“Pity the sorrows of a poor old man,
Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door.”
They carried a thick staff, not so much a weapon of offence as to support their tottering steps. They had also rattles in their hands, typical, we presume, of the coming rattles in the throat, for they were of no earthly use whatever. Each of them was furnished with a snug box, in which they slept as long as possible. But, if ever they did wake up, their proceedings were of a most remarkable kind. They set forth round their beat with a lantern in their hands, as a kind of a beacon to warn thieves and rogues that it was time to hide, until these guardians of the night had performed the farce of vigilance and gone back to snore. Moreover, like an army marching to surprise an enemy with all the regimental bands performing a grand chorus, they also gave notice of their approach to the same kind of gentry by yelling the hour of the night and the state of the weather with a tremulous and querulous voice, something between a grunt and a squeak, which even yet reminds us of the lines in Dunciad;
“Silence, ye wolves! while Ralph to Cynthia howls,
And makes night hideous: answer him, ye owls.”
But, to be sure, the wisdom of our forefathers had a double object in view when they ordered this musical performance to be got up. It not only saved the poor old watchmen from conflicts in which they must have suffered grievously, but it served another purpose, and so “killed two birds with one stone” with a vengeance. Only fancy the happiness of a peaceful citizen, fast asleep after the toils and fatigues of the day, to have his first slumber disturbed that he might be told that it was “half-past eleven o’clock, and a cloudy night,” and then, by the time that he had digested this interesting intelligence and was composing himself on his pillow again, to be again aroused to learn that it was now “twelve o’clock, and a starlight morning,” and so on every half-hour until day-break. The vagaries of the veritable queen Mab, with “tithe-pigs’ tails” and all the rest of it, were only more poetical, not the least more rest-disturbing, than the shouts of these bawlers of the night. Truly, the watch committee of those days might have taken for their motto, “Macbeth does murder sleep.” And many were the funny tricks played upon these poor, helpless old creatures, by the practical jokers who then so abounded amongst us. Sometimes they would, when caught napping, be nailed up in their boxes, while occasionally, by way of variety, their persecutors would lay them gently on the ground with the doors downwards, so that their unhappy inmates would be as helpless as a turtle turned upon its back, and be kept prisoners till morning. In short, “a Charley” was considered fair game for every lover of mischief to practise upon, and their tormentors were never tired of inventing new devices for teazing and annoying them. Latterly, however, as the town grew larger, the veteran battalions, the cripples, wheezers, coughers, and asthmatics, were superseded by a more stalwart race, who looked as if they would stand no nonsense, and could do a little fighting at a pinch.
The last of these men, whom we recollect before the establishment of the new police, had the beat in the neighbourhood of Clayton-square. Many of our readers must recollect him. He was a six-foot muscular Irishman. “Well, Pat,” some of the young ones, who are middle aged gentlemen now, used to say to him, “Well, Pat, what of O’Connell?” On such occasions Pat invariably drew himself up, like a soldier on parade, to his full height, looked devoutly upwards, and then solemnly exclaimed, “There’s One above, sir—and—next to him—is Daniel O’Connell!” And it was a name to conjure with in his day! We respected, as often as we heard of it, that poor fellow’s reverence for his mighty countryman, and felt that, had we been Irish, we also should have placed that name first and foremost in our calendar of saints, martyrs, patriots and heroes. Who is there now of his name and nation who can rise and say, “Mr. Speaker, I address you as the representative of Ireland.” But, forward. How the old times, and the old things, and the old oil-lamps, and the old watchmen have all passed away and disappeared! And the old pigtails, too, have vanished with them. When we first escaped from petticoats into jacket and trousers, every man, young and old, wore a hairy appendage at the back of his head, called a pigtail, as if anxious to support Lord Monboddo’s theory, that man had originally been a tailed animal of the monkey tribe; for surely our wholesale re-tailing, if we may so speak, could have been for no other purpose. Pigtails were of various sorts and sizes. The sailors wore an immense club of hair reaching half-way down their backs, like that worn by one of Ingoldsby’s heroes, and thus described by him,—
“And his pigtail is long, and bushy, and thick,
Like a pump handle stuck on the end of a stick.”
Those of the soldiers were somewhat less in magnitude, but still enormous in their proportions. And quiet citizens wore jauntily one little dainty lock, tied up neatly with black ribbon, and just showing itself over the coat collar. It was a strange practice, but custom renders us familiar with everything. At last, however, Fashion, in one of her capricious moods, issued her fiat, and pigtails were curtailed. But some few old stagers, lovers of things as they were, and the enemies of all innovation, saw revolution in the doom of pigtails, and persevered in wearing them long after they had generally disappeared. The pigtail finally seen in society in Liverpool dangled on the back of —; but, no, no! never mind his name. He still toddles about on ’Change, and might not like to be joked about it, even at this distance of time. Its fate was curious. Through evil report and good report he had stood by that pigtail as part and parcel of the British Constitution, the very Palladium of Magna Charta, Habeas Corpus, and the Bill of Rights. But the time for a new edition of The Rape of the Lock arrived. He dined one day with a party of gay fellows like himself. The bottle went freely round, until, under its influence, our unlucky friend fell fast asleep. The opportunity was seized upon. After some hours’ refreshing slumber he awoke, and found himself alone. On the table before him was a neat little parcel, directed to him, made up in silvery paper, and tied with a delicate blue ribbon. What could it be? He eagerly opened it, and found, Il Diavolo! that it was his pigtail. “Achilles’ wrath,” as sung by Homer, was nothing compared with the fury of the wretched man. He stormed, he swore, he threatened, but he could never discover who had been the operator who had so despoiled him, like another Samson, of his pride. Let us hope that remorse has severely visited the guilty criminal. Its work, however, must have been inwardly, for outwardly he is a hale, hearty, cheerful-looking old man, who still carries himself among his brother merchants as if he had never perpetrated such an enormous atrocity.
This, we said, was the last of the pigtails seen in Liverpool society. But we did meet with another, the very Ultimus Romanorum, after a lapse of many years, under very peculiar and interesting circumstances. We were walking in Lime-street, when all at once we caught sight of a tall, patriarchal, respectably-dressed man, some three-quarters of a century old, with a pigtail. It was like the ghost of the past, or a mummy from Egypt, rising suddenly before us. The old gentleman, whose pigtail seemed saucily to defy all modern improvements as the works of Satan and his emissaries, was, with spectacles on nose, reading some document on the wall. Being naturally of an inquisitive turn of mind, and especially anxious at that moment to find out what still on earth could interest a pigtail, we stopped to make the discovery. Ha! ha ha! It nearly killed us with laughter. It was the electioneering address of Sir Howard Douglas. No wonder the old man’s sympathies were excited: it was pigtail studying pigtail, Noah holding sweet communion with Methuselah or Tubal Cain. We often marvel within ourselves whether that last survivor of the pigtail dynasty is yet alive, and whether he believes in steam-ships, and railways, and electric telegraphs; whether indeed he believes in the nineteenth century at all, or in anything except Sir Howard Douglas and pigtails.
Hair-powder, which also used generally to be worn in those days, went out of fashion with pigtails. It was in allusion to this practice that the old song laughingly asked,
“And what are bachelors made of?
Powder and puff,
And such like stuff,
Such are bachelors made of—
Made of!
Such are bachelors made of.”