When the Hibs are playing well, the spirit of old Leith rises once more amidst the gentrification that’s recently settled in these streets.

And Hibs are playing well these days. David Gray, Hibs’ young manager is fashioning a resilient and skilful team.

Earlier this month, Hibs celebrated their 150th anniversary with a Mass at St Patrick’s Church on the Cowgate, whose parish priest, Canon Edward Hannan was one of the club’s co-founders.

This quarter of Edinburgh has been colonised by the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, but once it was home to Hibs before they moved further east into Leith.

It was also home to Edinburgh’s Irish immigrants who lived in appalling deprivation in some of the worst slum housing to be found anywhere in Europe.

The roots of Celtic FC, Scotland’s other great football club for the immigrant Irish, are renowned throughout the world.

But before them there had been Hibs who wore green and white hoops for many years before Celtic adopted them a quarter of a century later.

By this time, Celtic – aided by the onset of professionalism and they’re greater economic pull - had also swiped half a dozen of Hibs’ best players.

Celtic’s origins in Glasgow’s East End, providing relief for Glasgow’s poor Catholic Irish, are still celebrated today, but Hibs’ connection to Leith and its surrounding neighbourhoods are just as vivid and tangible.

It’s only when you walk along the Cowgate and down into Leith that the extent of this connection becomes clear.

My guide on this mini-pilgrimage among Hibs’ hallowed tombstones is the journalist and academic, Simon Pia, who has written several books about Hibs and its iconic players.

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