Scottish chapbook literature

The diffusion of knowledge by means of the Chapbook practically began with the introduction of printing into Scotland. From the days when the Gude and Godlie Ballates of the Wedderburns were put in circulation, down to the middle of last century, the chapman was a travelling publisher of much importance. In crowded mart and on solitary moor he plied his calling: there he sold his broadsides by the ream, here he tempted the reading rustic to a judicious selection from his pack: in both cases he did what he could to spread knowledge and line his pockets.

The object of this volume is to provide a brief account of the chapman and his literary wares: to present a short survey of the literature of the common people during a period of three centuries, to trace the rise and influence of the Chapbook, and to mark its decay, or rather its blending into the cheap publication of the present time. The most important of the Chapbooks are discussed at length, and as many of them are valuable for the light they throw upon the life and customs of the [6]people among whom they circulated, the extracts that have been made will doubtless be read with interest and enjoyment.

Much biographical and bibliographical information concerning authors and printers and publishers is given. The greater part of this is presented in footnotes, which have been introduced freely with the view of enhancing the usefulness and value of the work, and at the same time preventing the text from becoming overloaded with details.

To facilitate reference, an alphabetical list of all Chapbooks referred to in the volume is included. It will be found at page 145. A Glossary and General Index have also been added.

In the matter of Illustrations the book is well supplied. A number of the quaintest pictures are reproduced, many of which shew at once the crudities of art and the pictorial limitations with which early printers had to contend.

No pains have been spared to make the volume worthy the subject of which it treats, and it is hoped that it will be of value both as a contribution to the literature of the social life of Scotland, and as supplying, in the absence of an exhaustive history, a hitherto unwritten chapter of the literary annals of our country.

Nothing has yet been done in the way of providing an exhaustive history of Scottish chapbook literature, but the wish for such a work has not remained unexpressed. So long ago as the late twenties of last century, when the chapman was still a person of considerable importance, and chapbooks—properly so called—were in wide circulation, it was believed that Sir Walter Scott would undertake the task. When it became evident that the author of Waverley was not to do anything, a hope was expressed that William Motherwell might become the historian of the vulgar literature. That poet entertained the idea himself, but subsequently abandoned it owing to paucity of materials and want of leisure. Other writers may have thought to do something, but up to the present time nothing of a general nature has been accomplished. Certain departments of our chapbook literature, however, have not lacked their editors and historians. The [10]Humorous Prose Chapbooks of Scotland⁠[1] found an able editor in Professor Fraser, although the work done is but a portion of his original scheme; and George Mac Gregor—notwithstanding that his volumes are not much more than a paraphrase of Professor Fraser’s books—accomplished a notable work in The Collected Writings of Dougal Graham.⁠[2] The volumes published by Robert Lindsay of Glasgow⁠[3] are valuable for the specimens of chapbooks which they contain; and Robert Hays Cunningham has compiled a not unmeritorious work in his Amusing Prose Chapbooks Chiefly of Last [the Eighteenth] Century.⁠[4] But these are only fragments. It is true that Dougal Graham was the chief writer of secular Scottish chapbooks, and that the humorous production found a wider circle of readers than the sermon or the serious poem, but the Skellat Bellman of Glasgow and the comic effusion are not, on that account, wholly representative of Scotland’s cheap literature of a by-gone day. It is to be regretted that too often that section of our chapbooks has been held up as typical of the whole, and that our fathers have not received [11]the credit which is due them for their appreciation of history and theology. The more serious chapbooks—such as those which recounted the deeds of Wallace and the achievements of Bruce, and those which contained the fiery eloquence of the Covenanters, and, later, of the Erskines—have been almost entirely overlooked. The song chapbooks, too, of which there were myriads, have only been referred to incidentally when they happened to be humorous. It is to be hoped—though every hour that passes makes the task more difficult of accomplishment—that some day a history of our national chapbooks will be written, so that a record may be preserved of a most interesting chapter of our literary annals.

Many difficulties beset a writer on this subject, and probably the greatest is to define exactly what a chapbook is. In Chambers’s Encyclopædia publications of the chapbook order are defined as

This may be Encyclopædia information, but it is hardly accurate, and was apparently written by one who knew [12]nothing about the subject. The chapbook is much more than, and is sometimes very different from what is here defined. In a general sense it is anything from a broadside to a decent-sized volume, and it received its name, “chapbook,” not on account of its size or its contents, but in virtue of the fact that it was chiefly circulated by the pedlars who sought to carry civilization and soft goods into hamlets and farm-towns far from the madding crowd. These men were known as chapmen. The derivation of the word shews that a “chapman” was simply a “cheap-man”; and chap literature may therefore be truthfully set down as “cheap literature.”⁠[5] [13]In these days of “World’s Classics” and Sixpenny Reprints, “Penny Poets” and “Halfpenny Novelettes,” chapbooks are unknown, while cheap literature is more in evidence than ever it was. But though it is true that chapbook literature derived its name from the fact that it was vended by chapmen, it in reality existed before it was added to the pedlar’s pack of multifarious goods, just as it flourished apart from the chapman altogether, and continued to survive after he had ceased to vend it to any extent.

The chapman, although still with us, and hated no less fervently than ever, is not in these days the indispensable travelling merchant of by-gone years. At the time when the telegraph and the telephone were undreamt of, and “iron horses” were things to be discussed with bated breath and wondering eyes, the smaller towns and villages of Scotland dwelt in complete isolation from each other. News—even bad news—travelled slowly; the stage-coach—where there was one—lumbered along, a prey to bad roads and drunken drivers; and the average Scot who desired to go from home expressed a lofty contempt for a conveyance, and increased his mileage by what was facetiously termed “shanks’ machine.” In such times and circumstances, the pedlar was a necessity. His pack of needles and laces, buttons and tapes, handkerchiefs and cravats, and other trifles, formed the stock from which many a matron replenished the store, that supplied her with the means of passing the long winter nights.

That the chapman’s life was not all lavender, is evident from the literature and the successor he has left behind. Various references in Dougal Graham’s booklets prove that his lot was not a happy one. By many people he was tolerated as a necessary evil, and in The Loss of the Pack—a chapbook which doubtless had a wide circulation—we learn something of the esteem (or, rather, want of esteem) in which the travelling merchant was held. The author of that poem says:—

But this angry outburst on the part of “the pert guidwife” at an end, she lapses into kindlier speech and indicates the more humane side of the pedlar’s life:

It was the “lilting up wi’ blithesome glee” that constituted the pedlar’s passport to every farm-town. The songs he sang and the stories he told brought him bed and breakfast and sometimes helped to lighten his pack. When newspapers were unknown the chapman was a moving “Intelligencer,” who carried the doings of the outer world into remote parts, and extended the horizon of many who otherwise might have been inclined to think that the earth was their own and the fulness thereof.

The chapman did not change much in the course of years, The frontispiece to Mr. John Ashton’s Chapbooks of the Eighteenth Century⁠[6] is a portrait of a pedlar reproduced from The Cries and Habits of the City of London, published in 1709. The attire of the man in the picture is that of the period to which he belongs, but beyond that there is nothing [17]to distinguish him from the street-vendor of to-day. There he stands, with his tray of nick-nacks and cheap jewellery suspended in front of him like the street-pedlar to be seen at any time in the busy thoroughfares of Edinburgh, Glasgow, or Dundee. The city hawker, like his brother who vended in rural parts, was not slow to recognise a valuable and saleable commodity in broadsides and booklets. These he added to his goods, and ere long gave them a name derived from himself.

Just when he did this is somewhat difficult to say. Broadsides and booklets similar to those which at a subsequent period formed the staple of chapbook literature were issued from the Scottish presses at a very early date. Indeed, the earliest printed examples of our popular poetry are comprised in a series of black-letter chapbooks published by “Walter Chepman and Androw Myllar, Edinburgh, in the year M.D.VIII.” In the previous year these two printers—burgesses of Edinburgh—received a patent under the hand of James IV. which entitled them to establish a printing-press. The instrument set forth that Chepman and Myllar had, at the request of His Majesty,

The printers duly implemented their bargain, and started business in the Cowgate,⁠[7] from which place these black-letter chapbooks issued. A few years later Scotland was in the throes of the fight for Protestantism. The press was called into use both for and against the new order. “During the heat of the Reformation,” says one writer, “there were many ‘ballatis, sangis, blasphematious rhymes, alsweill of kirkmen as temporal and utheris tragedies’ published.” Robert Lekprevick, another early Scottish printer, issued many broadsides of a political and ecclesiastical character in the interests of Protestantism. So partisan were these productions that Sir Robert Maitland was constrained to say in his verses “On the Malice of Poets”—

The chief of the broadside authors of this period was Robert Sempill. Along with him may be mentioned Sir [19]William Kirkcaldy of Grange and Sir John Maitland, Lord Thirlestane and the Earl of Glencairn, John Davidson and Nicol Burne. Reference should also be made to the brothers Wedderburn of Dundee, whose Gude and Godlie Ballates⁠[8] were so popular in their day, and are believed originally to have been issued singly in broadside form. Writers of the Reformation period, too—notably Buchanan and Knox—issued tractates not dissimilar in appearance from the chapbooks of a later age. But these, in one sense at least, were not chapbook literature. They may have done much, in an indirect way, to fire the imagination of “the rascal multitude,” but they must have been sealed books to many of the commonalty, with whom reading was an unknown accomplishment.

The Scottish printers were not long at work ere their labours were viewed with apprehension. The Scots Parliament, jealous, doubtless, of the power of the press, early [20]instituted a press-censorship. On 1st February, 1551-52, it ordained—

Notwithstanding these restrictions, the art of printing developed in many directions.

As time went on, education became more general and broadsides more numerous. The single sheet was the vehicle by which many authors sought to reach the public. Ballads and songs, old and new, genuine and fictitious, made their appearance in broadside form, and thus ceased to be dependant on oral tradition for their existence. It is not too much to suppose that these broadsides circulated among all classes. Their cost could not have been great, and if they were vended at fairs and markets, as is not unlikely, they may be accepted as the earliest form of our chapbook literature. In many ways they resembled the productions [21]common in later times, and as Mr. T. F. Henderson says in his Scottish Vernacular Literature,⁠[9]

This, the vulgar literature of an earlier age, would seem to have met at the hands of our fathers a fate similar to that which we have awarded to the chapbook literature of later times, and which our children may mete out to the cheap ephemeral publications of these days.

During the seventeenth century and down to the time of Allan Ramsay, broadsides were in general circulation, and by their means popular interest in our national song was kept alive. Many of our most widely-known lyrics appeared originally in song-sheets. The earliest version of “Auld Lang Syne” was so published, and so also was “Maggie Lauder,” “The Blythesome Bridal,” and numberless others. Habbie Simpson, the famous piper of Kilbarchan, was immortalised by Robert Sempill of Beltrees and the broadside press; and thousands all over Scotland learned how—

This, and other productions by Sempill and his contemporaries, popularised the single sheet publication, and Allan Ramsay seems instinctively to have turned to the broadside printer when he added poetry to the prosaic duties of a wig-maker. He soon became the laureate of the Edinburgh streets, and his biographer tells us that “the women of Edinburgh were wont to send out their children with a penny to buy ‘Ramsay’s last piece.’”⁠[10] These broadsides of the author of The Gentle Shepherd were published in the early years of the eighteenth century, but before this date chapbooks of eight, sixteen, twenty-four, and sometimes a greater number of pages, had become common.

