the WIG CLUB
In the Advertiser for 1783 it is announced as
.a standing order of the WIG CLUB, ” that the
members in <^the neighbourhood of Edinburgh
.should attend the meetings of the club, or if they
find that inconvenient, to send in their resignation
; it is requested that the members will be
^pleased to attend to this regulation, otherwise their
places will be supplied by others who wish to be of
the club.—Fortune's Tavern, February 4th, 1783."
In the preceding January a meeting of the club is
summoned at that date, " as St. P 's day." Mr.
Hay of Drumelzier in the chair. As there is no
saint for the 4th February whose initial is P, this
must have been some joke known only to the dab.
Charles, Earl of Haddington, presided on the 2nd
DecemDer, 1783.
From the former notice we may gather that there
was a decay of this curious club, the president of
which wore a wig of extraordinary materials, which
had belonged to the Moray family for three generations,
and each new entrant's powers were tested,
by compelling him to drink " to the fraternity in a
quart of claret, without pulling bit—i.e., pausing."
The members generally drank twopenny ale, on
which it was possible to get intoxicated for the
value of a groat, and ate a coarse kind of loaf,
called Soutar's clod, which, with penny pies of high
reputation in those days, were furnished by a shop
near Forrester's Wynd, and known as the Baijen
Hole.
source-Old and New Edinburgh
