The Edinburgh Literary Pub Tour combines beers in historic Edinburgh pubs with stories about Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson.
Poetry in the Beehive Inn, Grassmarket
In the upstairs room of the Beehive Inn on Edinburgh’s Grassmarket, a gathered crowd sits utterly perplexed as a passage from Robert Fergusson’s clock-busting poem, Auld Reekie, is performed. For most, the strong Scots dialect may as well be Swahili, but there’s something hypnotising about the rhythm and sharp edges of the words.
Fergusson should be better known. But he burned out young. His literary career lasted just three years, before he fell, became delirious and was committed to Edinburgh’s Bedlam.
- To book this writer-themed Edinburgh pub crawl, head here.
Robert Fergusson’s influence on Robert Burns
For one young poet arriving in Edinburgh from Ayrshire in 1786, however, Fergusson was an inspiration. Robert Burns bought a stone for the pauper’s grave that Fergusson was buried in, and channelled his unrepentant Scottishness in his writing.
Burns actually stayed in the White Hart next door to the Beehive, but he didn’t necessarily stay there locked away in his room, writing. A sign by the Beehive’s door states that Burns would regularly patronise the old coaching in to watch cockfights.
Edinburgh Literary Pub Tour’s in-character guides
This is the side of Burns that Clart, the more earthy of the two guides leading the Edinburgh Literary Pub Tour, likes to explore. In fact, the drinking, carousing, sexually-transmitted disease-ridden side is the one he likes to explore in all Scotland’s great writers.
His cohort, McBrain, takes a rather more academic approach. He has a distaste for all that seediness and is far happier looking at the writers’ cultural impact and motivations.
- For Edinburgh tours and experiences, check out the wide selection here.
Pubs on the Edinburgh Literary Pub Tour
The Edinburgh Literary Pub Tour is therefore slightly different to your average walking tour. It’s part tour, part theatrical performance, part pub crawl. And, as it turns out, the pubs are the most incongruent part of this. At least two of them are chosen because they are conveniently located on the route rather than because they’ve any special links to writers.
The Jolly Judge backs on to a courtyard where Boswell (of Samuel Johnson fame) rented a flat from the philosopher David Hume, but the yard is used as an excuse to introduce Sir Walter Scott. Clart and McBrain delve into how Scott’s brothers and sisters died young and the appalling debt he got himself into while celebrating the works such as Waverley, Ivanhoe and Rob Roy that established him as the big cheese of Scottish literature.
- For trains to Edinburgh, book via the Trainline.
Makars’ Court in Edinburgh
Nearby is Makars’ Court, where the paving slabs have quotes from a series of Scottish writers engraved on them. Most poignant is the slab bearing the words of Robert Louis Stevenson: “There are no stars so lovely as Edinburgh street lamps.”
They were written in his final home in Samoa, shortly before he died at the age of 44. Stevenson’s complex relationship with Edinburgh is played out nicely by the opposing characters of Clart and McBrain. But it’s perhaps even better shown in the personalities of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Stevenson’s book that could easily act as a metaphor for the city. The unstructured, chaotic Old Town sits opposite the neat, minutely planned New Town.
- Pick out Edinburgh accommodation for your budget here.
Milnes Bar in Edinburgh’s New Town
The last pub, the Milnes Bar, is actually in the New Town. It was the booze-soaked home to Scots dialect revivalist writers in the 60s and 70s, with their little alcove being dubbed ‘The Little Kremlin’. The tour finishes as it begins, with a largely incomprehensible poem being performed. But this time, it only seem right to toast it with a wee whisky.
More Edinburgh travel ideas
If you’ve enjoyed this review of the Edinburgh Literary Pub Tour, there are more Edinburgh stories on Planet Whitley. These include…
- The best things to do near Edinburgh Castle.
- How to get into Edinburgh Castle when tickets have sold out.
- How to spend 24 hours in Edinburgh.
- The Dean Village – Edinburgh’s scenic escape.
- What to see first in the National Museum of Scotland.
Disclosure: There are affiliate links within this article. If you buy a product after clicking through on these links, I will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
