I could tell other tales of the Perthshire Volunteers in their early days, but all I will say here is that if the Territorials who have taken our place are more smart and efficient, they cannot surpass us in good-will to serve our country. Some of us can remember an older and perhaps less serviceable force, the tottering Pensioners who turned out at least once a year upon the Inch to fire a feu de joie for the Queen’s birthday. I rather think I knew that Peninsular lieutenant of whom Sir Evelyn Wood tells a touching tale—though here I am a little confused between two bearded veterans that gave kindly words to a boy—how he had lived obscurely at Perth, unnoted by two generations, till Major Wood took a public occasion of pointing him out to his fellow-citizens as one of the heroes of Albuera; then the old man in a back seat bowed his head in tears of pride and joy—“Let me greet!”—overcome to hear that fiery day not forgotten by soldiers of another age. To a veteran of a former generation quartered at Perth was born a son, afterwards well-known as Charles Mackay, editor and poet, and as stepfather of one of the most popular novelists of our day, whose modestly retiring disposition is so notorious that I do not mention her name.
In my youth the neighbourhood of Perth was strongly garrisoned by retired officers, some of whom belonged to the Sandemanian congregation here, an exclusive body that, like the Plymouth Brethren in England, had a curious attraction for old Indian soldiers. The sons usually went with their fathers, while in some cases the mothers and daughters attended the Episcopal “Chapel,” where my Wenigkeit, as son of an Englishwoman, escaped the long sermons and Shorter Catechism of Presbyterian boyhood. The Anglican form of worship has in the last generation made great way among townsmen, but it then was apt to mark either English associations or hereditary Toryism. Perth had a Cathedral, looked on askance in those days as “Puseyite,” so that even the bishop for a time held aloof from it; at all events he preached regularly in our smaller church, his lawn sleeves attracting youthful reverence beside the black-gowned pastor of those Protestant days. Now, so strongly has turned the tide of ecclesiastical fashion, it is the Cathedral at whose door a string of equipages may be seen standing of a Sunday morning, and three or four English prelates officiating at the altar in the shooting season. But half a century ago, and later, the “Chapel,” as we called it, as yet ignorant that we were “the Church in Scotland,” made the more genteel place of worship, with peers, baronets, and lairds as thick as blackberries in the congregation, their carriages breaking the Sabbath quiet of the street. The English soldiers were marched to it from the other end of the town, though that empty Cathedral stood neighbour to their barracks; and thereby hangs a tale to be caught at in my reminiscent mood.
One warm summer forenoon, some of the congregation may have been finding the sermon too long, when it was broken on by a stirring incident. A whispered message came to the officer of the military party. The men abruptly rose to clatter out, heedless of the pulpit. Presently the captain sent back for his sword, and his wife turned pale before the surmising eyes of the congregation. What could be the matter? Had the French landed? Neither preacher nor people could give all their minds to the conclusion of the service. As we streamed forth, all agog with curiosity, the street showed the unusual Sabbath sight of cabs full of policemen dashing up towards what was then the General Prison for Scotland, beyond the South Inch. Report soon spread that the inmates of this Penitentiary, hundreds strong, had broken out and might be expected to scatter over the country like ravening wolves, after an alarming
example familiar to me from the pages of—was it not?—Midshipman Easy.
The excitement that followed seemed a godsend to youngsters, and perhaps to older captives of the dull Sabbath. But, as usual, rumour exaggerated. There had been a conspiracy to break prison, which, in the case of the men, proved a fiasco; while the women, after throwing their Bibles at the chaplain as signal of revolt, got loose into a yard, but failed either to make their escape from the walls or to release the men, as had been plotted. These incidents I state with reserve, after the example of the Father of History in dealing with facts beyond his own observation. The story that passed current was that our gallant centurion reached the scene of action in hot haste, but on beholding the enemy he marched off in high dudgeon, flatly refusing to lead his company against a mob of women. In the end, we understood, those Bacchanals were quelled by the artillery of the Fire Brigade.
If all tales be true, this is not the most ignominious retreat forced upon our gallant soldiers at the hands of Scotswomen. In Penny’s Traditions of Perth it is told how, in the old martinet days, half a dozen soldiers were flogged in public on the North Inch. Mobs of that century seem rather to have enjoyed such spectacles, as a rule; but pressed enlistments had made military discipline a sore point in Scotland; and now the poor fellows’ cries excited angry pity among the lookers-on. When it came to the turn of a married man, sentenced to five hundred lashes for stealing a few potatoes to feed his family, their feelings boiled over. His own wife was present, who, as he screamed under the lash, rushed in to hold the drummer’s arm; then other women began to pelt the executioners with stones. Led by these pitying Amazons, the crowd broke through the ranks to rescue the sufferer, and his fellow-soldiers apparently made no stout resistance. The officers were set to flight, the unfortunate adjutant being captured, whom the women are said to have stripped and whipped on the spot as a lesson in humanity. That made the last flogging on the North Inch.
Perth has had the soldiers of many armies quartered upon it, including Cromwell’s troopers, and the Hessians encamped for long on the Inch after the Rebellion of ’45. At that time barracks were so deficient that Cumberland’s men had to be lodged in the parish church and meetinghouses, turned into dormitories by deal boards laid across the pews. Later on, soldiers would be billeted upon the townsfolk, as the militiamen were in my recollection; and their pay was so poor that, like that culprit already mentioned, they did not always prove honest guests. Gowrie House, presented by the loyal townsfolk to the victor of Culloden, was made into an Artillery Barrack, but afterwards given back to the town to serve as its jail and county buildings in exchange for ground above the South Inch, where the General Prison came to be built. This was originally a depôt for French prisoners of war, the first batch of whom, confined in a church on their way from Dundee, stole all the brass nails, green baize, and other fittings they could lay hands on. The prisoners became increased to thousands, who on the whole must have behaved better, for they are said to have been missed at the peace, having, indeed, spent in the city a good deal of money which they earned in part by ingenious industries. These foreigners appear as the unexpected means of importing cricket into Scotland, first played on the Inches of Perth by the English regiments sent to guard the depôt.
English soldiers, one supposes, are not now needed to guard Perth, its ordinary garrison a small body of the Black Watch or other local regiment. Gone, too, are the militia whom I once came upon drawn up at the top of the “Whins” without a stitch of uniform on, stripped to bathe by word of command. Military displays on the Inch will be less common than games of golf, cricket, and football, the last in its more unsophisticated forms, since this public space does not lend itself to the collection of gate-money; but the barefoot laddies who here kick about the “leather” for their own divert, are the buds of those professionals that bloom out to such applause in English enclosures. And the rules of football have changed even since my youth, when a band of youngsters from various public schools, gathered on the Inch for a Christmas game, found themselves all at loggerheads in an anarchy not yet divided into the kingdoms of “Rugger” and “Soccer.” Still more has the game been refined since a day when country folk coming down to market, about two miles out of Perth, met a man charging along the Crieff road, chased by a party of the Forty-Second with their kilts streaming in the wind; at first sight the fugitive was taken for a deserter, and the farmers drew aside to give him a fair chance, but it was only a Methven lad carrying off the ball from a match on the North Inch, nor could he be tackled till it was goaled in his house, half a dozen miles from the field. Scone had once a name for rough matches, at which limbs were often broken, but, as the proverb went, “A’s fair at the ba’ of Scone.”