Mr. John Ashton, in his Introduction to the volume of English Chapbooks of the Eighteenth Century, says that in England the chapbook proper did not exist before the year [23]1700.⁠[11] There is ample evidence that it was known in Scotland before that date. In 1644 we find the famous Glasgow divine, Zachary Boyd, complaining to the General Assembly, in the vigorous language of the period, that “their schools and country were stained, yea pestered, with idle books, and their children fed on fables, love-songs, baudry ballads, heathen husks, youth’s poison;” and a complaint of this kind clearly indicates that chapbook literature, in the form of “idle books” and “fables,” “love-songs,” and “baudry ballads,” was in general, if not approved, circulation. The troubles which came upon the country with the Restoration, and the long period of unrest that preceded the Revolution of 1688, doubtless turned men’s thoughts to more serious matters. The Covenanting divines who were ejected from their pulpits by Claverhouse and his dragoons, sought to spread the truth according to their light by means of the press, and numerous sermons were issued in chapbook form. Admirers of the “Scots Worthies,” too, prepared tracts relating to them, their sufferings, and their prophecies, [24]which, we may suppose, were read with avidity in quiet corners by their followers, and treasured almost as carefully as the Bible, for their peculiar interpretation of which they were ready to lay down their lives. “The internal evidence of the chapbooks relating to Peden, Cargill, and other worthies of the ‘Killing-time,’” writes George Mac Gregor, “indicates that their first editions were published within a few years at least of the events recorded in them.”⁠[12]

The Revolution of 1688 may be said to mark the beginning of the period which may be called the chapbook era. There were earlier indications, as has been pointed out, but from that date the commonalty were supplied with booklets and broadsides in gradually increasing numbers, and the work of their distribution was taken up more generally and thoroughly by the scores of pedlars who did their best to keep village joined to village and hamlet in touch with hamlet.

The chapbook period—if one may set limits where points are difficult to adjust—may be said to have extended from 1688 to 1830. From the date of the Revolution chapbooks gradually increased in number and importance, down to 1746, when Dougal Graham published his metrical History of the Rebellion. Graham was a new and distinct force in Scottish chapbook literature. The popularity of this class of reading was greatly enhanced by his many productions, and during the next thirty years the gradual increase of the earlier period gave place to a circulation that went up by leaps and bounds. By 1775 they doubtless had attained their widest limits, and for the next fifty years their prestige remained unchallenged. With the later twenties of the nineteenth century, however, the literature shewed signs of decay. Probably the fact that little new was being added [26]accounted in some degree for this, but doubtless the chief reason was the introduction of other literature of a cheap kind. Gradually chapbooks lost the potent sway they had had. Societies and publishers set themselves to issue series little calculated to offend public taste in the way the broad publications of Graham had done, or, rather, were beginning to do. One firm, that of Messrs. D. Webster & Son of Edinburgh, considering it desirable to print the old chapbooks “in a more correct and neat form,” began the issue of a series under the high-sounding title, “Caledonian Classics of the Common People.” But even “apt alliteration’s artful aid” failed to do much, and this series, in common with others, did not meet with unbounded success. Popular taste demanded something entirely different from what had been, and the chapbooks, though still lingering for many years, were gradually superseded by, or became merged in, the cheap literature with which we are familiar to-day.

It has been said that the chapbook varied in size. Leaving out of consideration what are known as broadsides, it was a publication of any extent from eight pages to two hundred pages, and sold at prices ranging from a penny to a shilling. Sometimes, in the larger and more expensive productions, there was an attempt at artistic printing, but, as a general rule, chapbook literature did little credit to the followers of Caxton. The paper was invariably of the coarsest kind. The heavy duty on that article of manufacture kept it dear, and [27]accounts for the rude appearance of many of these productions. A study of a number of chapbooks from any one press reveals some of the difficulties with which the printer had to contend. For one thing, his type not unfrequently gave out. An edition of Allan Ramsay’s Collection of Scotch Proverbs forms one of the chapbooks of G. Caldwell of Paisley. This book naturally entailed a heavy drain on “capitals,” and it is amusing to notice with what frequency the compositor had to fall back on “italics” or “lower-case” letters when his Roman capitals failed him. Sometimes the paper ran short. In these days, the proverbial editorial blue-pencil is called into use to effect a judicious condensation. The chapbook printer scorned such a method. His reader must have everything, and the last page or so was occasionally set in a smaller size of type, so that all the author’s work might appear. At other times, the story was too short to fill the desired number of pages, and trifles of any kind were introduced to fill up space. In this last-mentioned respect, the editor of the present day still follows the chapbook publisher. In the matter of illustrations, some amazing results were achieved. Anything in the way of ornament was called into service, and one picture had frequently to do duty in many chapbooks. So long as an illustration did not deal with a specific subject, the matter was of little moment; but when it came to the portrait of one man—and that man probably a creature of the artist’s imagination—doing duty [28]for several authors, the result was as amusing as it was absurd. A few examples may be mentioned. A number of religious chapbooks, issued in Glasgow and “printed for the booksellers,” were adorned with an illustration on the title page. This was a clergyman of the conventional type, clad in gown and bands, and wearing a full-bottomed wig. There was apparently only one woodcut in the printer’s stock, and it did duty in turn for John Welch and Donald Cargill, William Secker and Ebenezer Erskine, Thomas Wilcocks and Isaac Watts. No less amusing was the combination effected on another occasion. A History of Wallace, the renowned Scottish Champion, was issued at Glasgow, without date, “printed for the booksellers.” At the first glance the illustration on the cover did not seem quite accurate. It was the portrait of a man wearing a crown. Now, not even the Scottish Rights Association or the “Britain v. England” patriots ever claimed a crown for Wallace, and there was evidently an error somewhere. A scrutiny of certain other chapbooks explained the matter. The portrait requisitioned to adorn the History of Wallace had done duty in another chapbook as an illustration of Henry the Second of England! For the humour of the thing, one could wish that it had been Edward Longshanks. Less glaringly absurd were some other combinations. A portrait of a man in Highland costume—with an unmistakable claymore and an abbreviated kilt—adorned a history of Prince Charlie. Accompanied by other [29]text, it served to represent Rob Roy. A Highland piper, seated on a stool or “creepie,” and playing lustily on his pipes, embellished the front page of Odds and Ends, and a footnote, which referred to one of the anecdotes contained in the publication, set forth that he was “the Piper who was carried away for dead during the Plague in London, but revived before interment.” Without the explanatory footnote, he adorned The Scotch Haggis; somewhat appropriately he embellished the History of James Allan, the Celebrated Northumberland Piper, and he also played in The Long Pack, or the Robbers Discovered. So far as the artist was concerned, Dick Turpin and O’Donnel, the Irish assassin, wore a garb and features common to each other in the chapbook, and in real life alien to them both. These facts are not without consolation to those of us who have had to submit to the not very tender mercies of the newspaper artist. A comparison of a number of song-chapbooks, with the same imprint, shows that the early printer was alive to the possibilities of variation, and that he frequently “rung the changes” on certain pieces. When a song was put into type, it was seemingly kept “standing” for some time, and made to serve in several chapbooks ere the type was distributed. This afforded the printer an easy and cheap method of producing a number of publications, and meant that if any one wanted a collection of songs, he had to buy a greater quantity of books than [30]would have been the case if the contents of each sheet had been entirely different.

The chapbook printer did not greatly concern himself with questions of literary ownership. He was, in this way, as great a thief and pirate as the men whose exploits he sometimes recounted in penny pamphlets. Readers of Allan Ramsay will remember that, in his Address to the Town Council of Edinburgh, the poet bewails the action of “Lucky Reid.” He begins by saying:—

“Lucky” Reid was the relict of John Reid, who had a printing establishment in Bell’s Wynd, Edinburgh, and who did an extensive business in the production of popular literature. She, Ramsay explains in a footnote to his poem, “with the hawkers,” reprinted his pastoral on Addison, without his knowledge, “on ugly paper, full of errors.” Having made [31]his plaint to the civic fathers, he pleads that he may be allowed “to guide his gear” himself, when—

Ramsay’s was only one of many complaints that might have been made on the score of literary piracy. Byron may have heard of such things when he coined his phrase about Barrabas.

While the vast majority of chapbooks were issued singly, and were what may be called fugitive productions, there were one or two publications which took the form of series. One of these, issued at Edinburgh and undated, was known as the Select Collection, and ran to a good many numbers. Each part consisted of eight pages. Another, also undated, was named The Edinbury (sic) Gleaner: being a Collection of Anecdotes, etc., for the Amusement of Youth. The title-page stated that it was “To be published in numbers, with a beautiful wood engraving, price 3 Pence, by W. Smith, Bristo Port, Edina.” It consisted of sixteen pages, and, in the preface setting forth the aims of the publication, the editor invited contributions from readers. In these days of two guineas per column and five pounds per page, it is interesting [32]to hear the terms on which this old-world editor was prepared to accept MSS.

The chapbook literature of Scotland, in addition to those productions—sermons, poems, songs, and sketches—which were of native origin, included many chapbooks of English authorship. They issued from Scottish presses, were vended by Scottish chapmen at Scottish fairs and markets and all over Scotland, but they were not Scottish books. While it is impossible to say how many chapbooks found readers north of Tweed, it is worth noting that Robert Hays Cunningham, in his Amusing Prose Chapbooks Chiefly of the Last [the Eighteenth] Century, which is a Scottish production and is doubtless intended to be representative, only includes four [33]that are distinctly Scottish in a collection of twenty-five. These four are The Comical Sayings of Paddy from Cork (Scottish in authorship, as it was written or compiled by Dougal Graham); The Penny Budget of Wit and Package of Drollery (a collection of mainly Scottish anecdotes); Mansie Wauch, Tailor in Dalkeith (a condensation of Delta’s famous work); and The Life and Astonishing Adventures of Peter Williamson, who was carried off when a Child from Aberdeen and sold for a Slave. But none of the others in Cunningham’s collection was unknown to our fathers, though they are all of English origin. The Comical History of the King and the Cobbler, Mother Bunch’s Closet Newly Broke Open, The History of the Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, are three among many that were familiar as household words; while Jack the Giant Killer and Blue Beard, Simple Simon and Dick Whittington, have descended in all their grotesque glory to our own time.

In any survey of Scottish chapbook literature, it is almost essential that English productions should be excluded or only referred to incidentally. English chapbooks supplemented our national supply, but did not enrich it. “Scottish chapbooks,” writes Professor Fraser, with perhaps just a touch of the perfervid Scot, were “superior in every respect to kindred productions in England, Ireland, and France.” With a pronouncement such as that from a man who knew the subject so intimately as Fraser did, we may well consider the Scottish [34]publications in themselves and apart—as far as we may—from the booklets of the sister kingdom.

