From ploughshare to pulpit

by Gordon Stables

I forget, by the way, whether it was during this time, or a few years before, that a strange piece of revenge was taken against a professor who had incurred the displeasure of his students. This gentleman was a fowl fancier. And one night a band of some twenty or thirty students appeared a little before midnight at the professor’s house. They first barred the doors up from the outside. Then they coolly attacked the fowl-house, killing every one and carrying away the lot. Next night, at some inn in the New Town, there was a big supper, and the standing dishes were roast and boiled fowls. Such a criminal riot as this would hardly be tolerated now-a-days.

At long and last the installation day came round. A riot was confidently expected, and all preparations made to, if possible, stem the tide thereof.

The installation of Lord Rector is one of the sights of a session. It takes place in the great upper hall of the University, which occupies the top storey of a wing stretching from the back of the University, with many tall mullioned windows at each side. It is beautifully furnished with cushioned forms, a platform, and pulpit, and the walls are covered with costly pictures.

There is one thing sure and certain, the ringleaders among the student-rioters knew the value and the science of organisation, and they had everything well planned beforehand.

For example, there was an order of the Senate that rendered it impossible for policemen to enter the quad to make an arrest or to clear the square during a riot. This was a very old law, but whether rescinded or not by this time, I cannot tell.

And the ringleaders knew this. They had also found out that it was proposed to send for the soldiers, to clear courts and quad, if the riot should assume gigantic proportions. They knew that the regimental colonel had been notified to this effect, and that the soldiers were confined to barracks. It is strange that soldiers might enter in where bobbies feared to follow, but such, it would seem, was really the case.

However, against such a contingency the chief ringleaders had provided; and I may as well state here as farther on, that during the progress of the riot, first one student messenger, and then another, were despatched to solicit the aid of the soldiers to clear the quad, but that both were captured by the enemy’s scouts, and made prisoners in Mother Robertson’s till the riot was all over.

As a rule, at an installation of Lord Rector, ladies are admitted, and very gay the hall looks with their presence; but on this occasion, fearing the consequences, the presence of ladies was forbidden. This was another mistake, for students are possessed of considerable gallantry, and the rioters would never have proceeded to such extremes as they did in the presence of their mothers, sisters, and sweethearts.

As the students filed in through the gates into the quad, they were ordered to give up their sticks. This the rioters willingly did; and well they might, for, concealed under his coat or gown, every one carried a short heavy-headed hammer.

And now the great hall was crowded. The dissenters keeping all together, that is, the nations of Mars and Buchan, the two poor skinny little Highland and Foreign nations looking a mere handful beside them.