BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. IS7
were, neither by birth, education, nor former habits, trained to endure with
much patience the insulta of the rabble, or the provoking petulance of truantboys
and idle debauchees of all descriptions, with whom their occupation brought
them into contact. On the contrary, the tempers of the poor old fellows were
soured by the indignities with which the mob distinguished them on many
occasions, and frequently might have required the soothing strains of the poet
just quoted :-
“ 0 soldiers ! for your ain dear sakes,
For Scotland’s love-the land 0’ cakes,
Gie not her bairns sic deadly paiks,
Wi’ firelock or Lochaber axe,
Nor be sae rude,
As spill their blude.”
“ On all occasions-when holiday licenses some riot or irregularity-a skirmish
with these veterans was a favourite recreation with the rabble of Edinburgh.”
The recollection of many of our readers will enable them to appreciate the
truth of this quotation from the Heart of Mid-Luthian. The “ Town Rats,” when
annually mustered in front of the Parliament House-
“ Wi’ powdered POW an’ shaven beard,”
to do honour to the birth of his Majesty, by a feu de joie-were subject to a
species of torture, peculiarly harassing-dead cats, and every species of “ clarty
unction,” being unsparingly hurled at their devoted heads :
“ ’Mang them fell mony a gawsey snout,
Has gusht in birth-day wars,
Wi‘ blude that day.”
The last vestige of the Town Guard disappeared about the year 1817-a
period particularly fatal to many of the most ancient characteristics of the Old
Town. “ Of late,”) continues the Author of Waverley, “ the gradual diminution
of these civic soldiers reminds one of the abatement of King Lear’s hundred
knights. The edicts of each set of succeeding Magistrates have, like those of
Gonerill and Regan, diminished this venerable band with the similar question-
& What need we five-and-twenty ?-ten 1-r five 9’ And it is now nearly come
to-‘ What need we one 1’ A spectre may indeed here and there still be seen
of an old grey-headed and grey-bearded Highlander, with war-worn features, but
bent double by age : dressed. in an old-fashioned cocked hat, bound with white
tape instead of silver lace ; and in coat, waistcoat, and breeches, of a muddycoloured
red, bearing in his withered hand an ancient weapon, called a Lochaber
axe, namely, a long pole with an axe at the extremity, and a hook at the back
of the hatchet. Such a phantom of former days still creeps, I have been
informed, round the statue of Charles the Second, in the Parliament Square, as
if the image of a Stuart were the last refuge for any memorial of our ancient
The “Heart of Mid-Lothian” was published in 1817.