Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 22

by Unknown

My heart beat high on hearing these joyous sounds. I quickened my pace, and in a few seconds was in the thick of the throng that crowded the space in front of the long line of shows extending from the bridge to the Bridgegate. As it was yet several hours to the height of the horse-market, I resolved on devoting that interval to seeing some of the interesting sights which stood in such tempting array before me.

The first that fixed my regard was "The Great Lancashire Giant," whose portrait at full length—that is, at the length of some fifteen or twenty feet—flapped on a sheet of canvas nearly as large as the mainsail of a Leith smack.

This extraordinary personage was represented, in the picture, as a youth of sixteen, dressed in a ruffled shirt, a red jacket, and white trousers; and his exhibitor assured the spectators that, though but a boy, he already measured nine feet in height and seven feet round the body; that each of his shoes would make a coffin for a child of five years old, and every stocking hold a sack of flour. Six full-grown persons, he added, could be easily buttoned within his waistcoat; and his tailor, he asserted, was obliged to mount a ladder when he measured him for a jacket.

Deeply interested by the astounding picture of this extraordinary youth, and the still more astounding description given of him by his exhibitor, I ascended the little ladder that conducted to the platform in front of the show, paid my twopence—the price of admission—and in the next minute was in the presence of "The Great Lancashire Giant;" a position which enabled me to make discoveries regarding that personage that were not a little mortifying.

In the first place, I found that, instead of being a youth of sixteen, he was a man of at least six-and-thirty; in the next, that if it had not been for the raised dais on which he stood, the enormous thickness of the soles of his shoes, and the other palpably fictitious contrivances and expedients by which his dimensions were enlarged, he would not greatly have exceeded the size of my own father. I found, in short, that the tremendous "Lancashire Giant" was merely a pretty tall man, and nothing more.

Quitting this exhibition, and not a little displeased at being so egregiously bitten, I passed on to the next, which was "Mr. Higgenbotham's Royal Menagerie. The Noblest Collection of Wild Beasts ever seen in the Civilised World."

This was a splendid affair. On a narrow stage in front were seated four fat red-faced musicians, in beef-eater coats, puffing and blowing on bugles and trombones. Close by these, stood a thin, sharp-eyed, sallow-complexioned man in plain clothes, beating a huge drum, and adding the music of a set of Pandean pipes, which were stuck into his bosom, to the general harmony. This was Mr. Higgenbotham himself.

But it was the paintings on the immense field of canvas above that particularly attracted my attention. On this field were exhibited an appalling collection of the most terrific monsters: lions, as large as cows, gambolling amongst rocks; ourang-outangs, of eight feet in height, walking with sticks in their hands, as grave and stately as drum-majors; and a serpent, as thick as a hogshead, and of interminable length—in truth, without any beginning, middle, or end—twining round an unfortunate black, and crushing him to death in its enormous folds.

All this was irresistible. So up the stair I sprang, paid my sixpence, and in a moment after found myself in the centre of the well-saw dusted area in the interior, gazing on the various birds and beasts in the cages around me. It was by no means a perplexing task; for, as in the case of "The Great Lancashire Giant," the fulfilment of the inside but little corresponded with the promise of the out. The principal part of the collection I found to consist of half-a-dozen starved monkeys, as many parrots—grey and green, an indescribable monster, in a dark corner, strongly suspected by some of the spectators of being a boy in a polar bear's skin, a bird of paradise, and a hedgehog, which they dignified with the name of a porcupine.

"Whaur's the lions, and the teegers, and the elephants, and the boy instructor, and the black man?" said a disappointed countryman, addressing a fellow in a short canvas frock or overall, who was crossing the area with a bucket of water.