they
are said to have sallied out to meet the foe in no disorder. The women
they would fain have left behind them; but these had their own injuries
to redress, and they followed in their husbands' wake carrying bags of
stones. The men, who were of various denominations, were armed with
sticks, blunderbusses, anything they could snatch up at a moment's
notice; and some of them were not unacquainted with fighting. Dire
silence prevailed among the men, but the women shouted as they ran, and
the curious army moved forward to the drone and squall of drum and
pipe. The enemy was sighted on the level land of Cabbylatch; and here,
while the intending combatants glared at each other, a well-known local
magnate galloped his horse between them and ordered them in the name of
the King to return to their homes. But for the farmers that meant
further depredation at the people's hands, and the townsmen would not
go back to their gloomy homes to sit down and wait for sunshine. Soon
stones (the first, it is said, cast by a woman) darkened the air. The
farmers got the word to charge, but their horses, with the best
intentions, did not know the way. There was a stampeding in different
directions, a blind rushing of one frightened steed against another;
and then the townspeople, breaking any ranks they had hitherto managed
to keep, rushed vindictively forward. The struggle at Cabbylatch
itself was not of long duration; for their own horses proved the
farmers' worst enemies, except in the cases where these sagacious
animals took matters into their own ordering and bolted judiciously for
their stables. The day was to Thrums.

Individual deeds of prowess were done that day. Of these not the least
fondly remembered by her descendants were those of the gallant matron
who pursued the most obnoxious farmer in the district even to his very
porch with heavy stones and opprobrious epithets. Once when he thought
he had left her far behind did he alight to draw breath and take a
pinch of snuff, and she was upon him like a flail. With a
terror-stricken cry he leapt once more upon his horse and fled, but not
without leaving his snuff-box in the hands of the derisive enemy.
Meggy has long gone to the kirkyard, but the snuff-mull is still
preserved.

Some ugly cuts were given and received, and heads as well as ribs were
broken; but the townsmen's triumph was short-lived. The ringleaders
were whipped through the streets of Perth, as a warni