Still more characteristic of old Edinburgh was the Town Guard, who for many a long day acted most inefficiently as police and guardians of the peace to the city. They are, so to speak, embalmed in the pages of Scott and Fergusson. The first treats them with a touch of comic contempt, the other calls them “the black banditti,” and deprecates their brutal violence. He had some cause, personal or otherwise. One of their number, Corporal John Dhu, a gigantic Highlander, as short of temper as he was long of body, during a city row with one fell stroke stretched a member of the mob lifeless on the pavement. The populace told wondrous legends of this corps. They existed, it was averred, before the Christian era, nay, some of them were present at the Crucifixion as Pilate’s guard! In truth they only dated from the seventeenth century, at any rate as a regularly constituted corps, and they came to an end early in the nineteenth. They attended all civic ceremonies and civic functions, their drums beat every night at eight o’clock in the High Street. Their guard-house long stood opposite the Tron Church. There was always a collision between them and the populace on occasion of rejoicing, as witness Fergusson’s Hallow Fair:
“Jock Bell gaed forth to play his freaks,
Great cause he had to rue it,
For frae a stark Lochaber aix
He gat a clamihewit
Fu’ sair that night.”
The unfortunate wretch received a still worse blow, nor even then were his troubles ended:
“He, peching on the causey, lay
O’ kicks an’ cuffs well sair’d.
A highland aith the serjeant gae