Chapter VI: In Snow-Time--A Town and Gown

My well-beloved reader--what a pretty expression, by the way!--must not jump to the conclusion that this chapter, and those that follow, describe life at the Northern University far back in the Middle Ages.

No; Sandie’s time was just about thirty years ago. Ten years after that, I know there was but little change. There may or may not be an alteration since, for I have been to sea, and scarcely clapped eyes on a red gown.

Well, in Sandie’s time, town and gown riots were far from uncommon; especially in snow-time. Snow-time was glow-time then. The very look of the falling snow sent a thrill of joy to each Grammar School boy’s or even student’s heart, and the first question one would ask another would be--

“Is it making?”

That is, was the snow soft enough to form easily into snowballs? For if very frosty and powdery it was of course no use. As most of the real snowball battles took place just when the thaw commenced, a constant fusillade would then be carried on all up and down Union Street. The street boys, as well as students, were chokeful of mischief, and every conspicuous person caught it hot--if a snowball can be called hot. Battered silk hats were scattered in all directions. Mashers or extra-well-dressed people became simply living targets; silk umbrellas, if put up, were speedily riddled--it was only a case of making the snowball a trifle harder, an extra squeeze did that, and lo! there was a hole in the silken ’brella.

It is almost needless to say that the bobbies, or policemen, suffered greatly at such times. In fact, a policeman was hardly to be seen without an expanded snowball or two on his greatcoat, and more than one might be sporting black eyes. As for catching the depredators, and running them in, this was out of the question. The running-in part would have been easy enough, but first they had to catch their hare,--there was the rub.

Well, school challenged school. The Grammar School, for example, dominated the Gordons, or Sillerton boys, with a rod of iron.

These boys, in those days, were the drollest-looking chaps it is possible to conceive. They used to march four deep, with a bit of a fife and drum band ahead of them; and, just imagine it, they were all dressed like little old men, in blue swallow-tailed coats, with brass buttons, knee-breeches, and broad Tam o’ Shanter bonnets.

Well, on days when the snow was making, the Grammar School lads would lie in wait for them, about three deep on each side of the street, and when they got the Gordons right between, oh, then the fun began, and soon waxed fast and furious. Some of the teachers, foolishly enough, would charge the Grammarians with their umbrellas. They were soon to be pitied; here and there you would see one of these well-dressed whiskered dons lying on his back, his umbrella torn to tatters, and snowballs alighting on his person from all directions, as if from a Maxim gun.

Meanwhile the Gordon ranks would be broken up, the music stopped, and after perhaps an ineffectual attempt at self-defence, Sillerton would be demoralised and flying for safety in all directions.

But there were other schools that would meet the Grammar School at times. I have known them meet by challenge by the Denburn side, and a fine afternoon’s fight be the result.

Then there used to be a manufactory where the workers were terrible roughs, namely, “the comb-work chaps,” as they were called. As a rule, the Grammar School steered clear of these. They were bad to beat, and there was no honour or glory in beating them. Besides, they used to put stones inside their snowballs.

Sometimes bands of sailor boys used to come up from the shipping in the harbour to engage the Grammar School in a pitched battle, and all up and down the school-hill the fight would rage sometimes for hours.

Once I remember the Grammar School was being badly beaten by the comb-work chaps. Many had received ugly cuts in their faces with stoned snowballs.

The school lads were almost demoralised, and making a running fight of it towards their own quad. But help was at hand. A band of red gowns had heard of the brutality of those roughs, and now they managed to outflank the cowardly ruffians, while the Grammar School boys rallied once again and attacked them from the front.

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.”

* * * * *

“Now, Sandie,” cried Willie, one morning in the end of January, as he burst gleefully into his friend’s attic and surprised him at his porridge, “I’ve good news for you. You and I are both invited to the medical students’ supper, the night after next.”

“I don’t know that I care to go, Willie,” said Sandie. “Aren’t they just a wee bit noisy and rough at times?”

“Oh, that is nothing, it is only good-humoured and funny they are.”

“And don’t they as a body indulge in toddy to some considerable extent?”

“Perhaps, perhaps, but you and I shall indulge in gingerbeer and lemonade. Come, you mustn’t refuse. They will be offended. I won’t go unless you go, and if I don’t go I shall lose some good friends.”

“Well, Willie, for your sake, I’ll go.”

“That’s a man! You’ll hear some humorous speeches and some capital songs, most of them with choruses.”

Well, the night came round; and round the great tables in the dining-room of the Lemon Tree Hotel about a hundred as sturdy, happy, and healthy-looking young men assembled as ever you would wish to witness. They were not only happy, they were hungry. The speedy way in which the viands disappeared was proof positive of this. Every edible domestic animal seemed to be represented on these tables--turkey, geese, and fowls, pork, mutton, and beef, besides haggis galore, and plenty of mashed potatoes and sturdy Scottish kail.

Each plate was flanked by a tankard of table-ale. Nothing stronger. Stronger potations had yet to come.

Well, in due time even the puddings were discussed, and then the tables were cleared.

“Give your orders, gentlemen,” cried the president, knocking on the table. A very tall splendid-looking fellow this president was, by birth an Africander, who had come to take a medical degree in Aberdeen previously to taking up practice at Cape Town.