Chapbook literature has been divided into many sections. Professor Fraser proposed to deal with the subject under five headings; John Ashton (and his arrangement is applicable to Scottish as well as English chapbooks) divided it into ten sections; and Cunningham, finding both of these proposals inadequate for his needs, set out the literature in no fewer than thirteen divisions. Probably an arrangement something like that of Fraser’s is as good as any. We shall therefore glance briefly at our chapbook literature under the following five sections:—

The humorous booklet undoubtedly occupied foremost place in public favour. It frequently depicted a phase of life which was familiar to readers, and dealt with men whose acquaintance they had made in the flesh. The stories that were recounted may have been broad—coarse, sometimes, as the paper on which they were printed—but they were always true to actual life as the commonalty saw it. “John Cheap, the Chapman,” was to be found at every fair and in every hamlet, and “Leper the Tailor” was a visitor at every farm-town. What is more reasonable, then, than that books which dealt with these worthies should be bought rapidly and read with delight? In addition to their enjoying first place in popularity, the humorous chapbooks are unique in that we know something of some of their authors. Much of our vulgar literature, like a great deal of our ballad minstrelsy, is the work of innominate writers. Certain songs have been traced to particular poets, sermons invariably appeared with their authors’ names, but the great bulk of general chapbook literature was published anonymously. [36]And, with the exception of the most characteristic of the humorous booklets, the authorship has continued in obscurity.

Dougal Graham, the Skellat Bellman of Glasgow, is the chief of chapbook writers, and he must always occupy a prominent place in any history of our vulgar literature. He was born at Raploch (a hamlet that nestles at the foot of the rock on which Stirling Castle stands), in or about the year 1724, and we are told that he was

In view of his subsequent career, there was something appropriate in the place of his birth. He was born within sight of the Jousting Flats, where the ancient fraternity of chapmen of the counties of Stirling and Clackmannan were wont for centuries to engage in sports: he was born under the shadow of the Palace of the Stuart Kings, and this may have given him that interest in the “Auld Hoose” which impelled him to follow Prince Charlie through victory and defeat to Culloden, and to write his History of the Rebellion; and he was almost a native of Stirling, one of the towns which were subsequently to become centres of chapbook enterprise. Little or nothing is known of Graham’s early life. It is believed that he was for some time engaged in farm-service at Campsie, and that at an early period he relinquished that employment, for which, from his deformity, [37]he must have been unsuited, and turned pedlar. He was pursuing this calling when Prince Charlie raised his standard in the West Highlands. Meeting the Pretender’s army in the neighbourhood of Stirling, he joined it—in the capacity of sutler or camp-follower, it is surmised—and was with it in all its subsequent marchings. He himself tells us, in the preface to his History of the Rebellion, that he was “an eye-witness to most of the movements of the armies, from the rebels first crossing the Ford of Frew to their final defeat at Culloden.” Then Dougal’s faith failed him. “Life,” he says, in his own rugged phraseology,

and, cutting himself apart from Jacobite and Royalist, he returned to his native Stirlingshire. From this time onwards, for more than thirty years, he was the moving spirit in the production and sale of Scottish chapbook literature.⁠[15]

One of the earliest and best of Graham’s books is The Whole Proceedings of Jockey and Maggy, which is believed to have been published in 1755.⁠[16] It is written with considerable dramatic power, and gives a striking and faithful representation of rustic life and manners in the eighteenth century. We are introduced to Jockey and Maggy at a fair in a neighbouring town, and, accompanying them on the way home, learn something of how a country wooing is effected. They agree to accept each other for “better or worse,” and thereafter communicate the fact to their mothers, who immediately set about preparing for the wedding. The main feature in a marriage of that time was the feast, and the author gives us a delightful glimpse of what comprised it.

The heavy dinner, with the drink he had consumed on the way home, proved too much for the bridegroom, who had to be assisted to bed. Then the respective qualities of the young spouses were discussed by their parents; they disagreed, words came to blows, and the marriage feast ended in a regular Donnybrook.

As a description of the humours of rustic life, Jockey and Maggy’s Courtship is difficult to excel. Scenes such as those depicted were not uncommon, and they belong to a time when the whole machinery of ecclesiastical law was brought into motion to impart decency and order to “blithesome bridals.” But even strait-laced Scotland would not be Kirk-ridden, and the eighteenth century Scot enjoyed life to the full, and sinned, sometimes to his heart’s content, in spite of [42]scowling Holy Willies and stools of repentance. The remainder of Jockey and Maggy’s Courtship deals with some of the sins of Jockey’s youth and their consequences. He had loved one of his mother’s maids not wisely but too well, and this coming to the ears of the Kirk-Session he is summoned to answer for his misdeeds. But he proves intractable, and aided and abetted by his mother, who delivers herself of a denunciatory harangue against the repentance stool, he refuses to come under the censure of the Church. We get an interesting glimpse of what Church discipline really was, and of the material with which the elders of the Kirk had to deal. In his mother, Jockey had a stout defender and voluble advocate, but death put an end to her pleading, and he was left to fight his battle alone. Then he yielded to the order of the Kirk, and submitted to public correction.

Love, Courtship, and Marriage are the themes most frequently dealt with in Graham’s chapbooks. They were subjects at which a great deal of fun might be poked, and in which everybody was more or less interested. Books treating of them were assured a ready sale.

The Coalman’s Courtship to the Creelwife’s Daughter is one which deserves to be mentioned alongside Jockey and Maggy’s Courtship. Sawny, a young coalman, is, like his friend Jockey, desirous of securing a wife, but, not being informed in the art of courtship, he applies to his mother for counsel and advice. That worthy dame—contrary to the general belief that mothers never wish their sons to marry—enters heartily into the project, and lays all her advice and experience at Sawny’s disposal.

She also enjoins him “to crack weel o’ their wealth and hide their poverty.”

Sawny was a “blate wooer.” Having considered the matter, he thought it would be judicious to approach his sweetheart by means of her mother. After selling his coals one day, he attires himself in his best and proceeds in quest of Katie’s mother. They meet, and, over a gill and a “het pint,” old Be-go promises her daughter to Sawny. Having obtained the mother’s consent, he, a few days later, sets out on a visit to his intended bride, to ascertain whether she is agreeable to his proposal. An amusing dialogue ensues.

Chagrined at being repulsed where no repulse was dreamt of, and having fired off this parting shot at his rival, the “tottom of a taylor,” Sawny made his way home feeling, like many a slighted lover before and since, that he might now take melancholy farewell of the earth, the moon, and the stars.

But a broken heart is only fatal on rare occasions. With the dawn came Katie’s mother, anxious to smooth matters, and effect the union so much desired by Sawny, and perhaps not altogether unwished by the independent sweetheart of yesterday.

Thus the matter that was first discussed over “a gill and a het pint,” was concluded on the strength of “a dinner of dead fish,” and all that remained to do was the tying of the nuptial knot. The coalman and the creelwife belonged to a class not in very close touch with the Church—they were representative of the “lapsed masses” in a time before that phrase was coined—and they did not, therefore, trouble themselves about marriage in the orthodox fashion. A “Cheap Priest” was requisitioned. He tied the Gordian knot as securely as the Moderator of the General Assembly could have done, and as perfunctorily as the High Priest of Gretna Green would have done if an enraged parent had been knocking at the door for admission with the butt-end of a well-primed pistol. The slipshod manner was not altogether lost on the creelwife.

The History of the Haverel Wives, another of Graham’s chapbooks, differs widely from those already mentioned, but is not the least important of his works. Many editions have been issued. One, printed at Stirling by William Macnie, bears the following elaborate title:—

This dual production—the History was sometimes published apart from the Oration—is freer from indecencies than certain others of Graham’s compositions. In it the author indulges his satire against “clashing wives.” A prefatory note reads:—

With this preface, we are introduced to Maggy and Janet busily “cracking” “at their rocks.” The first subject they discuss is Maggy’s age, and this leads to an interesting description of Scottish life and custom in pre-Reformation times.

Dougal was never a friend of the Roman hierarchy. In his metrical History of the Rebellion he apostrophises the children of the Pope in lines beginning—

and the History of the Haverel Wives testifies that he was equally unfriendly in prose. The description of a Scottish Sunday before the Reformation is historically true, and proves that the prolific pedlar was not ignorant of the social life of an earlier day. Maggy, after listening to the harangue of her friend, and learning that the priests were [52]possessed of all power over men and death and devils, asks pertinently enough—

The answering of this question affords Janet another opportunity of indulging her antipathy to “Paepery,” and gives her a chance to air her views on Episcopacy. This part of the chapbook is interesting as preserving a fair reflection of the minds of the common people on the subject of Prelacy. Lonely graves on the moorlands of the west, and memories of the Grassmarket of Edinburgh, could still move men to tears; the terrible sufferings of the Covenant days were things but of yesterday, and—rightly or wrongly—Bloody Claverhouse and his Dragoons, and relentless Archbishop Sharp, were still emissaries of the devil and typical representatives of Scottish Episcopacy. In these days a good true-blue Presbyterian can sit down to breakfast and make a hearty meal in spite of the fact that his newspaper tells him the Churches are “praying for union;” but at the time when the chapbook was written, things were very different. Every Presbyterian held the same opinion as the Skellat Bellman of Glasgow, and only refrained from expressing it because, unlike Dougal Graham, he was seldom “unco glib at the pen.”

In this strain, Janet “haivers” on to the end of the chapter, in answer to Maggy’s questions. She discusses the devil and his wife (is there any other record of Satan having added matrimony to his sins?); blackamoors and what they are made of; and that fruitful subject of discussion in all ages—the minister. Janet points out, in a woman’s unerring way, the many faults of the minister, his wife, and “twa gigglet, gilliegaukies o’ dochters;” and tells how she would preach if she had the chance of “wagging her pow in the pu’pit.” Then she proceeds to give her younger sister some advice concerning marriage; and the chapbook—in some of its editions—concludes with her “Oration on the Virtues of the Old Women and the Pride of the Young.” In a humorous fashion she expatiates on her sex, pointing out their many vices, and wherein they have fallen from the high estate they enjoyed when she, “Janet, was a Janet.” She regrets that they will not speak their mother tongue, and will not even swear in it, “but must have southern oaths.” Having said her say, she imparts some advice to her readers as to waling a good husband or a perfect wife.

The three works of Dougal Graham, with which we have dealt, and from which we have given extracts illustrative of [56]their style and the subjects of which they treat, are, in certain respects, different from the other productions attributed to the Skellat Bellman’s pen. They show that their author was possessed of an inventive faculty, and that he could create characters and make them play their parts in the development of a plot. The plot was never intricate, but the sketches had a dramatic construction which is wanting in his other chapbooks. Such histories, for example, as those which relate the Entertaining Exploits of George Buchanan, or the Comical Transactions of Lothian Tom, are merely a number of stories gathered from many sources, and thrown together with a certain amount of local colour. John Falkirk the Merry Piper, Paddy from Cork, and Simple John—like George Buchanan and Lothian Tom—are called into service merely to enable Graham to weave his anecdotes, wise and otherwise, and his witticisms, new and old, into a composite whole. It would seem, indeed, as though the Skellat Bellman, like authors of a later date, had found it impossible to keep up a continuous output of original matter, and had descended to mere hackwork or pot-boiling. To say this is not to say that there is nothing of interest in these collections of facetious anecdotes and droll misfortunes. Like his other sketches, they are valuable for the light they shed on Scottish life and custom in a by-gone time.

