On May Day mornings gone by the slopes of Arthur’s Seat were once as crammed with pedestrians as the paving slabs of Princes Street. The tradition of washing one’s face in the morning dew persisted in Scotland for hundreds of years, having only fallen out of favour fairly recently. In Edinburgh each May 1, thousands of people, mostly young ladies, would set their alarms for before sunrise to traipse up Arthur’s Seat, Calton Hill and Blackford Hill and partake in the ancient rite of washing their... Read this story
