called the Scotch Dutch. Here he learned
military discipline; and, returning afterwards, in the course of an idle and
wandering life, to his native city, his services were required by the
magistrates of Edinburgh in the disturbed year 1715, for disciplining their City
Guard, in which he shortly afterwards received a captain's commission. It was
only by his military skill and an alert and resolute character as an officer of
police, that he merited this promotion, for he is said to have been a man of
profligate habits, an unnatural son, and a brutal husband. He was, however,
useful in his station, and his harsh and fierce habits rendered him formidable
to rioters or disturbers of the public peace.
    The corps in which he held his command is, or perhaps we should rather say
was, a body of about one hundred and twenty soldiers, divided into three
companies, and regularly armed, clothed, and embodied. They were chiefly
veterans who enlisted in this corps, having the benefit of working at their
trades when they were off duty. These men had the charge of preserving public
order, repressing riots and street robberies, acting, in short, as an armed
police, and attending on all public occasions where confusion or popular
disturbance might be expected.3 Poor Fergusson, whose irregularities sometimes
led him into unpleasant rencontres with these military conservators of public
order, and who mentions them so often that he may be termed their poet laureate,
thus admonishes his readers, warned doubtless by his own experience: -
 
»Gude folk, as ye come frae the fair,
Bide yont frae this black squad:
There's nae sic savages elsewhere
Allowed to wear cockad.«
 
In fact, the soldiers of the City Guard, being, as we have said, in general
discharged veterans, who had strength enough remaining for this municipal duty,
and being, moreover, for the greater part, Highlanders, were neither by birth,
education, nor former habits, trained to endure with much patience the insults
of the rabble, or the provoking petulance of truant schoolboys, and idle
debauchees of all descriptions, with whom their occupation brought them into
contact. On the contrary, the tempers of the poor old fellows were soured by the
indignities with which the mob distinguished them on many occasions, and
frequently might have required the soothing strains of the poet we have just
quoted -
 
»O soldiers! for your ain dear sakes,
For Scotland's love, the Land o' Cakes,
Gie not her bairns sic deadly paiks,
Nor be sae rude,
Wi' firelock or Lochaber-axe