Two chapbooks, attributed to Graham, differ in construction from the anecdotal compilations such as The Exploits [57]of George Buchanan, or the dramatic sketches of the nature of Jockey and Maggy’s Courtship. These are John Cheap the Chapman, and Leper the Taylor. The former is understood to be autobiographical in part. “John Cheap” is an interesting fellow, and in his company—though often-times it is more agreeable than polite—we can wander over a large stretch of lowland Scotland and learn something of the life he lived. He got his

Many a man in a higher walk of life than that in which John Cheap moved, could plead guilty to harbouring the same wish.

In this sketch, the author paints with a broad brush. The trials of a pedlar’s life are duly set forth. One quotation will suffice for illustration.

To the pictures of early Church life, which are found in the History of the Haverel Wives, may be added one from Leper the Taylor. It belongs to a later age, and while the others dealt with the Church in the days of Popery and Episcopacy, this gives us a glimpse of matters as they existed under Presbytery. It illustrates ecclesiastical life in Glasgow at the time when Dougal Graham held the position of Skellat Bellman. The Kirk-Session, acting in conjunction with the Town Council, appointed certain officers, known as “civileers,” whose duty was to see that everybody attended Church at both diets of worship on Sabbath.⁠[21] These [59]functionaries pounced upon Leper on one occasion, and the following extract narrates the sequel:—

Of the other humorous chapbooks attributed to Graham, no lengthy mention need be made. At most, as has been indicated, he was only editor of them; and they are, for the greater part, merely collections of facetiæ. Many of the stories were chestnuts even in Dougal’s time, and some of them are none the fresher for the fact that they have been fathered on every beadle and minister of distinction within the last decade. He had an eye for a good story, and one seldom lost [63]anything in being retailed by him. If the George Buchanan of his pages is rather a buffoon than the first statesman of his age, it should be borne in mind that the Bellman wrote for a people who demanded mirth, and that the George Buchanan of history—if Graham had chosen to treat him seriously—would have cut a sorry figure in the company of Paddy from Cork and Lothian Tom, and would not have been so much appreciated as the ribald courtier of a ribald age.

Besides the Skellat Bellman of Glasgow, there were a number of others who contributed humour to Scottish chapbook literature. One of the most notable of these was William Cameron, who in certain respects was a fitting successor to Dougal Graham. He, like Graham, was born within sight of Stirling Castle; like him, too, he wandered over a large part of Scotland as a “flying stationer;” and, like him, he ultimately settled down in Glasgow and became one of the worthies of St. Mungo.⁠[22] Cameron has a connection with Graham’s work in respect that he edited Janet Clinker’s [64]Oration, and, giving it a new title, sent it forth on a fresh lease of life. His own words are:—

Cameron was author of one or two chapbooks. He wrote The Prophecies of ‘Hawkie’: a Cow, which poked fun at a prophet who “prophesied in Fife and appeared in Glasgow, and converted numbers.” The book sold well, and secured for Cameron the name by which he was subsequently known—he was “Hawkie” to two generations of Glaswegians. Another of his productions is The Gauger’s Journey to the Land of Darkness: what he discovered there and his journey back. It narrates the story of an exciseman who, being found drunk and asleep by some colliers, was taken down a pit and laid in a corner. When he awoke, he fancied he was in another world.

The Life of Mansie Wauch, Tailor in Dalkeith, is a notable chapbook, and cannot be overlooked in this connection. It is—as many of the chapbooks were—a condensation of a [65]larger work, and, in its extended form, is still widely esteemed. There is this difference between “Delta’s”⁠[23] creation and all of those of Graham, that he is always respectable. Mansie, like many other mortals in chapbook literature, finds himself in strange places and the victim of unfortunate circumstances—such as his experience of “calf-love” and his adventures in the playhouse—but he never loses his self-respect or finds it necessary to be obscene to be emphatic. Doubtless these very characteristics led to his being less widely appreciated by the common people, but he has this much to his credit that when, in later times, a movement originated to suppress or supplant the coarse productions of the Skellat Bellman, it did not—because it could not—affect him.

There were a number of chapbooks in verse which deserve to be noticed under the present heading. One of the most popular of these was Alexander Wilson’s⁠[24] humorous poem, [66]Watty and Meg; or, the Wife Reformed—Owre True a Tale, which was first published in 1792, and considered worthy of the Ayrshire Bard. Another was, The Comical Story of Thrummy Cap and the Ghost, from the pen of John Burness,⁠[25] a cousin of the national poet. Both of these effusions enjoyed a wide popularity as chapbooks; they were reprinted time and again, down to the very close of the period when these [67]books may be said to have ceased to be vended; and then they passed on into standard collections of our national verse, through which they are known to a wide circle of readers. Two other publications which were popular, but which had not that fate, are—(1) The Comical Tale of Margaret and the Minister, which narrates how Margaret, having been invited to dinner at the manse, accepted the invitation; and then, through ignorance or misadventure, affixed the table-cover instead of a napkin to her breast: all went well until, having swallowed some mustard, she beat a hasty retreat from the room to hide her discomfiture, and dragged the cloth and dishes with her; (2) The Dominie Deposed, with a Sequel, by William Forbes, A.M., late schoolmaster of Petercoulter. This sets forth in vigorous verse the lamentation of a dominie, who had the misfortune to sweetheart, as Mr. Henley might say, “with all his heart, and soul, and strength.”⁠[26]

While these were the most important of the humorous chapbooks, there were many others of a similar kind but of lesser merit. Graham called forth numerous imitators, and stories of love, courtship, and marriage fell fast from the chapbook press. The Art of Courtship,⁠[27] a somewhat commonplace [69]production, which, in Professor Fraser’s judgment, “bears strong signs of having been written or edited by Dougal Graham, or at least suggested by his writings,” was one; A Diverting Courtship,⁠[28] and The Pleasures of Matrimony,⁠[29] were others. Subjects of such a nature lent themselves to broad treatment; and the chapbook writer of a century ago—like the enterprising publisher of to-day—gave the public what it wanted, rather than what was good for it. If Graham was imitated in these productions, he also had [70]companions who issued publications after the style of Paddy from Cork and the Exploits of George Buchanan.

A collection of amusing, and sometimes coarse, anecdotes was published at Glasgow in 1767, under title, The Comical Notes and Sayings of the Reverend Mr. John Pettigrew, Minister in Govan,⁠[30] and a budget of stories of a more general character was issued with the name of The Scotch Haggis.⁠[31] In addition to these, there were Odds and Ends; or, a Groat’s Worth of Fun for a Penny,⁠[32] and Grinning Made Easy; or, Funny Dick’s Unrivalled Collection of Jests.⁠[33] By way of description, these books of facetiæ do not call for much attention. Anything in the way of wit and humour was pressed into service. The editors did what they could to caricature Scotland, before Punch and other enterprising [71]London periodicals found this a pleasant and paying duty. Many of the more characteristically Scottish anecdotes in these chapbooks have been made familiar to modern readers through the dignified pages of Dean Ramsay’s volume and the works of other gleaners in the field of Scottish story.

Under the heading of “Instructive Chapbooks,” much falls to be noticed. It is a section which readily sub-divides itself, although at the same time it is difficult to arrive at any very exact classification. Following Professor Fraser’s plan, which, unfortunately, he did not elaborate, an attempt will be made to range the productions under one or another of these five heads:—(a) Historical; (b) Biographical; (c) Religious and Moral; (d) Manuals of Instruction; (e) Almanacks.

(a) Historical.—The historical chapbook was much in evidence, and few outstanding events in national history were overlooked. There were publications dealing with The Battle of Otterburn, The Battle of Bothwell Bridge, The Battle of Drumclog, Executions in Scotland from the Year 1600, The Battle of Killiecrankie, The Massacre of Glencoe, and The Rebellion of 1745-6. Then there were others that dealt with such subjects as Scotland, Edinburgh, and Glasgow and the High Church.

Three of these chapbooks have the merit of being written by eye-witnesses of the actions they describe. The account [73]of The Battle of Bothwell Bridge was composed “by the Laird of Torfoot, an Officer in the Presbyterian Army.” It forms a 16 page chapbook, and is written, as will be readily understood, from the Presbyterian point of view. A later editor of this work, in an undated edition issued by G. Caldwell of Paisley, added a footnote which strangely confuses the author of the Scots Worthies—John Howie of Lochgoin—with Old Mortality of the Waverley Novels. Referring to the John Howie of the Covenant days, the editor says,

It is quite apparent that the editor confused Robert Paterson with John Howie. An abridgement of this narrative, together with an account of The Battle of Drumclog, was issued as another chapbook. That portion relating to Drumclog was also from the Laird of Torfoot’s pen. It was extracted, a prefatory note explains, “from an American Newspaper entitled, the National Gazette.” Like that which [74]chronicles the doings at Bothwell Bridge, it is written in sympathy with the Covenanters.

For the author of the most important of all the Scottish historical chapbooks, we must return to Dougal Graham. If the Caledonian Mercury is correct in its statement that Prince Charlie was the first to plunge into the Forth at the Ford of Frew, it may have been that courageous incident which impelled the little hunchback to throw in his lot with the Jacobite army. He followed the Young Chevalier in his triumphant march into England, returned with him in his hasty retreat northwards, and witnessed the sun of the Stuarts set in blood on Culloden Moor. It is not improbable that he took notes of the incidents he witnessed, and, like the war-correspondent of a later day, set about their extension with all possible speed. Culloden was fought on the 16th of April, 1746. By September of the same year Graham was in a position to announce the publication of his History. The following advertisement appeared in the columns of the Glasgow Courant for September 29, 1746:—

That last exclamation shews that Graham had faith in his work (what poet has not?), and there is little doubt that it became at once extremely popular. It dealt with a subject in which there was the most intense interest; it appeared ere Scotland had recovered from the effects of the shock of the Rebellion; and in the pedlars’ wallets it was carried over the length and breadth of the land. It would seem that, with the exception of two copies, the first edition has been read out of existence. Graham’s History is scarcer than the Shakespeare folios or the “Kilmarnock” Burns! The title-page of his book contained the couplet—

which is at once a biographical note and a specimen of the author’s doggerel. But, its rough and frequently infelicitous [76]rhymes notwithstanding, the work affords good reading. Dougal’s information was received at first hand, and he paints his pictures with the baldness of reality. Here, for example, is his description of the arms of the men who went forth to battle for the White Rose:—

These were the weapons that cleared the way to the Scottish capital and routed Cope’s army at Prestonpans! The expedition into England is duly set down in the historian’s halting numbers, and he does not hesitate to chronicle the chagrin of those

when the order went forth at Derby to retreat. The incidents of the homeward march are narrated. This is how he speaks of the eight days’ sojourn at Glasgow:—

Those “to plunder London that were keen” having been baulked of their aims on the capital, did their best to recoup themselves at the expense of Glasgow. The thrilling scenes on Culloden Moor are graphically described. Here is what he says of Cumberland’s artillery:—