The orders were given.

Most of these were simple enough--the wine of the country, with hot water, sugar, and lemon.

Then right loyally all the usual toasts were given, the Queen, the army, navy, and volunteers. The volunteers was responded to in a most heroic speech by one of themselves, who had been coupled with the toast. After this, song after song was sung, and many private individuals in the room were toasted, and had to reply, which they did in speeches more or less humorous.

Not much to his delight, Sandie, as first bursar, was “let in,” as Willie called it, for a speech.

“I don’t know, gentlemen,” he began, “whether I can speak or not; I am like the Irishman who, on being asked if he could play the fiddle, replied, ‘Oh, I daresay I could, but I never tried.’”

Then Sandie warmed to his oratory, and it was universally admitted that he had made the best speech of the evening.

More songs and more speeches followed this, and so very quickly did the time fly by, that hardly anybody would believe the landlord when he came in, smiling and rubbing his hands, to announce--

“Eleven o’clock, gentlemen, if _you_ please!”

They had to please, for policemen were at the door to see the house cleared.

Now, if these somewhat wild young men had broken up into little parties of three or four, and each gone its own way, the riot I have to describe would never have taken place.

I must tell you, first, that a very heavy snow-storm had fallen some days before, and that then a partial thaw had come. The streets were cleared in the centre only, the snow being thrown in shovelfuls to the sides near the pavement.

But frost had returned, and those shovelfuls of snow had become frozen into huge bricks of part ice, part snow.

“Well,” cried the Africander, who carried an umbrella like a weaver’s beam, “let us form four deep, and go singing up Union Street, as far as the bridge, then give three cheers and disperse.”

Four deep was formed accordingly, and the march commenced, also “Auld Lang Syne.”

But they had not got farther than Market Street ere the roughs had assembled in force, and commenced a regular cannonade on the students.

“Halt, front!” cried the tall Africander, waving his great umbrella. “Give ’em fits, charge.”

The mob by this time must have been nearly two hundred strong, but so desperate and determined was the charge made by the students, that they were beaten and partially scattered. The Africander, with his great umbrella, was as good as any three men. The others fought chiefly with those huge bricks of ice that I have already mentioned; and no matter where a man was struck with one of these, down he went as if shot.

But the mob was beaten. They made a kind of running fight of it, back as far as the Castle-gate, and now the victorious students would willingly have retired.

Fate, however, was against them. For just at that moment, while the students were meditating retiring with honour, the theatre, then at the foot of Marischal Street, a street leading directly down to the harbour from the square called Castle-gate, gave exit to its swarms. The gods, as those who occupied the galleries were called, seeing that a riot was on, at once raised the cry of “Down with the students,” as they joined the beaten mob. The fight was now sharp and fierce, but against such fearful odds only one ending was possible--the students were beaten and scattered.

Now to his credit be it said, Sandie would have gone straight home, and not engaged in this unseemly town-and-gown at all, but Willie went in for it like wildfire.

And after the first defeat, Sandie, to his dismay, saw the poor lad lying helpless on the ground kicked and cuffed by the mob. The Africander was at his elbow, and both rushed to Willie’s assistance.

The Africander fairly shouldered Willie, and fought his way with him clear of the mob.

But ill-fared it with poor Sandie. He was knocked down and half killed, three of his ribs being broken with a stout stick. It was well for him that two burly night-watchmen rushed in to his rescue.

They bore him away, however, and kindly helped him all the way home.

They even assisted him to bed--a bed, by the way, he did not leave for a fortnight.

“I’ll never forget your goodness,” said Sandie, as he presented one of them with a five-shilling piece, that the three might drink his health.

“Oh,” said the spokesman, “we did naething mair than common charity.”

“But you don’t understand, men. You might have made me prisoner, mightn’t you?”

“Oh, ay!”

“Then I might have been tried as one of the ringleaders of the riot?”

“To be surely!”

“Well, and if so, ten to one I should have been tried next by the Senatus Academicus, and deprived of my bursary. God bless you this night, men; good-bye now. But come back and see me.”

Sandie’s landlady was kindness personified. Dr. Kilgour himself attended the poor fellow, and Willie constituted himself his constant nurse. There was at no time any real danger, so the patient did not write to alarm his father and mother.

He had plenty of callers to keep up his heart. The great Africander came every evening.

“I never saw any one fight more bravely against fearful odds,” he said over and over again, “than you did, Sandie M‘Crae.”

“Oh,” said Sandie, smiling, “I assure you fighting is not much in my line, and but for my friend Willie, you ne’er would have seen me there.”

But with his temperate habits and his wonderful constitution, Sandie was at last able to get up, and though pale and stiff, rejoin his classes.

The first day he appeared, leaning on a stick in the quad, he was the recipient of a regular ovation. The students cheered and cheered again and crowded round him to shake hands, and I believe they would have hoisted him shoulder high had not his ribs been still so weak.

But it must be confessed that Sandie did not enjoy this ovation half so much as that he received on the night he gained the bursary. He had no wish in the world to pose as a warlike hero, and he made a vow that in future, come what might, he should keep clear of riots and town-and-gowns. It was well for him he did, as the sequel will show.