Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/319

 Rh amongst the first-footers; the whisky-shops, as they were then called, being open all night (and any amount of whisky to be had cheap, very cheap, say one shilling and twopence, or one shilling and threepence per bottle of five gills, and very good then), enabled the revellers to keep up continued supplies in their bottles. Then there were the "Baxters", or "Batchies Bow wow wows" (as they were termed then, bakers), and who were known by their peculiar trade-signal or whistle (and who were a powerful body of men, requiring great strength of neck and head to carry, say, forty or forty-five loaves on a large board or tray, placed on the head); they, leaving off their work, would sally forth into the streets, and join in the revelry. Then the students attending the University would likewise turn in and join the crowds, and if perchance a wrong expression or slighting word crept from one of the students towards a "batchie", then woe betide all: bottles and glasses were smashed, blows were exchanged freely, a regular melee occurring, and everyone fleeing his or her own way out of the shindy, until the row dwindled down or was fought out, leaving many a cut and scar to be accounted for.

This mode of procedure of first-footing is as followed now in Edinburgh. The Anglican element is slowly but surely invading Scotland at this period in Edinburgh; it begins about the first of December in the display of Christmas cards in shop-windows and on the counters of our leading dry-goods shops. Then on comes Christmas Day, which in the New Town principal shops make an afternoon holiday of it, and in some instances closed for the day. Some of the Presbyterian churches hold service, and altogether the day has an appearance of a holiday in the city. The festivities continue through the week, the schools are closed, and the people generally preparing for the great event of the year in Scotland, namely, the ushering in of New Year's Day in real earnest Scotch fashion. From the appearance of the leading thoroughfares, it is evident there is an expectancy of something about to take place in the