The subsequent wanderings of “Bonnie Prince Charlie” in the western isles are duly set forth, although much of what is said must be imaginary so far as Graham is concerned, or told at second-hand. Many editions of the book were published, and some of them differed widely from others, for Dougal found it necessary on occasion to express himself as a good Hanoverian rather than as a discredited Jacobite. It is usual to characterise the work as “Hudibrastic,” and from the extracts given it will be seen that the criticism is not unjust. In point of literary workmanship, it has small claim to distinction, but it is not without [78]merit as the record of an eye-witness. “It contains,” says Chambers, “and in this consists the chief value of all such productions, many minute facts which a work of more pretensions would not admit.” Dougal wrote with a graphic pen, and had his facility in verse been equal to his power of description, the metrical History of the Rebellion had not now been a forgotten volume.⁠[34]

Under the heading “Historical,” may be included those broadsides and chapbooks which referred to topical events. Frequently the matters dealt with were too local or too trivial to be regarded as history in the proper acceptation of the word, but a passing sentence at least may be awarded them. There was one, for example (and it certainly rises to the dignity of history), which provided “An Account of the Massacre of Captain Porteous of the City Guard,” and another which set forth “A Particular Account of the Great Mob at Glasgow that happened on Tuesday, 9th of February, 1779; with an account of the Magistrates’ and Trades’ activity in assisting to suppress the same.” Occasionally, when an important event was to take place, a chapbook in connection therewith was put in circulation. “Hawkie” tells us that he published an account of Ancient King Crispin, which was sold in Edinburgh on the day of a Crispin procession in that town. Sometimes rivals in trade sought the help of the flying-stationer. Cameron says that he sold, for a newspaper office, a broadside entitled, The Expiring Groans, Death, and Funeral Procession of the “Beacon” Newspaper. It is safe to say that the erewhile proprietors of the extinguished Beacon did not engage “Hawkie” to spread the news of their disaster. Sometimes these topical chapbooks consisted of the last speeches of condemned criminals. At a time when public executions were in force, and when great crowds of all classes assembled to see a fellow-mortal dance [80]into eternity, such literature commanded a ready sale. The last speeches were usually supplied to the “flying-stationers” on the day before the execution, and “pattered” among the assembling multitude. When no speech was forthcoming, the chapman, recognising that the opportunity was too good to be lost, invented something that would sell. A case in point may be mentioned, and the pedlar’s own words quoted⁠[35]:—

Having sold the fictitious Reprieve for all he was worth, Cameron turned his attention to the Last Speech. A continuation of the above extract gives us an interesting glimpse of the business.

The extract is interesting as affording an illustration of life in the days of spectacular executions, and as showing the character of the men who “pattered” the speeches of the criminals. Fifty or sixty of these ruffians—hardly more respectable than the central figure in the tragedy—moving through the dense throng and shouting their wares, did nothing to dignify a public hanging.

Last Speeches and Confessions were, as a rule, melancholy productions, chiefly notable for their bad grammar and the spirit of lamentation in which they were written. Sometimes they were accompanied by a short history of the crime for which the extreme penalty was being exacted, or by some “Verses” called forth by the incident. In these days, when [84]public executions are no longer carried out, and when the populace cannot even indulge its morbid curiosity so far as to hail the hoisting of the black flag, the chapbook has been superseded by the newspaper. In the public prints the revolting details are duly served up, and a confession—where one is made and supplied to the reporters—awarded due prominence and set out with all the blandishments of expressive headlines and effective type. The relish and avidity with which such news is read prove that human nature has not changed much since the days when fifty flying-stationers found it worth their while to risk being laid by the heels for vending literature of a similarly sensational kind.⁠[36]

(b) Biographical.—In many instances the biographical chapbook was closely allied to the historical. The History of Sir William Wallace, the Renowned Scottish Champion, The History of the Life and Death of the Great Warrior, Robert [85]Bruce, King of Scotland, and The History of the Black Douglas, really comprise a narrative of the wars of Scottish independence. Again, The Life and History of Mary, Queen of Scots, and The Life and Meritorious Transactions of John Knox, the Great Scottish Reformer, supply an account of Scotland during the troublous Reformation days. The History of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, commonly called the Pretender, is largely and naturally a resumé of the rebellion of 1745. More distinctly biographical are the chapbooks which deal with Michael Scott and John Welch, Alexander Peden and Donald Cargill, Thomas the Rhymer and Robert Burns, William Lithgow and Peter Williamson, Paul Jones and Rob Roy. None of these is remarkable for literary excellence. They are, as a rule, bald narratives of [86]incidents in the lives of the subjects with whom they deal, and, without exception, they may be said to present the traditional view of the person they describe. The craze of modern historical writers to alter the conventional colours of certain portraits was undreamt of by these old-world authors. Wallace is not in these badly-printed pages the beer-stealing thief of Sir Herbert Maxwell, and there is no suggestion that in digging the pits at Bannockburn Bruce was treacherous rather than strategical. The Good Lord James is “the Black Douglas” of the tender heart, and Knox is the stout Reformer “who never feared the face of man.” Mary Queen of Scots and Prince Charlie come in for not unfriendly treatment, and a good deal is forgiven them on account of the circumstances in which they found themselves. The “Lives” of John Welch and John Knox, Alexander Peden and Donald Cargill, are drawn either wholly or in part from Howie’s Scots Worthies, and are written in the sympathetic style of the Foxe of the Scottish Reformation and Covenant Days. A notable biographical chapbook was the History of the Kings and Queens of England and Scotland from the Reign of James the First to Victoria the First. This, which must have been published during the later forties of the nineteenth century, is “Part II.” of an earlier book, which dealt with the English sovereigns from William the Conqueror to Elizabeth. Each monarch is represented by a woodcut and a short biography.

The two outstanding literary portraits in the gallery of chapbook literature are Thomas the Rhymer and Robert Burns. Here Thomas of Ercildoune is Thomas of “the east corner of Fife.” He was born near Crail, according to this chapbook writer, and much credit was given to his prophecies, although “they are hard to be understood.”⁠[37] The chapbook on the national poet, which is entitled An Interesting Account of Robert Burns, the Ayrshire Bard, is largely made up of extracts from letters of the poet and of his brother Gilbert. The salient points of Burns’s life are narrated in a simple manner, and occasionally a word of apology is offered for his misdeeds. But there is no enthusiasm; the author is not even a “common Burnsite,” and if a stranger chanced on this booklet for a knowledge of the “peasant poet,” he would doubtless conclude that Mr. Henley’s “half-read M.P.’s and sheriffs, and divines and provosts flushed with literary patriotism” had a poor excuse for drinking oceans of whisky and eating mountains of haggis, and belching forth be-fuddled speeches every 25th of January. The pen-portrait is about as indistinct as the woodcut which forms the frontispiece.

Rob Roy, the Celebrated Highland Freebooter, or Memoirs of the Osbaldistone Family, and the History of Paul Jones, [88]the Pirate, may be mentioned as typical examples of the Scottish chapbook literature which dealt with Notorious Characters, Highwaymen, and Burglars. Rob Roy is nothing more than a fictitious account of the Highland cateran written up from Scott’s novel. We meet the creations of the Author of Waverley—Die Vernon, Bailie Nicol Jarvie, Dougal Craitur, Rasleigh, Andrew Fairservice, and all the others—but they are mere skeletons, not the living beings that move in the pages of Scott. The Life of Paul Jones would not be wanting in readers. It presents in small compass the life-story of one who for a considerable time “kept the coasts of [89]the United Kingdom in a constant state of alarm,” and disputed Britannia’s right to rule the waves.

(c) Religious and Moral.—This is a section in which Scottish chapbook literature was largely supplemented by English productions. Sermons by outstanding martyrs and divines, such as James Renwick and Ebenezer Erskine, were in great demand, but the Scot was not averse from nurturing his Presbyterian soul on the pulpit orations of clergymen furth of the realm. The English Nonconformist always commanded a wide public. Of notable sermons may be mentioned, Man’s Great Concernment, and Christ’s Glorious Appearance to God! or the End of Time; The Grones of Believers under their Burdens, and God’s Little Remnant Keeping their Garments Clean in an Evil Day; The Plant of Renown, and A Wedding Ring fit for the Finger; A Choice Drop of Honey [90]from the Rock Christ, and Sins and Sorrows Spread before God. A sermon that passed through many editions was The Stone rejected by the Builders, exalted as the Head Stone of the Corner. Preached at Perth, at the opening of the Synod of Perth and Stirling, on October 10, 1732, it gave rise, its author tells us, “to three days’ warm debate” in that reverend Synod. In the other Courts of the Church it was taken up and as warmly debated, and it led eventually to the secession of its author⁠[38] and his associate friends from the Church of Scotland. Other religious books were many and varied. There was Divine Songs for the Use of Children, by [91]Isaac Watts, with its faulty rhymes and homely phrases; and there was also—one can hardly conceive it possible in the land of Jenny Geddes and Jacob Primmer—A Prayer Book for Families and Private Persons upon various subjects and occasions. A Scottish sheriff, famous more for his erratic judgments than his law, recently stated that so far as Scotland was concerned the word “Liturgy” was a nickname. Probably this particular directory of devotion deserved such an epithet, and Carlyle may have seen it ere he wrote about “worshipping by machinery.” The compiler has discharged his duty in such manner that—a prefatory note explains—“the Prayers are so arranged that when any one is too long to be used without inconvenience, it may be shortened by leaving out some of the paragraphs; and this may be done without injury to the connection.” If history speaks truthfully, [92]the extensive devotional exercises of the pulpit did not lend themselves to such a laudable arrangement. An early chapbook writer, whose productions were of a religious character, was William Mitchell, better known as “The Tinclarian Doctor.” Many of his booklets were originally printed by John Reid, Bell’s Wynd, Edinburgh, husband of the piratical “Lucky Reid,” against whom Allan Ramsay complained to the Town Council. Mitchell, says George Mac Gregor, “was an odd being who sought by his works to spread ‘light’ through Scotland. He was a lamplighter in [93]Edinburgh for twelve years, but losing this situation, he got, as he says himself, ‘an inward call from the Spirit to give light to the ministers.’ His works may be classed among the chapbooks of Scotland, for, though he sold them himself, and did not allow them to be retailed by the chapmen, they are of the same description.”⁠[39] Incidents in Holy Writ frequently formed subjects for chapbooks, and these were almost invariably illustrated. The New Pictorial Bible, which comprised notices of the most important events in Scripture from “the creation of light” to “the last day” foreshadowed in “Revelation,” was a series of forty-six illustrations. The History of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, The History of Joseph and His Brethren, The History of Moses, Jonah’s Mission to the [94]Ninevites, and The Life, Journeyings, and Death of the Apostle Paul, were some of the subjects. The Life of Paul and Jonah’s Mission, which, in the chapbooks I have examined, were added merely to eke out space, do not seem to have lent themselves to illustration, but the other subjects were profusely embellished with woodcuts. The higher critic draws none of his inspiration from these books. So far as the artist is concerned, it was a serpent that tempted Eve, the sun and the moon did stand still, and it was a fish that swallowed Jonah.⁠[40] One of the most curious, and certainly one of the most repellant of these Biblical chapbooks, is that entitled, The Life and Death of Judas Iscariot, or the Lost and Undone Son of Perdition. It is possible to feel a kindly interest in the mortal who played a necessary part in a disagreeable [95]business even though one may have never read a line of Marie Corelli, but the Judas of these pages is not calculated to inspire esteem. He was a villain of the deepest dye—a man who, to his other crimes, added those of murdering his father and marrying his mother. Indeed, one rises from a perusal of this booklet with the conviction that the historic transaction for thirty pieces of silver was not the greatest of Iscariot’s sins. Two other popular chapbooks were The Pilgrim’s Progress, told in a series of twenty-one realistic pictures, and Evan’s Sketch of all Religions, an abridgment of a larger work which gives particulars of forty-two different sects, including “Atheists,” “Jumpers,” and “Hutchinsonians.” Religious poetry was not unrepresented in the chapman’s wallet, and the Grave by Blair, which ran through numerous editions, may be cited as a typical example. The religious chapbook occasionally took a form which has been [96]perpetuated and developed in the later tracts issued by Missionary Societies and similar bodies. This was the life-story of some precocious youth with an early genius for Christianity. Typical examples are found in An Account of the Last Words of Christian Kerr, who died at Edinburgh on the 4th of February, 1702, in the 11th year of her age, and in A Brief Memoir of Urcilla Gebbie, who died at Galston on the 28th of August, aged 15 years.

