Caledonian Candlesticks
Towards the close of the year 1867, that mighty empire, the drum-beat of whose soldiers welcomes the sun all round the world, was plunged into one of those periodical visitations of panic which have afflicted her like an intermittent nightmare since the naughty pranks of Fenianism first disturbed the digestions of her statesmen. Three brave men had just been hanged in the city of Manchester for the rescue of two rebel leaders, and Ireland mourned them as martyrs, while the guilty conscience of England quaked in hourly fear of a retribution which was felt to be deserved, and of which more than one indication had been foreshadowed. For, to say nothing of the terrible explosion at Clerkenwell, London, by which some twenty people were killed and hundreds more or less seriously wounded, every metropolitan and provincial paper shrieked forth dire warnings of mysterious plots, awful conspiracies, and blood-curdling revelations. A red-headed Irishman had been discovered prowling round the Warrington Gas Works. That smoky Lancashire town was instantly declared in a state of siege. The volunteers were called out, every male between the ages of twelve and eighty was sworn in as a special constable, and in the terrible confusion of the time many of the sturdy Anglo-Saxons so far lost their presence of mind as to beat other fellows’ wives instead of their own, while some of them became such hopeless imbeciles as to behave like Christians for a whole week. Soon after the bodies of two dead cats were seen in the canal at Crewe, within a hundred yards of the mayor’s residence. So convinced was that functionary that they were stuffed with nitro-glycerine or fulminate of mercury that he took the first express for London, and thence telegraphed to the chief constable to seize the suspicious feline carcasses. With the assistance of a detachment of engineers and the entire police force of Crewe, the remains of the defunct tabbies were brought to land, but there wasn’t a chemist in England’s borders would undertake a post-mortem examination, so they were carefully conveyed far out into St. George’s channel, and committed to the depths of the silent waters.
It was in Manchester, however, that the most abject state of alarm existed. The military guards were trebled, the police force was augmented by all the men that could be spared from the county constabulary, the Irish population was placed under the closest surveillance; watchmen patrolled the neighborhood of all public buildings and important warehouses, which were amply supplied with bags of sand and buckets of water in view of any possible conflagration, the sand being for the especial contingency of Greek-fire, which is like Irish eloquence in one respect, that it can’t be quenched by cold water, and must therefore be smothered. So overwhelmed was the superintendent of the Manchester police, Capt. Palin, by his responsibilities, that he ran away from them along with the wife of the resident magistrate, Mr. Fowler. In his absence, the duty of guarding the city from the Fenian bombs, dynamite, powder, bullets, daggers, and shillelaghs devolved upon the commandant of the Ninety-second Highlanders, who were then in garrison at Manchester. It is easy to imagine the horror of this officer when, a few days after his appointment, he received a letter containing the details of a diabolical plot to destroy the city and annihilate the troops. On a given night the gas mains were to be severed, and in the ensuing darkness the town was to be fired in a hundred places, the barracks attacked by a few thousand wild Irishmen, armed with pikes, bowie-knives, hand grenades, bottles of vitriol, Remington rifles, sledge-hammers, and revolvers, and the devoted Cameron men chopped into as many fragments as the squares of their tartans.
Their chief at first was overwhelmed. He swallowed three mutchkins of Glenlivat and consumed a quarter-pound of snuff in two minutes without knowing it. Recovering somewhat, he summoned a hasty council of the Macintoshes and the Mackenzies and the Macgregors of those various ilks, and after many applications of the barley bree and sundry inhalations of Lundyfoot, a plan of defence was agreed upon. The sentries were doubled, and the remainder of the garrison ordered to sleep upon their arms. Sand-bags were piled in every convenient corner, barrels and buckets and tubs of water ranged on every staircase, and, greatest effort of the entire strategy, each kilted warrior was provided with two tallow candles and a box of matches. Unfortunately, they received no orders as to how the illuminating agents were to be utilized in the event of an Egyptian darkness suddenly enshrouding them in gloom. Consequently they were much divided in opinion as to whether one Highlander was to hold the candles while the other did the shooting; or should each Highlander carry his own candle in his bonnet or his kilt; or were they to pile the candles in a pyramid on the ground, and form a square around them; or was it possible the candles were intended for rations, should the siege last any time. Luckily no occasion arose for testing the brilliancy of the candle idea or of the candles themselves, but for days afterwards a doughty mountaineer from Inverness or Aberfeldy would be surprised, when at the friendly fireside of some hospitable countryman in Manchester, to find Niagaras of grease rolling impetuously down his nether limbs, and would learn too late that he had forgotten to take his strange munitions of war out of his pocket, and was consequently indulging in a warm tallow bath. In time the story oozed out, and until this day that battalion of the Ninety-second is known to the gamins of Manchester as the Caledonian Candlesticks.