time, primarily, an emblem of a sergeant’s office, and, secondarily, used for the infliction of chastisement on clumsy or disorderly recruits; and perhaps it was equivalent to the Pruegel of German armies, with which sergeants drove lagging warriors into the fray.  But is there any record of such an accoutrement as being that of a sergeant in the British army? and what was the purpose of the loose strip, unless it was to cause the blow administered to resound as much as to hurt, as does the wand of Harlequin in a booth.”

These questions received no answers from the learned correspondents of the most useful and omniscient of weekly papers.  Personally, I much doubt Mr. Denman’s suggested explanations of his highlander’s curious implement.  There is no evidence that a sergeant in the British army ever carried a cricket-bat-like implement either as a sign of office or to be used for disciplinary or punitive purposes like the canes of the German sergeants of long ago.  It would seem to be more likely that this particular figure was of unusual, perhaps unique, make, and had some special local or individual significance, wherever or for whom it was first made and used, which has now been forgotten.

After the suppression of the Jacobite uprising of 1745, the English Government made war on Scottish nationality, and among other measures the wearing of the highland dress was forbidden by Parliament.  On this occasion the following paragraph appeared in the newspapers of the time:  “We hear that the dapper wooden Highlanders, who guard so heroically the doors of snuff-shops, intend to petition the Legislature, in order that they may be excused from complying with the Act of Parliament with regard to their change of dress:  alledging that they have ever been faithful subjects to his Majesty, having constantly supplied his Guards with a pinch out of their Mulls when they marched by them, and so far from engaging in any Rebellion, that they have never entertained a rebellious thought; whence they humbly hope that they shall not be put to the expense of buying new cloaths.”  This is not a very humorous production, but at least it bears witness to the common occurrence in 1746 of the highlander’s figure at the shops of snuff and tobacco-sellers.

The highlander, as he existed within living memory at many shop doors, and as he still exists at a few, was and is the survivor of many similar wooden figures as trade signs.  The wooden figure of a negro or “Indian” with gilt loin-cloth and feathered head, has already been mentioned as an old tobacconist’s sign.  In early Georgian days a tobacconist named John Bowden, who dealt in all kinds of snuff, and also in “Aloe, Pigtail, and Wild Tobacco; with all sorts of perfumer’s goods, wholesale and retail,” traded at the sign of “The Highlander and Black Boy” in Threadneedle Street, London.  At York, in this present year, 1914, I came upon a brightly painted wooden figure of Napoleon in full