The De’il on Twa Sticks

From Rutherford’s ‘Complete Collection of the most celebrated Country Dances, etc’.,
 The De’il on Twa Sticks

The titles of Scottish tunes published and in manuscript during the 18th century generally fall
into one of three categories; they are either the names of some worthy or patron, the names of
locations, or some part of the words of a popular song (many of whose complete words have
been lost). There are, however, occasional titles whose meaning is almost totally obscure.
Much has been written, for instance, about Linkum Doddle. Another of these I first came
across while compiling a collection of tunes for the second volume of my history of piping in
the Lowlands “Welcome Home My Dearie”. ‘The De’il on Twa Sticks’ appears in
Rutherford’s Complete Collection of the most celebrated Country Dances, etc., published in
London in 1756.
I spent some time wondering what could be the significance of this title, but did not at the
time pursue it any further. However, I have recently found myself once more confronting
this question, and by a most round-about route. It began when Peebles-based bagpipe maker
Julian Goodacre came back from a week in the English Lake District with a framed copy of
an 18th century engraving featuring a bagpiper. Unlikely as it may seem, there is a direct
connection between this engraving and The Devil on Two Sticks.

The engraving carries the title ‘The March of the Medical Militants to the Siege of Warwick
Lane Castle in the Year 1767’ and the words ‘J. June sculpt.’ John June was a successful
engraver in mid-18th century London; this example of his work was published by Robert
Sayer of Fleet Street, the same publisher who produced the engraving of the bellows piper
from an original painting by Heemskerk which I printed in Welcome Home My Dearie.
So just what is going on here, and what is the connection with Rutherford’s tune? The answer
to both questions turned out to be contained in the 1952 volume of the ‘Journal of the History
of Medical and Allied Sciences’.1 It turns out that this engraving records an extraordinary
event that took place at the headquarters of the Royal College of Physicians on September
24th, 1767. The College was founded by Henry VIII in 1518 ‘with a view to the repression of
irregular, ignorant and incompetent practitioners’. By the 18th century this meant in practice
that no-one who had not graduated at either Oxford or Cambridge Universities could become
Fellow of the College, although they could be granted licence by the College to practice in
London and its environs. At the same time, neither Catholics nor Dissenters could be
admitted. By the middle of the 18th century perhaps the most prestigious and advanced school
of Medicine in Europe was that at Edinburgh, and it seems to have been amongst Scottish
doctors practicing in London that pressure for reform was most strongly felt. It is clear that
there was also a political element involved; the Colleges notion of medical education
remained firmly grounded in the ancient texts of Hipocrate, whereas the Scottish and
continental schools were advancing the cause of ‘scientific’ medicine, a cause which, in
Scotland at least, frequently went hand in hand with the cause of political reform.
In 1767 a group of rebellious and dissident Licentiates formed themselves into the Society of
Collegiate Physicians, a move prompted by the publication of a bye-law that no-one should
be admitted into the Order of candidates who had not been created doctor of physic in the
universities of Oxford or Cambridge. The first meeting of the new Society was chaired by Sir
William Duncan Bart., and some thirty others were present, amongst which 19 had gained
their degrees from Scottish universities.
On June 25th, 1767, Duncan and eight others, including William Hunter, Physician
Extraordinary to Queen Charlotte, entered the College Committee meeting and sat down,
insisting on their legal right to be there and announcing their intention of attending every
future meeting. The meeting growing ‘very tumultuous’, the President announced that if they
did not withdraw he ‘should be under the necessity of calling the constables’, whereon
Hunter declared ‘that if any man or constable offered to lay hands on him … he would run
him through the body’. The president was then obliged to dissolve the meeting.
The next meeting of the Committee was to be held on September 24th, before which a group
of people gathered at the gates of the College’s Headquarters in Warwick Lane, near St
Paul’s, who ,when asked, said that they had been sent there by ‘some gentlemen in the
Queen’s Arms Tavern in St Paul’s Church Yard. Fearing that this was the work of the
Licentiates who regularly dined at that tavern, the gates were locked and the key delivered to
the College solicitor. 19 doctors eventually arrived at the gate, as well as two constables and
the original men, now armed with staves. When they were refused entry, they broke down the
gate and proceeded to the hall doors; Duncan was seen, together with a blacksmith, armed
with large hammers; the blacksmith and one other then broke down the main door and,
entering the building proceeded to break open other doors until they reached the meeting.
Meanwhile at least 40 panes of window glass were broken by one of the Licentiates.
Despite the violence of this event, nothing seems to have been achieved, and matters
remained unchanged although attempts to renew the demands for reform were made at the
height of the revolutionary fervour that swept the country in the late 1790’s. The Society of
Collegiate Physicians ceased to function soon after and reform of the Royal College did not
come until 1834.
These details were gleaned from the journal article, which in turn was drawn from original
records of the College, from the minute books of the Society and from a report of the Society
written in 1795. None of these make any mention of the pipe and drum portrayed in the
engraving. So how are we to interpret their appearance? A clue is given in a second
engraving published in the Journal article which depicts the forced entry of the Licentiates
into the meeting room of the College. The be-sieged Fellows are given quote-bubbles in
which they are saying such things as
“These northern locusts want to govern everywhere” and “D-m their Scots pills. They have
ruined the constitution of England”.
These words make it clear that the general tenure of the press reaction sided with the College
Fellows2 who were seen as resisting what was at the time felt to be a take-over of government
in London by the Scots,3 a feeling that had been epitomized by the prime-ministership of the
Earl of Bute just four years before, and which had been given a popular voice by John Wilkes
in his paper The North Briton. It is, then, in this context that we must view the presence of
the drummer and piper at the head of the march.4
It is therefore not surprising that the bagpipes depicted are drawn from that vocabulary of
stock images with which Londoners were familiar, having been first shown such a instrument
in 1743 in the aftermath of the Black Watch Mutiny. Hugh Cheape showed the prevalence of
this image throughout the 18th century, and also suggested that it had its origins in the much
copied 17th century painting of a bagpiper by Abraham Bloemart. How or why this particular
painting and its engraving (by Abraham’s son) became the source of so much bagpipe
iconography remains unclear.

