THE monument erected to the late Robin Cook MP in the elegant grounds of the Grange Cemetery in Edinburgh unashamedly displays a proud statement of his skills as a Westminster "Parliamentarian" and a "Statesman" and ends with a quotation expressing his firm opposition to the Iraq War.
What makes this unequivocal funerary inscription unusual is that the vast majority of headstones simply supply the bare biographical essentials of birth, death and, perhaps, rank or profession. Sometimes there is a sentimental verse, but little more. Most people go quietly, but not those of the calibre of Robin Cook.
Yet, compared to some of Edinburgh's historic gravestones, Mr Cook's is low-key. Take the imposing monument to John Mylne (1611-67) just inside the entrance to Greyfriars Kirkyard. It is a monument that grabs you by the throat, that trumpets the deceased's achievements and frightens the life out of you. Mylne was the fourth John to be a master mason from a family who served seven successive kings, although not one of the Mylnes was ever knighted for his services.
Mylne designed the Tron Kirk and built part of Heriot's School. He was not only a builder, but also represented Edinburgh at the Scottish Parliament. The carved cloth bearing the main inscription - "Great Artisan grave Senator; John Mylne" - is framed by the ferocious heads of monsters. Two ornate pillars trumpet epitaphs and commemorative verse.
According to the inscriptions, Mylne was remarkably handsome, honest, pious and everywhere respected. But the picture you get from his tomb tells another story: skulls, an hourglass and crossed torches burning upside-down speak of the fear and pain of death which haunted Mylne and probably most of the people of Edinburgh in his day.
More a theatre set than a monument, his stone sports a heraldic shield above, gripped by two beefy men, possibly stonemasons. Below, a dragon roars while right at the base a contented winged soul spreads its feathers as it flies up to Heaven - in all, a sort of Renaissance V-sign.
Author Michael Turnbull
High up on the south wall of Greyfriars Kirk, between the last two buttresses, are 11 memorial stones set into the wall. In the middle is that to the cheery poet and publisher Allan Ramsay (1686-1758), buried in the churchyard in an unknown location:
Tho' here you're buried, worthy ALLAN,
We'll ne'er forget you, canty Callan,
For while your Soul lives in the Sky,
Your GENTLE SHEPHERD ne'er can die. Ramsay, Lanarkshire-born, served his apprenticeship as a wigmaker. He was a tiny, chubby little man with an ugly face, but full of fun and amusing conversation. In 1712 he opened his own wig shop and founded the Easy Club. His next business was at the sign of the Mercury on the sunny side of the High Street. Six years later he published his first book of poems and then in 1724 his Tea Table Miscellany, a collection of Scots songs and ballads.
Ramsay then set up a bookshop at the end of the ramshackle Luckenbooths beside St Giles' and opened a lending library - it was the first one in Britain.
Near the wall facing the west end of the church is the stone to Captain John Porteous (d. 1736). Jock Porteous was the son of a Canongate tailor, but his father found him so difficult to handle that he packed him off to the army where he served in Holland with the Scots Dutch Brigade.
Around 1715 Porteous returned to Edinburgh as drillmaster of the Town Guard. By 1726 he was a captain with 30 men under his command.
Ten years later a smuggler, the dyer Andrew Wilson, was sentenced to be hanged in the Grassmarket. The black-masked executioner gripped the rope, the drummer beat out a menacing roll and Wilson was jerked up.
The magistrates went for the customary "deid-chack" (execution meal) to a nearby tavern and half an hour later waved a white rod out of the window as a signal for Wilson's body to be cut down. As the hangman stepped forward to do this he was stoned by the crowd, one of whom cut through the rope. At the same time a hail of stones and earth was directed at the Town Guard and their captain.
In the confusion Porteous ordered the Guard to fire. Three civilians were killed and 12 wounded. The furious mob chased the Guard up the West Bow; in a panic the Guard fired again, killing three more.
Porteous was put on trial, found guilty, but reprieved (for political reasons) by the Regent, Queen Caroline. Immediately what were to become known as the Porteous Riots broke out. The mob stole the keys of the West Port and locked all the town gates.
