Auld Reekie

Auld Reekie is a traditional nickname for the city of Edinburgh, in Scotland. The nickname is from the Scots word reek meaning smoke (not, as is often assumed, smell).

"... people on the decks of ships, or ploughing in quiet country places over in Fife, can see the banner on the Castle battlements, and the smoke of the Old Town blowing abroad over the subjacent country. A city that is set upon a hill. It was, I suppose, from this distant aspect that she got her nickname of AULD REEKIE. Perhaps it was given her by people who had never crossed her doors: day after day, from their various rustic Pisgahs, they had seen the pile of building on the hill-top, and the long plume of smoke over the plain; so it appeared to them; so it had appeared to their fathers tilling the same field; and as that was all they knew of the place, it could be all expressed in these two words."

from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Poems

Auld Reekie is the title of one of the Scots poems of Robert Fergusson, who died insane in Edinburgh's Bedlam, aged 24, but whose poems were an inspiration for Robert Burns.

Auld Reikie, wale o' ilka Town

That Scotland kens beneath the Moon;

Where couthy Chiels at E'ening meet

Their bizzing Craigs and Mous to weet;

And blythly gar auld Care gae bye

Wi' blinkit and wi' bleering Eye:

from the poems of Robert Fergusson

In 1893, [Robert Louis Stevenson] (1850-1894) wrote from Samoa to the Scottish novelist S R Crockett "I shall never take that walk by the Fisher's Tryst and Glencorse; I shall never see Auld Reekie, I shall newer set my foot again upon the heather. Here I am until I die, and here will I be buried." His prediction came true, he died the following year in Samoa. His poem Auld Reekie was one of his last, and one of the few that he wrote in Scots. It ends:

I gang nae mair where ance I gaed,

By Brunston, Fairmileheid, or Braid;

But far frae Kirk and Tron.

O still ayont the muckle sea,

Still are ye dear, and dear to me,

Auld Reekie, still and on!

from the poems of Robert Fergusson

The Whisky

Auld Reekie is also the name of a 12 year old bottling of Islay Malt whisky, selected for its pungent smoky character..

The Recipes

• Steak "Auld Reekie"
• "Auld Reekie" Cock-a-Leekie Soup

• Auld Reekie: An Edinburgh Anthology collected by Ralph Lownie; Timewell ISBN 9781857252040 ("...historical snippets, garnered from a very wide range of sources, well-known and not-so-well-known facts, statistics, and vignettes of the characters and incidents that have made the city so interesting and appealing." Alexander McCall Smith, in the preface)