This is all well and good, but exactly what does it have to do with The Devil on Two Sticks?
Well, the original article by Stevenson in the Journal of the History of Medicine makes
reference to another article by Betsy – in which, Stevenson says, is discussed the appearance
of the Warwick Lane revolt on the London stage. Fortunately for researchers, this article was
printed in the same volume of the Journal, immediately after that of Stevenson. I was
therefore able to establish that the satirical dramatist Samuel Foote had one of his greatest
successes in 1768 with a play containing scenes which lampooned, not just this revolt, but
the medical profession in general. Indeed, one scene from this drama, in which a novitiate
physician is, Dr Last, is examined by a character representing Sir William Browne was so
popular that it was often preformed as a separate piece between acts of other plays. Samuel
Foote himself played Dr Last.
In the original play he also took another, that of ‘The Devil Upon Two Sticks’ from which
the play took its name. Foote had embedded his satirical commentary on the Warwick Lane
events in a play which was adapted from a work in French which had had great success
across Europe during the first part of the century, Le Diable Boiteux’ by Alain-René Lesage,5
which told of the release of a devil trapped in a bottle, who, on his release is found to be lame
and to support himself on two crutches.
 Samuel Foote as the Devil upon Two Sticks.
The term is now sometimes used to describe the ‘diabolo’, the jugglers’ device, in which a
‘double-cone devil’ is made to spin on a string held between two sticks. I have been unable to
establish whether this was the origin of Lesage’s notion of a crippled Devil, but an English
translation was in its 7th edition by 1741.6 Rutherford’s tune may therefore have been in
circulation a good while before he published it.

The De’il on Twa Sticks’ (Rutherford’s Complete Collection of the most celebrated Country
Dances, etc., London, 1756)
1
An internet search for Warwick Lane eventually turned up a reference to this article. A complete run of the journal is in the
Edinburgh University Library, George Square.
2
Although several papers printed letters of support for the Licentiates. See Public Advertiser (London, England), Monday,
October 26, 1767; online at http://find.galegroup.com/bncn/basicSearch.do [18/09/2009]
3
These ‘rebel’ Licentiates were by no means insignificant physicians; their leader was Sir William Duncan Bart., whose
family had long been established in Forfarshire, and who was the physician to George III; likewise, Hunter was physician to
George’s wife Queen Caroline.
4
The banners which the marchers carry bear the slogan “delenda est Oxoni [and Cambigensis]; this is a reference to the
(then) famous remark from the Latin text of the Punic wars, which every Scots Grammar School student would have known
“delenda est Carthage” {[Carthage must be destroyed]. The unlikely fact of a ‘riotous’ protest march carrying its slogans in
Latin is perhaps an indication of the uniqueness of this event. It may also be one of the last protest marches in which the
protestors, as good Scots gentlemen, all carried swords.
5
Lesage, Alain-René, Le Diable Boiteux, 1707The text is on-line at http://www.archive.org/details/asmodeusordevilu00lesa
[18/09/2009]
6
Le Diable Boiteux: or, the Devil Upon Two Sticks, 7th edition, Tonson, J. and R, London, Eng.1741. For sale online
http://www.biblio.com/books/195182178.html [18/09/2009]