They then broke into the Guard House in the High Street, seized guns, Lochaber axes and the town drum, tried to set fire to the Tolbooth (where Porteous was being held) and managed to break in and drag him into the street where, after scorching his feet, they lynched him on a dyer's pole.
"All passion spent" reads the epitaph on the modern headstone - presumably words designed to turn away the violence both of Porteous himself and of the mob that killed him.
To the north of the church is the grave of James Craig (1744-95), who at the age of 23 won the competition to design Edinburgh's New Town. Craig also designed the once-fashionable Merchant Street under George IV Bridge, the neo-gothic observatory on Calton Hill (built for the astronomer Thomas Short) and the entrance to Leith Fort.
The quotation on Craig's stone is from the poetry of his uncle, James Thomson, in his Prospect of Great Britain:
August, around, what public works I see!
Lo! Stately streets, lo! Squares that court the breeze,
Even fram'd with elegance the plain retreat,
The private dwelling. Certain in his aim,
Taste, never idly working, saves expence. At the Canongate Churchyard, to the west of the church, there is an equally laudatory headstone, a simple grey slab with its plot of roses fenced off by heavy chain-links. This is the grave of the young poet Robert Fergusson (1750-74), whose alert bronze likeness welcomes visitors to the church from the Canongate.
In spite of having a university degree from St Andrews, Fergusson toiled as a humble legal clerk, writing songs which he performed at Edinburgh private houses. His end was tragic - sudden changes of mood and a hint of mental instability produced by a fall down a flight of steps led to him being committed to the Bedlam asylum. There he took his own life and was buried in a pauper's grave.
Fergusson, whom Robert Burns greatly admired, wrote with a fresh and colourful eye. Two of his best poems are Caller Oysters and Auld Reekie, the latter a celebration of the sights and sounds of street life in Scotland's capital.
When Robert Burns came to Edinburgh in 1787 he was so angry at the absence of a memorial to Fergusson that he asked permission from the Town Council to pay for a stone and epitaph. Burns' words on the stone read:
No sculptured marble here, nor pompous lay,
No storied Urn, nor animated Bust;
This simple Stone directs Pale Scotia's way
To pour her Sorrows o'er her poet's Dust. This was an expression of Burns' disgust at the way Fergusson had been treated and an angry warning to posterity that the dead poet deserved much greater honour than he ever received in life, sentiments that echo what is written on the gravestone of Robin Cook.
Edinburgh never had a good reputation for honouring its dead since King George IV laid the foundation stone for the National Monument on Calton Hill in 1822. It was intended to be a Scottish Valhalla, a Hall of Heroes, but since the people of Edinburgh could only raise half the necessary £42,000, it became known as "Edinburgh's Disgrace". That is certainly not something that can be said about Robin Cook.
• Michael T R B Turnbull is the author of
The Edinburgh Graveyard Guide, published by Scottish Cultural Press, £8.99. For more details, go to
www.scottishbooks.comHAVING A LAUGH WITH THE EPITAPH
WHAT'S worse? To be forgotten in death or to be remembered with an epitaph that's at best funny, at worst downright rude.
Such as poor Ezekial Aikle, whose grave in East Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia, informs passers-by: "Here lies Ezekial Aikle, Age 102. The good die young."
Jonathan Blake wasn't laughing when he met his end in a road accident in Pennsylvania, but someone decided to make a joke of it: "Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake, stepped on the gas, instead of the brake."
Anna Hopewell's demise in Vermont wasn't much better. "Here lies the body of our Anna, done to death by a banana. It wasn't the fruit that laid her low, but the skin of the thing that made her go."
And pity Harry Edsel Smith of Albany, New York: "Looked up the elevator shaft to see if the car was on the way down. It was."
Some epitaphs are particularly clever - like on one London gravestone, dated 1767: "Here lies Ann Mann, who lived an old maid but died an old Mann."
Finally, pity the unfortunate soul whose tomb in Ontario is marked by these words of wisdom: "Here lies all that remains of Charlotte, born a virgin, died a harlot. For sixteen years she kept her virginity, a marvellous thing for this vicinity."
The full article contains 1605 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
