I stand on a small hill, dwarfed by a dark mound; a giant looming over us ready to settle down and crush my tour group. Edinburgh’s lights illuminate the night and in the distance, atop low-lying mounds of land a green glow interrupts the dark orange sky. The Northern Lights make a surprise appearance, as I take a late night tour of Calton Hill, one foggy March evening.

The horizon is a myriad of colours, a stark contrast to the mountain’s shadow behind us. Arthur’s Seat, a long-extinct volcano in the middle of Edinburgh is partly obscured by fog covering its tip. High above us, twinkling inside the fog, to my great shock, I see two beams from flashlights, excitedly moving up and down the mountain peak.

"Probably two drunk kids, who decided to take a hike after a night at the pub," our guide, a very Scottish gentleman, with long red hair laughed. "Any minute now, we’ll see those lights falling down the mountain!" Some members of the group laugh nervously. Thankfully, the lights continue their perilous journey in the other direction, fading into the fog instead and we proceed up Calton Hill.

This world is breathtaking, but I am rather anxious. This is my first vacation alone in a new city, and I imagine the mountain transforming into a large giant, that might inadvertently roll over and crush me. Many think Arthur’s Seat was named for King Arthur, of Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table fame. But our guide denies this. He tells us Arthur’s Seat was actually home to a great giant, who was eventually killed by a Scotsman seeking to end the death and destruction the giant caused.

So much of Edinburgh’s story is a mixture of violence and tragedy, heavily sprinkled with myth. And even more of it is a collection of fumbles along the way, stories of mistakes that define the city as much as its beauty. Atop Calton Hill is the National Monument of Scotland, which looks like a half-baked version of Athen’s Parthenon. Started in the early 1800s, it was, in fact, never completed due to a lack of funds and is known as "Scotland’s disgrace", "Edinburgh’s shame" among other affectionate terms.

Edinburgh’s dysfunction is sown into the tour guides’ stories, to the extent that the arguably worst poet in the English language is a key figure in my education of this city. This same poet, it is said, inspired our favourite fictional professor’s name: Minerva McGonagall of Harry Potter.

William McGonagall is buried in an unmarked grave in Greyfriars Kirkyard, but a plaque commemorating him was unveiled there in 1999.

The same guide, with a loud guffaw, pointed it out, highlighting how McGonagall’s friends and others in the city constantly played pranks on him, even sending him across the ocean to New York City, after fooling him that he was to be honoured there.

The plaque in the graveyard reads:

I am your Gracious Majesty ever faithful to Thee,

William McGonagall, The Poor Poet,

That lives in Dundee.

There is much affection for the Poor Poet in Scotland, even if it makes him the butt of their jokes. He was born in Edinburgh in 1825. Before McGonagall was a terrible poet, he was an actor of some repute in Dundee, where he spent most of his professional life, playing characters like Macduff, in Macbeth. He once played Macduff with such aplomb that the audience demanded to see him repeat his duel with Macbeth. He refused to die when stabbed and eventually tripped up the lead actor, according to a review.

Edinburgh welcomes the literary traveller. I learned about the worst English-language poet in the world in its graveyards, and found a vast collection of bookstores in various nooks and crannies. To me, the bookstores and literary landmarks offered comfort when travelling alone. I had been warned off walking around late at night, told to watch my belongings, keep my passport in a safety deposit box, among other pieces of advice many seem to think a female traveller needs.

Modern Edinburgh, however, is a safe city according to most accounts. The real challenge is finding enjoyment in the long silences.

I have always travelled with company; revelling in sharing new experiences, watching a city through other’s reactions, taking pictures and being in someone else’s pictures. But I was panicking on this trip, tempted to sit in one coffee shop and hide behind a book so I did not look like a fool to all the anonymous strangers around me. My irrational fear of looking stupid was, in fact, cured by books. This trip, I relied on the company of those in books, long dead or far away.

I explored numerous bookstores, spent hours rifling through antique collections, finding many a dull travelogue, written by British men trying to understand the Scottish experience. Yet within those bookstores were numerous treasures. I stumbled across a hundred-year-old copy of Edward Fitzgerald’s translations of Umar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat for the relatively reasonable sum of 20 pounds. There were beautiful illustrations of The Water Babies, Alice in Wonderland and endless collections of Scottish fairytales. Selkies, faeries and references to the Loch Ness monster abounded. Granted, these books were also being recommended to me, a tourist, with little knowledge of Scotland other than the Outlander series, and a few clips of Braveheart.

But by focusing on literary tours of Edinburgh, the deafening silence of solitary travel was replaced by a growing clamour of voices expecting me to find them. Books demanded to be bought and read, alleyways boasted a new story, pub names spoke of scandal and intrigue. The Ensign Ewart pub was named after Charles Ewert who captured one of the regimental eagles from Napoleon’s army at the Battle of Waterloo. The Maggie Dickson pub was named for a woman who survived her execution after being accused of infanticide -- she said her child was born dead. Focusing on these exciting, tragic voices, and in a perverse way, learning about McGonagall’s many failings as an artist, made my journey less lonely.

I admired William McGonagall’s stubbornness, despite being made a fool of on many occasions. His life was spent trying to prove himself, continuing to write despite the negative commentary he faced and somehow, Scotland rewarded him for being so steadfast in his resolve. All his work has been published, and after Robert Burns, most Scots mention his name as one of the most well-known poets in the region.

McGonagall was a strange and very lonely figure who stuck with me during that trip. McGonagall’s bad poetry ultimately immortalised him.

Minerva McGonagall is more well-known than her namesake. She is the put-together, favourite professor for die-hard Gryffindor fans. She is a firm opposite to the bumbling William McGonagall, she is wisdom personified.

These diametrically opposing characters stem from the same place, a city with infinite stories, a city that in its contradictions, made me embrace my own.