, nor so brave as Jamie, not even the little dancer. She was strong though, Agnes Morton, and fought him, so that Jamie must needs wrap his afflicted face, for 'the toothache', until the scratches faded.
It was pleurisy that carried him off, such things happen, and he left me a legacy. I would have given the next youth a warming welcome, but his gaze fell on Jamie's verses and now I was no longer simply the '
Accounts'. The poems were transcribed, published, anthologised and plagiarised. Bloody Agnes' little rhyme became a popular ballad, sung from the stage of the Theatre Royal and I sniggered, that still they did not know, imagining that all the poems were directed to the unknown sweetheart of this tragic young man.
It might be assumed that when our principal donated me to the Advocates' Library I would consider I had gone up in the world, but I was banished forever from the ranked leather of the Law to share a box with sweepings from the vennels – playbills, chapbooks, broadsides.
Year-after-year I languished amidst the grime of unclean hands on the old rag paper. One concession to the fame of 'James Weir (minor poet)', I was wrapped in green baize and then came the day that I was brought out to be shown to a distinguished visitor, a titled lady with an excess of sentiment.
The Library staff fawned over her as they displayed the originals of the celebrated Wynd Ballads. But when she was done pawing at the visible lettering, she had a mass of questions, stupid, vacuous questions, so that my keepers were distracted and they placed me back naked into that sink of stinking, greasy litter.
A tattered broadside made to curl about my spine. Rage, white and cleansing, rose up to succour me – every piercing within ached until I felt again Jamie's hand, his certainty. Some time later, the lady returned, her daughters in tow. This time she stripped off her kid gloves to handle me and it was the matter of a moment to make her squeal like a piglet. There was a single smear of blood left, but the paper cut went to an infection and the lady, sadly, died.
The next called himself a scholar. He would write on the 'peasant poets', lumping James Weir alongside ploughmen and blacksmiths. That was cause enough, but he was a hungry creature and on his last visit his questing touch found out the name of
E l l e nThe fever struck Jamie quickly and there was no surname pricked out to close the circle, but if the 'scholar' looked further, he might find Mary Esson or any of his other sweethearts and they still lived in the memory of the town.
I could feel the small wheels of his intellect grinding slowly. Once he glanced up and would have spoken to the librarian sitting nearby, but we remained safe… any discoveries he would guard jealously to himself.
Nevertheless, he had begun to turn the pages with purpose and I could not risk our discovery. From deep within the rubbed binding, from the place where the leather was splitting on the spine and the old cracked glue showed like dried sap, I drew out dusty spores, lain dormant in the tanning…let him breath them in as he hunched over me, a flush of excitement beginning to show on his sallow cheeks.
We were not troubled by him again.
No-one remained now who remembered the advocates of Wiggie's Wynd and I felt interest in this literary curiosity draining away. On the other hand, a tale of bloody execution amidst the Old Town closes held some fascination for the vulgar but, together, we had long since passed from the living record into a sort of myth.
That spelt safety, small chance of Jamie's secret being discovered – and a kind of death too. Poetry had become a misshapen thing, no rhyme nor metre to speak of. They
must not forget him.
The National Library of Scotland – it had a fine ring to it; a proper setting for the reliques of a poet. When the Advocates' Library willed us away it was a wrench finally to quit the Law, but I had begun to suspect that lasting fame lay elsewhere.
In 1925 when the library opened I left the broadsides behind. I would never, in the ordinary way of things, sit on an open shelf to watch the readers, but I was housed in the store, amidst
Scottish Poetry.
Little remained of the gilt lettering that said "
Accounts"; it did not distract from the new stamp "
Wynd Ballads". There had been some troubling talk of re-binding. Bizarrely, the evidence of my humble origins was thought important and so nothing major was done. However, returned to the chilly company of my new neighbours, I began to suspect that my position was, in reality, little better than before. At least, under the Advocates' charge I held some novelty as originating in a legal setting. Now the whole of
Scottish Literature crowded around me and I was never called for.
My anger grew such that when, in 1937, a careless porter mis-shelved me, wedging me half hidden between larger volumes where I might never be found again, my rage brought the whole rack of books down upon his worthless head. In the subsequent investigation I was found and returned to my own place, but I was greatly taken by the number of police and library officials and even a gentleman of the press, who attended his demise.
I now had decades to endure the barbed comments of more
fashionable volumes and to plan. I had done James Weir a disservice by imagining that he meant to remain anonymous. My person would eventually have passed from his control, risking discovery at any time and his death had robbed me of his chosen last verse. The tale was half-told.
I could have favoured the distinguished scholar who skimmed my pages for a monograph on
Urban Ballads, or the sloe-eyed undergraduate studying
Edinburgh in 18.., but I would make my own revelation. Two things favoured me. Firstly, I was scheduled to go to the conservators and secondly, the "Great Murray Archive" was come to the NLS.
The furore over the Murray archive verged on sycophancy. Where would it be housed? Who would be its neighbours, to enjoy the bustle and gain by association? I despised Murray's. They had anthologised Jamie's verses with some mealy-mouthed editing 'to suit the tenor of the times.'
I chose an apprentice conservator, who handled me gently. It seemed to me that his superiors did not value him sufficiently and my 'wounds' stood proud from the page to catch and snag at the cotton gloves he wore. Intrigued, he had looked at the reverse of the leaf beneath an illuminated magnifying glass and then, stripped off his gloves to run the tips of his fingers across the page – as Jamie had done.
I watched him take a slip of paper, on it write "Messrs. Cameron & Moody" and then mark the pinpricks above and below the letters. I saw him spell out 'Mary Esson,' saw the recognition in his eyes, the glance to the rhyme on the opposite page and the quick movement of his throat as he swallowed. I let Agnes Morton's pages fall open and relished the faint tremor in his touch as he traced her name.
There was an investigation, several publications, an exhibition and a pleasing sensation created at the opening. We have our own temperature-controlled case where I am lifted towards the viewer's gaze. The walls feature huge facsimiles of my wounded pages lit from behind; beams break through to fall on maps of Edinburgh, pinpointing the places where the women were found. There is a display of first editions of the Wynd Ballads, and cheap commemorative china and prints featuring
The Young Poet Dying, his Pen in Hand. In the playbill collection they even found one with mention of "A pas seul by Miss A. Morton", who found more fame in death than ever her talent allowed her on the stage. Most satisfying of all perhaps, my young conservator, promoted to assistant curator, trawled the Murray archive and found evidence of their weasel editing.
With a more public life in view, I determined to become a tame artefact, my circle closed – almost. But how might I induce them change the text on my caption?
How might that be done?
