Note 145 — TAVERNS OF OLD TIMES.

‘The wags of the eighteenth century used to tell of a certain city treasurer who, on being applied to for a new rope to the Tron Kirk bell, summoned the Council to deliberate on the demand; an adjournment to Clerihugh’s Tavern, it was hoped, might facilitate the settlement of so weighty a matter, but one dinner proved insufficient, and it was not till their third banquet that the application was referred to a committee, who spliced the old rope, and settled the bill!’—Wilson’s Memorials of Old Edinburgh.