Spit here..

You should not be surprised if walking up the Royal Mile in Edinburgh you find people deliberately spitting on this heart-shaped mosaic included in the cobble stones. This marks the spot of the old Tolbooth which was the town jail, and the scene of public executions.

People spit on it to ward away the evil memories that surround the place. It is also meant to be bad luck to walk across it - variously it is said that you will never find true love, or that you will never return to Edinburgh. It is close to the West Door of St Giles' Cathedral and close to the Signet Library, where Sir Walter Scott (as a Writer to the Signet) would walk to discuss his clients with their solicitors.

The jail was known as "The Heart of Midlothian". Scott named his seventh Waverley novel after it. The story is about the aftermath of the Porteous Riots - when a Captain of the Town Guard was seized and lynched by a mob. Scott tells how a woman (a true life character called Helen Walker, but in the novel known as Jeanie Deans) walks to London to beg for a pardon for her sister.

It was the first Scott novel I read - as a matter of compulsion for Eng Lit 1 in the University of Edinburgh!