The term “Moral” embraces a number of secular chapbooks. The Wonderful Advantages of Drunkenness deserves to be remembered for its “Comparisons of Drunkenness.” It gives the following comparisons and explanations:—

One cannot fail to be impressed with the distinct temperance note which is sounded in Scottish chapbook literature. It is true that there are verses in praise of “Scottish Whiskie,” and also that there is the equivocal song entitled the “Effects of Whiskey”; but these notwithstanding, there are many chapbooks which are directed against the use of intoxicants. The most notable is undoubtedly Scotland’s Skaith; or, the Sad Effects of Drunkenness, exemplified in the History of Will and Jean. This poem, from the pen of Hector Macneill,⁠[41] had an almost unprecedented run of popularity, [98]although it is doubtful if more than one verse is known to-day, and many who quote it would probably be at a loss to give the author’s name—

Temperance teaching is inculcated in A Night frae Hame, and, in a lesser degree, in Rab and Ringan. The subject is also dealt with in the Oration on Teetotalization, and in the Dialogue between John and Thomas on sundry questions. The vigorous verses entitled a Protest against Whisky, might have been written by an uncompromising Rechabite. Chapbooks of this nature could not fail to exert some influence upon the people who read them, and although, as unspeakable Scots, we may never be able to get over our thirst for the barley bree, it is gratifying to know that—even in our darkest hour—we endeavoured to free ourselves from one at least of our original and selected sins.

Allan Ramsay’s Collection of Scotch Proverbs should not be overlooked in this section. First published in 1736, this volume of “sententious saws of antecedent centuries,” as William Motherwell would call it, was considerably abridged, and frequently produced as a penny chapbook. It professed [99]to contain “all the wise sayings and observations of the old people of Scotland,” and as it circulated at a time when the average Scot punctuated his conversation with proverbial expressions, it doubtless sold as readily as anything in the pedlar’s pack.

(d) Manuals of Instruction.—This is a section which cannot be said to be distinctly Scottish, There was The Housewife’s Cookery Book, which provided recipes for many [100]things from the roasting of beef to the fermenting of wines; and there was The Housekeeper, which gave practical instruction in domestic economy. The bashful swain who found it difficult to woo in words on the 14th of February, found refuge in The Valentine Writer; while The Art of Courtship or The Accomplished Courtier or the New Academy of Compliments, assisted him towards the same end all the year round.⁠[42] There were text-books on the making of money and on personal etiquette; and treatises on divers subjects from the killing of vermin to the art of swimming.

(e) Almanacs.—These were hardy annuals, and were always in great demand. Their number is legion. Only one [101]or two can be noticed, and these in a very general way. In Kelly’s Collection of Scottish Proverbs, published at London in 1721, there is a reference to an early almanac in the maxim, “Buchanan’s Almanac, lang foul and lang fair.” The Aberdeen Almanac enjoyed a wide popularity, and readers of Burns will remember that the poet, writing to his friend, Gavin Hamilton, during the Edinburgh period of his life, said he was “in a fair way of becoming as eminent as Thomas à Kempis or John Bunyan,” and that he might expect henceforth to see his “birthday inserted among the wonderful events in the Poor Robin’s and Aberdeen Almanacs.”

When this monopoly was broken down, other almanacs were rapidly put in circulation. Poor Robin’s, which existed for nearly two centuries—from 1664 to 1823—also enjoyed considerable [102]popularity north of Tweed. A typical example of these publications, but of later date, is to be found in Orr’s Scottish Almanac, which still circulates widely and preserves all the outstanding features of the almanac of a by-gone day. Published by the firm of Messrs. Francis Orr & Sons, Glasgow, who issued many chapbooks during the first half of the nineteenth century, this annual has changed but slightly—if at all—in its appearance. Features have been forced upon it, and things of which it once took note have passed out of everyday life, but, when allowances of these kinds have been made, it is still—in its paper and general get-up—the chapbook almanac of long ago. Any one searching in the mass of cheap literature of these days for a lineal descendant of the chapbook family, could hardly find a nearer representative in the direct line than Orr’s Scottish Almanac.

Scotland’s contribution to this section of our chapbook literature is remarkable for its poverty. Few of the romantic chapbooks were of native growth. Apart from certain of Dougal Graham’s productions and Mansie Wauch, which have been considered under the heading “Humorous,” the most notable romances of Scottish origin were those by the Ettrick Shepherd.⁠[44] Duncan Campbell and his dog Oscar, and The Long Pack; or, The Robbers Discovered, are two of Hogg’s tales which were in much demand as chapbooks. They were printed by the thousand, and editions came from almost every press in the country. Although in many cases they were published anonymously, the authorship was occasionally acknowledged, and these tales did much to increase the popularity of the Ettrick Shepherd with the Scottish people. His Brownie of Bodsbeck, appearing shortly after Old Mortality, was sometimes compared by the literati of [104]Edinburgh with that work, to the disadvantage of the former, but his shorter tales, such as those mentioned, circulating widely among that class of people whom Messrs. Henley and Henderson would call “the uncritical,” were read and enjoyed for themselves alone. At many a fireside the touching tale of Duncan Campbell and his faithful dog has moved readers and hearers to tears. So familiar did it become in time that matrons all over the country were able to tell the story to [105]their children without the book, and garnished occasionally with little touches of added pathos that detracted nothing from the genius of Hogg. The popularity accorded to Duncan Campbell was equalled by that meted out to The Long Pack. The concealment of a robber in a pedlar’s pack was a thing that concerned the everyday life of the people, and many a later chapman who had the good fortune to possess a large stock of goods would be looked upon with suspicious eyes until he opened his bundle and proved that there was no robber where no robber should be. The people of those days, like their successors of our time, enjoyed a spice of sensation, and doubtless gloated over the “moving pack” from which, when the fatal shot was fired, “blood gushed out upon the floor like a torrent, and a hideous roar, followed by the groans of death, issued from the pack.” Hogg was a master of the gruesome, and in this sketch he maintains the rôle to the very end. The body “lay open for inspection for a fortnight,” and, even after it was buried, the neighbours “confidently reported that his grave was opened and his corpse taken away!” Hogg has fallen upon evil days, and to many his romances are practically non-existent. The copious tears of the up-to-date “Kailyairder” blind the eyes of his readers, who, in their endeavour to master the “pidgin” Scots that flows from his pen, forget that Scottish life was lived generations before London publishers found a Klondyke in the joys and sorrows of every [106]Scottish village. But to those who care to read them, the Ettrick Shepherd’s tales are still accessible in the two volumes of his collected romances.⁠[45]

Christopher North⁠[46] was laid under tribute to the extent of Blind Allan, which was extracted from the now forgotten Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life. In addition to these, there were a few, such as Allan Barclay, and The Broken Heart: a Tale of the Rebellion of 1745; The Ghost of my Uncle, and John Hetherington’s Dream; The Murder Hole, and The Strange Adventures of Tam Merrilees, by innominate writers, but the great bulk of romance was of alien manufacture. Many of the fairy tales which still delight and terrify young readers were in constant circulation. Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, and Sinbad the Sailor; Beauty and the Beast, Whittington and his Cat, and Jack the Giant Killer; Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe, and Baron Munchausen; Hero and Leander, The Siege of Troy, and The King and the Cobbler, may be cited as representative types of the romantic literature of the pedlar’s wallet. But, beyond the fact that they were extremely popular with readers north of Tweed, these are in no sense Scottish.

Unlike the Romantic, the Superstitious chapbook flourished vigorously in Scotland. Some one has said that the average Scot spoke to and of God as though He had been a next-door neighbour. This familiarity was not confined to the Divinity. A very material Devil held Scotland in fear and trembling, and, aided by numberless servants, kept the powers—both civil and ecclesiastical—in active employment. Many chapbooks went to the elucidation of “Satan’s Invisible World,” of which, one of 24 pages, published by C. Randall at Stirling in 1807, may be regarded as a typical specimen. It is entitled:—

The above may be said to be the ordinary chapbook version—and there were many more or less varied editions—of George Sinclair’s credulous work, a duodecimo, which was printed at Edinburgh by John Reid in 1685, and the full title of which is as follows:—

This is not the place to refer at any length to that terrible condition of matters which led to so many innocents being sacrificed to the demands of a deluded people. The literature [109]of witchcraft and devilry affords amusing reading in these days, but it is almost impossible to gauge the seriousness with which it must have been read by folks who found it difficult to distinguish an old woman from a witch. The stories are ludicrously absurd to a modern reader: they were doubtless very real to the simple Scots of a by-gone day. One is inclined for once to oppose Sydney Smith in his exclamation, “Thank God, I was born so late,” and wish that he could have met some of these children of the devil in the flesh. How exciting it would be, for example, if one could join Major Weir⁠[48] in his fiery chariot at Edinburgh, [110]and ride out with him as far as Dalkeith; or how comforting it would be if one could venture out with Luggy, the Zetland fisherman and wizard, knowing that he could cast out a line and, from the depths of the ocean, bring up “fish well boiled and roasted.” The chapbook says his companions “would make a merry meal thereof, not questioning who was cook,” and one would be prepared to be similarly silent if one could meet him on these terms. The marks of Peter’s finger and thumb, and the finding of the piece of money, lose something of the miraculous alongside Luggy’s wonderful feat. If the “chapman [111]billies” of Burns’s day vended books of this kind, and were at all communicative as to the nature of their wares, the wonder is that “Tam o’ Shanter” did not witness something more infernal than “warlocks and witches in a dance” during that immortal ride from Ayr to the Shanter Farm.

Witchcraft formed a common subject for chapbook treatment. Among others there were The Life and Transactions with the Trial and Burning of Maggie Lang, the Cardonald Witch, who was executed at Paisley in 1697; The History of Witches, Ghosts, and Highland Seers; Witchcraft Detected and Prevented, or the School of Black Art Newly Opened; Witchcraft Proven, Arraign’d and Condemned, etc., by a Lover of the Truth; and The Life and Transactions with the Trial and Burning of Maggie Osborne, the Ayrshire Witch.

