Desperate diseases require desperate cures, and in this case the students despised snowballs. Those cads used stones, let them have it. This was the cry, and the red gowns went at them tooth and nail, or stick and fist. It ended by the comb-work chaps receiving such a drubbing that they were civil for all the season thereafter. They seemed determined now not again to provoke a fight with the Grammar School boys, who had such fierce and terrible allies in those wild hordes of red gowns.
“Where were the policemen?” it may be asked, when fights like these were going on. I think I would be safe to say they were somewhere round the corner. One dutiful bobbie might go to his sergeant, and a conversation such as the following would take place:—
Bobbie. “Man! sairgent, there’s an unco killo-shangie (riot) goin on at the tap o’ Jack’s brae!”
Sergeant. “Ye dinna say so? What’s doin?”
B. “Oh, Grammarians, comb-work chaps, and students—they’re a’ at it.”
S. “Ony (any) windows broken?”
B. “I canna say there is.”
S. “Weel, man, just lat them fecht awa. They canna hurt ane-anither (each other); a black e’e or a bloody nose’ll do them good, and we canna help it. Laddies will be laddies.”
B. “A’ richt then. I’ll keep oot o’ sicht.”
S. “Ay, do.”