Our third day in Scotland was our last day with Raya. I’m totally sad she is going and am gonna miss her!

We slept in late, but eventually we all got up to find Edinburgh gloomy cold and rainy. We headed out to get some food. After the three of us ate and did some shopping, we decided to take the walking tour. We figured it was cold and rainy, there couldn’t be too many people.

This tour was a free walking comedy tour of Edinburgh. Our guide, whose name I don’t know, was pretty funny. He was dressed in a traditional kilt, which we have actually seen a lot of around here.

He was great, explaining he would tell us whatever he knows and if we ask a question he doesn’t know the answer to, he simply will say he don’t know. In the beginning asked if anyone in the group was a smart ass.  So I raised my hand. He said “Great! Haggle me. I love it, but I will haggle you back.” Fair game, challenge accepted.

Our first stop was in this car park between a bunch of fancy buildings. He said raise your hand if you have a gym membership of any sort. People raise their hands while Holly, Raya and I look at each other like “ha! nope.” The guy sees this and calls on Raya. There was a gold box on the ground in the middle of a parking space. He asks her to go on it and do jumping jacks. Raya, being a good sport does. Then he asks her to dance, he dances with her and also yells at her to stay on the gold box. Everyone is laughing. He asks us if Raya is a law abiding citizen. I mean we have only known Raya for 3 days. Well, in that time, we happen to have discovered the answer to that question. And now this is where I don’t tell you the story.

The guide thanks Raya and she comes back, everyone is laughing. He then tells us Raya has just broken the law and committed high treason. “No, you don’t get arrested for dancing in the street. But you do get arrested for dancing on a mans grave and you Raya have just danced on top of the grave of John Knox. A very important man to Scottish history.” Her jaw drops and everyone is kind of laughing. I chime in with a “And he’s burried in the middle of a car park?” He laughs. “No worries though, you are not Scottish therefore you can’t commit high treason so you will not be hanged.” He says. Everyone is laughing now.

He goes on to explain it use to be a cemetery and is now the court rooms. The highest profile cases were done in a building close to us. He also explains to us about the statue we are standing near. It was pretty cool. If, at least here in Scotland, a man is upon a horse as a statue and the leg is raised of the horse, he died a hero in battle. If all legs are down, he was a brave hero but died of natural causes. That was actually a really interesting fact to be able to note about every statue we saw.

He told is how the statue is made of lead and over the years the acid rain caused it to erode and make a hole in the mans head. The statue was filling up and beginning to move because it’s off balance so they drilled a hole for the water to go through. In the penis. “Ladies and Gentlemen the worlds only peeling statue!” He yells. Everyone is cracking up. He tells us how it’s hilarious they did this because on in Scotland media is not allowed into court rooms. So the set up outside and this statue is directly out front of the high profile case room. He said there’s been many times on the news you will see them reporting about a huge case and this statue in the background. He said one time there was a man who had been dropping his pants and walking around all over Scotland. Like this huge case of indecent exposure.. So the news is outside reporting on this and it rains a lot in Scotland and all you can see is this statue in the background with the horse looking like it’s peeing. Everyone at this point is cracking up. He says we can YouTube it, it’s true.

We continue our tour about the first fireman and how he invented the fire helmet. How he quit the army to be a fire fighter and originally it was looked down upon. The statue was near a church when we were looking at it but apparently back in the day they had it on a big hill. Then in 1996, I think, an episode of the Simpsons aired and Bart cut off the head of a statue. Two days later this guys head was cut off and missing.

To this day, they don’t know where the original head is. After this happened, for 4 years they would profit from this headless statue by charging people and allowing them to climb up and place their head on the statue and get a picture. After a while the council thought it was disrespectful so they gave him a new head and a new home. Haha!

We moved on to an area where he began to talk about torture and killings back in the day. He called upon Raya again and handcuffed her with old handcuffs. He began to explain about all the witch killings that happened in Edinburgh. As well as various ways they use to torture people. The Scots were brutal. He said they would handcuff your arms above you (using Raya as his example) and put you in a coffin fit for the body and shut the door. This door had twelve long spikes on the inside.

If that doesn’t do it for you, they upgraded. They had a similar device but with 24 spikes that when closed would stop about a foot from your body. Then, a man would crank a wheel on one side that caused the spikes to slowly move forward. He would crank it until it was about an inch into the body and then stop. Imagine, stuck in a box. Spikes in you at 24 different points on your body. Only an inch in, so you’re still alive and the man stops. That’s horrible enough. But not for them. The man would leave for 2 hours with the person left in the box. What would he do? Go out and sell tickets. Tickets to the towns people to come and crank the other side of the machine which caused the spikes to slowly expand outwards. There was a little box on the front so people could see the face. That’s absolutely horrible.

Another form was they would put a rat in a box with you, your arms handcuffed up. They would make it so the rat felt danger and the only way for the rat to escape would be to  burrow it’s way out. Through your stomach. To your chest. Out your mouth. But if you did something really bad they would put two rats in. Adding competition of survival to the rats.

Ever wonder where “the rat race of life” expression came from?

Yes, he’s holding a fake rat in front of her as he explains. I know it’s gross but it’s what we learned. He said he or anyone from Edinburgh alone is not proud of what happened but they can’t pretend it didn’t.

He was also very serious when talking about what happened with witches. Vague as well. They killed more witches in the city of Edinburgh alone than all of Europe combined. He wouldn’t tell us the exact number. He said numbers don’t matter because then it becomes a competition and all those people just become numbers. The true travesty of what happened gets lost.

He let that sink in. From the tour overall, by piecing it together, I gather it was millions.

There’s even a sign apologizing for killing the good witches.

In this tour I was also to realize there was a lot more literary history in Scotland than I ever realized.

There use to be a man in this city who by day was a good man. Donated to the church, would help anyone. A model citizen. By night he was a druggie, gambler and spent time in hostels.

They say the book Jackal and Hyde was written off this man. The idea of good and evil. But our tour guide doesn’t agree. Every villain has a good counterpart. They don’t walk around the city during the day screaming “I’m a bad guy!” No, he thinks Jackal and Hyde (side note since I didn’t make it clear, it was written here in Scotland) was based on the city. In the tour we got to see both the good and bad about Edinburgh. Both Jackal and Hyde. That it is in this time the city is choosing which side they want to be. And now it was our choice to decide where we thought Edinburgh fell.

It was a phenomenal tour. And free! The guy was so passionate about this city and Scotland.

That’s one thing I’ve noticed about the Scottish. They are so proud of who they are and their Scottish background. More than proud, they are honest. Whether it’s good or bad, they own up to it all. I got that not only from this tour but every interaction with Scottish people here. It’s quite admirable the pride and love they have for their country. Good and bad included.

I loved the tour.

Afterwards it was raining again so we grabbed dinner from an Italian place and then tea from Starbucks and went back to the hostel. Holly and I had an early day the next day. Tour to the highlands that required an 8:15 leaving time.