SOLDIERING. 7 1 



professors, clergymen, parish schoolmasters, apprentices, 

 etc., and, in Scotland, every poor man having more than 

 two lawful children, or property under fifty pounds. This 

 militia service being irksome to many persons, associations 

 were formed, in each district throughout the country, for 

 the accumulation of central funds to pay the requisite 

 bounty to volunteers when any of their members wished 

 to be relieved from duty, the general sum being five 

 pounds, but, during the French wars, rising not unfrequently 

 to forty. 



John Duncan was once balloted, and twice offered 

 himself as a volunteer for others, receiving for this the 

 additional bounty of five pounds a great sum to a poor 

 weaver; helping him to meet the expenses of the daughters' 

 upbringing, and buy some desired volumes from the old 

 book shops in Aberdeen, which he used regularly to 

 frequent, and where he picked up many a rare volume and 

 pamphlet. From a letter addressed to him as " Private 

 soldier, Aberdeen Militia," in 1825, he must have joined 

 before that date. The militia were then drilled twice a 

 year, once in early spring and again in the end of summer, 

 a month at one time and six weeks at another, though, in 

 times of peace, the militia require to be only twenty- 

 eight days in the field. The commander of the corps was 

 Colonel Gordon of Cluny (the father of the late John 

 Gordon, Esq., of Cluny), known as the richest commoner 

 in Scotland, a vigorous but kindly and popular officer, 

 who, by the over-free use of his tongue when excited, could 

 be " a gey coorse fellow whiles," as our soldier said. In 

 1826, John offered himself as substitute at Pitcaple on the 

 Urie, in the parish of Chapel of Garioch, and in 1831 the 