In the Elegy in Memory of Sir Robert Grierson of Lag, we are introduced to a Devil who is as remorseless as the creation of Milton, and who is in keeping with the superstition of the time. If there is a material Devil, there is also a material Hell, and Lag is there without even the privilege of Judas, who, according to a kindly legend, gets out to cool himself for one day in each year. The Elegy is 24 pages of what is probably as ribald verse as ever was put forward in connection with religion. It is not lacking in point, and one or two impressive lines save it from being altogether commonplace. There is something striking in the idea that Satan cannot weep. The author says:—

It is interesting to learn who have served the Devil. Beginning with Cain, he claims quite a host of notabilities—Saul, Doeg, Ahab, of early days; and Clavers, Middleton, Fletcher, King Charles, of Covenant times, are all

is worthy to be named with Lag for his exertions on behalf of the Prince of Darkness. Nor in the hour of death was he forsaken by his master. “For,” says the Devil,

It is interesting to note—though the authority is “The Father of Lies”—that according to this Presbyterian rhymer there is such a place as “purgatory.” As a rule, the Covenanter denied its existence, even as “the lowest pit of Hell.”

Superstitious literature of a different and slightly more respectable kind was that which treated of the prophetic utterances of Thomas the Rhymer, Alexander Peden, and Donald Cargill. Where a fulfilment of a prophecy is desired, it is sometimes an easy matter to find it, and the populace which enrolled Peden and Cargill among men of more than natural power would have sent them—a few years earlier or a [114]few years later—to the stake to be burned as wizards endowed with powers from the Evil One.

There was yet another class of superstitious chapbooks—that which dealt with dreams and fortune-telling. Three which were common to Britain were, The New Fortune Book; or, the Conjuror’s Guide, which largely concerned itself with fortune-telling by cards; Napoleon Bonaparte’s Book of Fate, which is still on sale in various forms; and Mother Bunch’s Golden Fortune-Teller, which was perhaps the most popular of all. There were others that bore evidence of being more distinctly Scottish. Such, for example, was The Spaewife, or Universal Fortune-Teller, wherein your future welfare may be known, by Physiognomy, Cards, Palmistry, and Coffee Grounds: Also, a Distinct Treatise on Moles. The matter comprising this book is just the nonsense which, notwithstanding our School Boards, our vanity, and our superior intelligence, finds thousands of readers (shall we say believers?) at the present time. Two chapbooks—The Golden Dreamer; or, Dreams Realised, containing the Interpretation of a Great Variety of Dreams; and The True Fortune Teller; or, The Universal Book of Fate—deserve to be noticed for a different reason. Undated editions of these were issued at Glasgow, “printed for the Booksellers,” and appended to both there is a note “To the Reader” in the following terms:—

It almost seems like a case of wilful fraud to ask a person to pay a penny for a dream-book which, when he has referred to it for the meaning of his yesternight’s dream, gives him a solution, and then—in effect—tells him that he had better consult a doctor, as his stomach is disordered. Still, one cannot but admire the candour of the old-world publisher. How many of the dream-books at present on sale are as honest?

For number and variety, the song chapbook occupies first place. Considerable notice has already been taken of the broadside which flourished during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and is, indeed, far from being extinct even at the present date, and little further need be said here. Of the song chapbook, however, a more detailed account may be given.

It was ordinarily the single sheet broadside folded so as to form a book of 8 pages, and, like the other productions vended by the chapman, was usually badly printed on execrable paper. As is the case with the song-sheets which are still issued from “Poets’ Boxes” and other similar adjuncts of Parnassus, all sorts and conditions of verse were admitted to its pages. The choicest lyrics of Burns and Tannahill, Lady Nairne and Susanna Blamire are found in company with doggerel stanzas by the veriest tyro in rhyme; and verses dealing with local events of momentary importance are sandwiched between songs written for all time. Unholy hands [117]are laid on sacred lines, and poems are sometimes parodied and altered out of all recognition. “Scots Wha Hae” in a common chapbook version was spun out to four verses more than its normal length. The extra stanzas were hardly an improvement, and it is possible that it was this version that [118]came under the notice of the “southron loon” who characterized the war-song as “swaggering rant.”⁠[49] A parody of Burns’s “Ode” was published under the title of “Wellington’s Address,” and the opening stanza may be quoted as a sample:—

If the “Iron Duke” had been as indifferent a soldier as he is a poet in this “Address” put into his mouth, Napoleon might never have learned that little lesson about “striking his medals at London;” or, if Wellington had met the bard, he would probably have told him what he told an ultra-obsequious hero-worshipper who doffed his hat to the great soldier, and remarked how pleased he was to do so—“Don’t be a damned fool!” The author of The Gentle Shepherd waxed wroth with Lucky Reid over the liberties she took with his text, and one wonders what he would have said had he seen the later version of “Lochaber No More.” Borrowing Ramsay’s title, some minstrel who “rhymed in [odd] numbers” composed a Jacobite song, of which the following are the closing stanzas:—

If the Jacobite lines were as broken as these, they were in a sorrowful plight indeed.

It is only fair, however, to say that these doggerel effusions formed a small percentage of the songs which were issued in chapbook form. The best of our national minstrelsy was put in circulation in this way, although acknowledgments of authorship were seldom made. Publishers apparently believed that the song, not the singer, deserved to survive. Burns had a chapbook devoted to himself, and a fairly good selection of his songs is given in it; and he and other bards—Tannahill, Hogg, Scott, Lady Nairne, Susanna Blamire, Jean Elliot, Ramsay, Sempill, Macneill—are represented in many publications.

It is not improbable that, so far as Scottish song is concerned, the chapbook in one way did a distinct disservice to the cause. Rude productions such as those cited were committed to print and stereotyped for all time, or as much of it as they might survive. In this way their crudities were perpetuated. Had topical ballads such as “The Lamentation for Mr. M’Kay” and “Wellington’s Address,” and lyrics of love like “The True Lovers’ Farewell” and “The Sailor’s [121]Journal,” been cast upon the world after the manner of our early ballad minstrelsy, and made to depend for existence on oral tradition, they, in passing from mouth to mouth, might have been shorn of their faulty rhymes and infelicitous expressions as the poly-sided stone is smoothed of its angularities by the ebb and flow of many tides. The means taken for their preservation may have proved their undoing!

The foregoing survey, brief though it is, may be sufficient to indicate the varied nature, as well as the poverty and riches, of the productions that went to the formation of our chapbook literature. Every one of the five divisions was supplemented by publications from beyond the Border; and even though Professor Fraser’s opinion, that the English chapbook was inferior to the Scottish, be true, no student of the subject can fail to be struck with the variety which the English compositions gave to the publications of the north. We have nothing, for example, to take the place of The Comical History of the King and the Cobbler; and there is no doubt that the Scot would laugh as hilariously as the Englishman over the “entertaining and merry tricks” that were enacted in the Strand in the early hours of the morning, when the King of all England discussed a pot of ale with the poor follower of St. Crispin. The wonder is that we have nothing. These tales of King Henry the Eighth are in line with the adventures of King James the Fifth, and it does seem strange that Harry Tudor never suggested The Gudeman of Ballengeich [123]to a Scottish author as a subject for chapbook treatment. Again, our romances and fairy tales would make a poor show were it not for the classics imported from south of Tweed; and our sermons and religious verse would lose much in bulk at least if we expunged the tractates of English ministers and the simple rhymes of Isaac Watts. Mother Bunch and Mrs. Shipton were not native born. The adventures of Dick Turpin, George Barnwell, and James Allan the Northumberland Piper, were pleasing variants to those of Rob Roy, Paul Jones the Pirate, and Gilderoy.

It has been said that the chapbook existed in all its vigour down to the early years of the nineteenth century, and George Mac Gregor, clearly confounding a part with the whole, says: “An impression of their vulgarity got abroad, they were regarded by public moralists as pestilential, and therefore deserving extinction.”⁠[50] Such a remark can only apply to the broadly humorous effusions of Graham and productions of a similar kind, and we must look elsewhere for an explanation of the passing away of the distinctive chapbook. The introduction of periodical literature had as much to do with the matter as anything. A notable printer and publisher of chapbooks in Haddington was Mr. G. Miller, who sought to impart something new to the cheap literature in existence by the starting of a penny literary paper. [124]This he entitled The Cheap Magazine, and readers of A Window in Thrums will remember that it was in the pages of that periodical that Tammas Haggart read the account of the origin of cock-fighting. But the natives of Thrums and other places appreciated the old familiar booklets better than The Cheapy, and, after a short existence, it expired. Other publishers endeavoured to succeed where Miller had failed, but they, too, were unsuccessful, until the Messrs. Chambers took the matter in hand. The first number of Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal was produced on 4th February, 1832. From the beginning its success was phenomenal. Fifty thousand copies of the first issue were put in circulation, and, so heartily was the new venture taken up, that the third number totalled the remarkable figure of eighty thousand. Chambers’s Journal was followed by other publications of a similar kind, such as Hogg’s Instructor and the Scottish Reader, which have collapsed, and The People’s Friend, which was founded in 1869, and still flourishes vigorously.

To keep pace with this newer form of cheap literature, some of the chapbook firms began the issue of “New and Improved Series.” Reference has already been made to the “Caledonian Classics of the Common People.” Another series, “illustrated with fine wood-cuts,” was issued by James Watt, Montrose; and publishers in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and elsewhere, hoping to gratify popular taste, set about the preparation of emasculated versions of Graham’s works. But the public that [125]might have gone on enjoying the realistic pictures of Scottish life which amused their fathers would not tolerate the colourless outlines, and ere long they ceased to sell in any great quantity.

The work of destruction begun by Chambers’s Journal and other similar periodicals was assisted by the increase of daily and weekly newspapers. The abolition of the duty on this form of literature gave an impetus to journalism, and soon organs of all kinds began to issue from all parts of the country. The bi-weekly of the city became a daily, sometimes with several editions; and soon every town with a few thousand inhabitants could boast as many rival newspapers as churches. The circulation of these sheets demanded the institution of the newsagent, who soon made his (or her) appearance in town and village and hamlet.⁠[51] The Advertiser, or the Journal, or the Gazette, penetrated with the mail-coach into rural parts, and was displayed in the window of the local post-office beside ginger-bread horses and double-strong peppermints. By and by the local newsagent found that she could sell song-sheets and dream-books, almanacs and penny-histories as well as newspapers; and then the “Flying [126]Stationer” awoke to find his occupation gone. The business of vending popular literature was silently transferred from one agency to another, and the chapman became the occasional character he is to-day. He could still push his trade at farm-towns remote from hamlets, and follow his vocation at fairs and centres of interest, but as a permanent and general means of supply he had outlived his time.

Something has already been said of the nature and character of the literary chapman, and, in taking leave of him here, a few notes may be added. Like his great prototype, John Cheap, he was seldom a respectable being, and not unfrequently turned pedlar when he had failed in a higher line of merchandise. The able-bodied man who makes Saturday night hideous in our busy streets with his raucous rendering of “the newest and popular songs of the day,” and spends his profits in the nearest tavern, is not an unworthy successor to, as he certainly maintains the inglorious traditions of, the “Flying Stationer” of a century ago. Hawkie describes two of them as being “as ‘kittle’ neighbours as Glasgow could produce,” and the description might apply to many, including Cameron himself. Of course, in the city, amid the excitement of fairs and hangings, the pedlar was seen at his worst, and to those who may incline to the opinion that the outline here given is lurid rather than just, the following sketch of the chapman as he appeared in rural places will be more acceptable. It is taken from a volume of [127]Scottish sketches, which was published in 1872, under title, Round the Grange Farm; or, Good Old Times.

