I labour’d once laboriously,
      Although no riches I amass’d;
    A menial I disdain’d to be,
      An’ keep my vow unto the last. 
    I have ceased to labour in the lan’,
      Since e’er I noticed to my wife,
    That the idle and contented man
      Endureth to the longest life.

    ’Tis my musket—­loving wife, indeed—­
      In whom I faithfully believe,
    She ’s able still to earn my bread,
      An’ Duncan she will ne’er deceive;
    I ’ll have no lack of linens fair,
      An’ plenty clothes to serve my turn,
    An’ trust me that all worldly care
      Now gives me not the least concern.

[124] The “Auld Town Guard” of Edinburgh, which existed before the Police Acts came into operation, was composed principally of Highlandmen, some of them old pensioners.  Their rendezvous, or place of resort, was in the vicinity of old St Giles’s Church, where they might generally be found smoking, snuffing, and speaking in the true Highland vernacular.  Archie Campbell, celebrated by Macintyre as “Captain Campbell,” was the last, and a favourable specimen of this class of civic functionaries.  He was a stout, tall man; and, dressed in his “knee breeks and buckles, wi’ the red-necked coat, and the cocked hat,” he considered himself of no ordinary importance.  He had a most thorough contempt for grammar, and looked upon the Lord Provost as the greatest functionary in the world.  He delighted to be called “the Provost’s right-hand man.”  Archie is still well remembered by many of the inhabitants of Edinburgh, as he was quite a character in the city.  In dealing with a prisoner, Archie used to impress him with the idea that he could do great things for him by merely speaking to “his honour the Provost;” and when locking a prisoner up in the Tolbooth, he would say sometimes—­“There, my lad, I cannot do nothing more for you!” He took care to give his friends from the Highlands a magnificent notion of his great personal consequence, which, of course, they aggrandised when they returned to the hills.

[125] A byeword for a regimental firelock.

[126] A favourite fowling-piece, alluded to in Bendourain, and elsewhere.

JOHN MACODRUM.

Jan Macodrum, the Bard of Uist, was patronised by an eminent judge of merit, Sir James Macdonald of Skye,—­of whom, after a distinguished career at Oxford, such expectations were formed, that on his premature death at Rome he was lamented as the Marcellus of Scotland.

Macodrum’s name is cited in the Ossianic controversy, upon Sir James’s report, as a person whose mind was stored with Ossianic poetry, of which Macpherson gave to the world the far-famed specimens.  A humorous story is told of Macodrum (who was a noted humorist) having trifled a little with the translator when he applied for a sample of the old Fingalian, in the words, “Hast thou got anything of, or on, (equivalent in Gaelic to hast thou anything to get of) the Fingalian heroes?” “If I have,” quoth Macodrum, “I fear it is now irrecoverable.”