Note 69 — SOME MEMORIES OF THE LUCKENBOOTHS.

Edinburgh was not in this respect worse than other European cities. Paris, at least, was equally disgusting. Rigord, who wrote in the twelfth century, tells us that the king, standing one day at the window of his palace near the Seine, and observing that the dirt thrown up by the carriages produced a most offensive stench, resolved to remedy this intolerable nuisance by causing the streets to be paved. For a long time swine were permitted to wallow in them; till the young Philip being killed by a fall from his horse, from a sow running between its legs, an order was issued that no swine should in future run about the street. The monks of the Abbey of St Anthony remonstrated fiercely against this order, alleging that the prevention of the saint’s swine from enjoying the liberty of going where they pleased was a want of respect to their patron. It was therefore found necessary to grant them the privilege of wallowing in the dirt without molestation, requiring the monks only to turn them out with bells about their necks.