prankis quhilk wer tedious to writt.” Quite so; but if all deceivers had their ears cut off, how few would retain them! A ferocious folk, those old Scots, and petty delinquents supped sorrow at their hands with a big spoon. Sorry the lot of scandal-mongers and the like, seated on a wooden horse with hands and legs tied, and permission freely accorded to all for the throwing of missiles. Ferocity, however, should go hand in hand with courage—a quality apparently not possessed by the citizens of Edinburgh when Prince Charlie and his Highlanders came, in 1745. Incredulous of the wild clansmen ever daring to attack the town, they laughed at the very idea; but when they heard of his small force having eluded the force of Johnny Cope, sent to intercept them, and advancing in earnest, things took a very different colour. Those who were loyal to the House of Hanover were quaking in their shoes, and the Jacobites rejoicing. The city armed, even to the clergymen, who, on the Sunday before the surrender, preached in the churches with swords and daggers buckled on under their gowns. Bands of volunteers were raised, and on the report that the Pretender was near, were marched outside the walls to dispute his entry, despite their murmurs that they had volunteered to defend the city from the inside, and were not prepared to go out to be cut to pieces with the invaders’ claymores. Captain ex-Provost Drummond marched with his company down the West Bow towards the West Port. Looking round when he had reached it, he to his astonishment found himself alone. The volunteers had vanished down the back lanes or closes! But the dragoons were as bad. Coming near the enemy at Corstorphine, two miles out, they bolted without firing a shot, and so back into Edinburgh and through it and out at the other end. It was the ferocious appearance of the Highlanders that caused this terror. They were comparatively few; ill-armed, ragged, and ill-fed. But their strange dress, their wild looks, shaggy locks, and generally outlandish appearance, frightened the good Lowlanders, who knew almost as little of these Gaelic tribes as Londoners themselves. The old-time warfare of the Japanese and the Chinese, with their hideous masks; the dismal tom-toming of the African savage; the war-paint of the Red Indian, are justified of their existence, for the strange and hideous in warfare is very effective in striking a paralysing terror into an enemy. Accordingly, the tartans, the naked legs and arms, and the uncombed locks of the lairds’ uncivilised levies captured Edinburgh for Prince Charlie, who, a few days later, September 17, caused his father, the Old Pretender, to be proclaimed king, by the title of James the Third, at the Cross. [Picture: The Wooden Horse]