Volunteer Arms, Morningside Road

Image: © kim traynor Taken: 4 Aug 2012

The original Morningside village inn, better known as "The Canny Man's" because of a former owner who left his mark on the place. Local historian Malcolm Cant relates how the inn, standing on the road to Biggar, became the property of Mr. James Kerr in 1871, who had a habit of telling carters patronising it on their way to and from the Edinburgh markets - and tending to drink too quickly for his liking - to "Ca' canny, man!"*. This gave the inn the name by which it became known in his lifetime and has been known since. *"Go easy, man" From around 1800 onwards, it was called 'The Volunteer's Rest' (and locally, 'the Rifleman'), the reason being that the Edinburgh Volunteers would practice on the 'shooting field' (still open space), south of what became Hermitage Drive, on the east side of Braid Road facing the west slope of Blackford Hill, before retiring here for 'refreshment'. Edinburgh had a tradition of volunteer regiments in the 19th century, starting at the time of the French Revolutionary Wars in the 1790s. "Another patriotic criterion, which however was necessarily limited, consisted in joining what was called the Gentlemen Volunteers, the only voluntary regiment that we then had. Such establishments became universal afterwards, and, as there was then a real danger, were put on a military footing. But the original long blue-coated regiment was a merely political association, which persons willing to attest their principles and to pay for a uniform were expected to join. It was a respectable, though rather pretending, body; composed of comfortable privates, and middle-aged officers, selected on the ground of their station in the world, and the intensity of their public intolerance. They were an assiduous and well fed corps, and made a grand figure parading in Bruntsfield Links or Heriot's Green; but a march to Haddington would have dissolved it." -- Henry Cockburn, Memorials Of His Time, 1856

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