This picture is more pleasing than that of the drunken crew with whom Hawkie and the Glasgow police hob-nobbed, and it presents what is the most favourable sketch that could be drawn of the travelling pedlar. But it is not essentially different from the coarser portrait to be found in John Cheap the Chapman. Both characters are wily merchants, ever ready to watch the main chance, and to further their interests by a word in season or a remark that is flattering rather than complimentary. The life they live is the same, and when one is a little more [131]decently clad—in tongue and manner—than the other, it is due to the fact that the portrait came from a feminine pen. Dauvit doubtless broke as many commandments as John Cheap, and it was well for him that his author, being a woman, had not, presumably, so intimate a knowledge of her subject and his sins as had Dougal Graham of “John Cheap” and his shortcomings.

It is to be feared—perhaps regretted—that the “Flying Stationer” seldom acquired wealth. If he had watched his business, it could have made him a man of money. There were large profits on his wares. William Cameron tells us that he could buy eight-page ballads at twopence a dozen, and states that, out of a capital of twopence, he made six shillings in about three hours. On another occasion, he bought tracts at three half-pence a dozen and sold them so well that by night he had nine shillings, and was drunk into the bargain. Sometimes, when there was a ready purchase, the price of the chapbook went up a hundred per cent., and, notwithstanding the increase, sold by the ream.

The chapman had various ways of going to work. A great deal of his success lay in his being able to “patter” well. If he could give an attractive rendering of the song or ballad he was selling, he was sure to draw a crowd of customers. Sometimes recourse was had to the practice of vending straw. The “Flying Stationer,” pretending that the books he carried were of a particularly interesting nature, informed his [132]audience that he dared not “call” them, but that he would sell them a straw for a penny and give them a copy of the book to the bargain. This “catch” seldom failed. The selling of the straw was more or less a piece of imposition, but sometimes the unscrupulous chapman descended to even greater fraud. When the worst came to the worst, he did not hesitate to “patter” one thing and sell another. Cameron, in his interesting reminiscences of a pedlar’s life, affords an illustration of this, and the good folks of Paisley were his victims.

John Milne, a poet-pedlar of Aberdeenshire, who sold his own effusions over a wide tract of the East of Scotland, always pleaded his cause in a verse of doggerel. He was one of the later-day chapmen. His poems frequently dealt with incidents connected with the great religious struggle that culminated in the Disruption of 1843, and these he recited at fairs and markets, always concluding with the following lines:—

The chapman was not always dealt with in life in a kindly fashion, and it is to be feared that he frequently found himself [134]deserted and alone in the hour of death. Sometimes in the gloaming of his days he found “a hained rig” in the shelter of a city hospital, but it is likely that more often he died,

Mr. Alan Reid, writing of John Burness, the author of Thrummy Cap, says his end was unutterably sad. “His occupation was anything but lucrative; his spirit was broken, and his physique impaired through struggles and disappointments; and at Portlethen, in 1826, the toiling wayfarer was overtaken in a snowstorm and literally ‘driven to the wall’ by the conqueror Death.”⁠[54] The shroud of many, like that of Burness, was woven by the snowy flakes of a wintry blast.

The flying-stationer did not lack his elegist. Part of a lament for Dougal Graham has been preserved, but it is more in relation to the bellman than the pedlar side of his character, and a few lines from the “Elegy on Peter Duthie”⁠[55] may be quoted in preference to it. Duthie, who flourished from 1721 to 1812, was a flying-stationer for “upwards of [135]eighty years,” and when at length he passed away his memory was embalmed in elegaic verse, from which the following is an extract:—

If “Jackey” took up the business where Peter Duthie left it, and lived to anything like the age of his predecessor, the chances are that his elegist—if he had one—would not be under the necessity of looking for somebody to succeed him. By that time, the newsagent would be supplanting the “Flying Stationer.”

The chapbook was issued from many towns in Scotland, and Dr. Robert Chambers—though his figure is believed to be well within the mark—put the annual circulation at 200,000. The leading presses were those of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Falkirk, Stirling, and Paisley. Many of the chapbooks were issued without printer’s name, and cannot therefore be assigned to any particular office. In Edinburgh, the great places of publication were Niddery’s Wynd and Cowgate, and the most notable printers were J. Morren and Alexander Robertson. In Glasgow, the firm of James and Matthew Robertson did an extensive business, and are understood to have realised £30,000 from the work. Their premises were situated in the historic Saltmarket. Other printers of the same locality were R. Hutchison and Thomas Duncan. Francis Orr, who started business in 1790, was a notable [138]Glasgow printer. In 1825, he assumed his three sons as partners, and his firm has since been known as that of Francis Orr & Sons. James, the last of the three sons, died so recently as 1899, leaving wealth to the value of about a million sterling. Paisley and Falkirk had two outstanding publishers. In the former town, George Caldwell carried on business, and was the original printer of many of Dougal Graham’s productions; in the latter place, T. Johnston issued a numerous collection of chapbooks. Stirling had no fewer than four printers engaged in the business. There were the two separate firms of C. Randall and M. Randall, and J. Fraser and W. Macnie, one or another of whose imprints appear on many publications. A number of other towns throughout Scotland—Leith, Dundee, Aberdeen, Kilmarnock, Irvine, Newton-Stewart, Haddington, Montrose, Airdrie—contributed to the general stock, and endeavoured to meet the demands of the “Flying Stationer.”

In criticising our chapbook literature, the prevailing tone has been either—as in the case of George MacGregor—to say that “no one need regret that the days of chapbooks are gone⁠[56];” or—as in the case of Professor Fraser—to say that they “should be read in the light of the age that gave them birth.”⁠[57] Neither position is quite just to the literature [139]itself. In the mass that circulated over Scotland there was a considerable leaven of indecency, just as there is more than a suggestion of filth in the literature of to-day. Writing of what was virtually the chapbook era, Mr. Henley described Scotland, out of the fulness of his ignorance and epigram, as a land of “fornication and theology.” To the Southron mind, therefore, it will not appear strange that Erskine’s Sermons were sandwiched between The Comical Adventures of Lothian Tom and Jockey and Maggy’s Courtship, or that Isaac Watts’s Divine Songs lay cheek for jowl with The Coalman’s Courtship of the Creelwife’s Daughter. There were many tastes to be suited, and in this direction we are probably as diverse as our fathers were. Any bookseller will supply you with Newman’s Apologia and Jude the Obscure.

The distinctive chapbook—that is, the broadly humorous production of which Dougal Graham was author-in-chief—affords a faithful reflex of life as it really was. Graham was an early “kailyairder,” who reared his plants from a stronger and more strictly Scottish soil than Barrie or Maclaren or Crockett. These later workers in the same field met uncommon Scots who knew more about Hell than the sins that fit a man for it, and who were religious to the point of extravagance. Their narrowness of view and their feeling for sanctity are insisted on, and only a glimpse of their normal condition is given here and there by way of comedy or burlesque. The weavers of Thrums, and the villagers of Drumtochty, [140]and the rustics around Cairn Edward lived in the time when, as the old Scotswoman said, swearing was regarded as “a grand set-aff to the conversation,” and yet not one of them could say “Damn it!” to save his life. It may be that the exigencies of modern taste, or the sympathies of the authors, demanded that their mouths be closed against the “aith that wad relieve” them, but to that extent many readers may think them less truthfully Scottish in their walk and conversation. The authors of some of the chapbooks felt no such scruples; and in their desire to paint life as they saw it, had no inclination to tone down that forceful beauty of our native tongue which is not taught at school. Their wish was like that of old Oliver—to have warts and all. It may be also, so far as Graham at least is concerned, that the old author was more intimately acquainted than the new with the life portrayed. The modern “kailyairder” writes from his study—it may be in London or in Liverpool—of a life he only knows by hearsay or from observation in long past years; Dougal Graham condescended on scenes and manners, customs and traits which he himself had witnessed or experienced—he was neither a son of the soil nor a chapman for nothing. What Fraser says of him, in comparison with the historian, is true of him as compared with J. M. Barrie or Ian Maclaren.

But if the recent “kailyairder” has not repeated the expressive Scots of the Skellat Bellman and his compeers, it cannot be said that the modern novelist has forgotten the incidents which bulk in the chapbook pages. The dominie, or the minister, is still occasionally “deposed” for the old lechery to help out an attractive plot, and even the prim, semi-religious authoress can insinuate a good deal about the nameless “Pleasures of Matrimony.” And although it is sometimes embellished with art and occasionally obscured with indifferent grammar, the incident round which much of Jockey and Maggy’s Courtship circles is so frequently turned [142]to account that one wonders what the average novelist would do if it were an impossibility for children to be born out of wedlock. The newspaper, too, often provides all the naked realism of the chapbook; and the generation which supports the journal supplying the longest account of the obscenities of the Breach of Promise and Divorce Courts, is hardly entitled to pronounce a very strong judgment against the indecencies of the antiquated chapbook. If there must be filth, the vulgar frankness of Graham is preferable to the insinuated suggestiveness of the present-day romancist.

Mention has already been made of the suppression of the chapbook by the literary periodical and of the abolition of the flying-stationer by the resident newsagent. Alongside these factors, there was a third, which had much to do with altering the tone of the compositions which circulated among the working classes. This was the wide distribution of religious tracts. Many of these—issued by the Religious Tract Society which was instituted in 1799—came from south the Border. Others were of Scottish production. During the forties of last century the land was deluged with pamphlets and tracts, many of which had reference to the Morisonian controversy. Series were issued at different towns, such as Perth, Edinburgh, Kelso, and Falkirk, and in 1848 Stirling revived the position it held in the dissemination of the older chapbooks by the establishment of a Tract Depot. This organisation, which is now known as “The Stirling Tract Enterprise,” originated in [143]the hobby and Free Church leanings of a Stirling seed merchant. It began in a very casual way—its inception was almost unconscious—but when it attained its jubilee, in October, 1898, the trustees were able to state that they had circulated something like four hundred and seventy millions of publications during the fifty years. These productions are distributed over all the world, and, so far as Scotland is concerned, they must have largely taken the place of the old religious chapbook.

In its other departments, chapbook literature has equally developed. The old romances were followed by a succession of lurid penny and twopenny dreadfuls issued at Glasgow, but chiefly dealing with American life. An attempt was made to counteract the influence of these by the issue of a series of religious tales under title, “The Stirling Stories.” A more recent Scottish publication with a similar aim, though not ostensibly religious, is the series of “People’s Penny Stories,” issued by Messrs. John Leng & Co., Dundee. In addition to these Scottish issues, there is a bewildering plethora of productions of English growth. Penny romances abound, and weekly miscellanies of the Tit-Bits order are legion. The advertising fiend, too, does much towards this multiplication of books. Enterprising soap-boilers now add literature to their business, and a man may shave himself into possession of a library of shabby editions of famous authors. The free distribution of almanacs and [144]dream-books is carried on wholesale by pushing patent-medicine vendors. Mother Shipton and Mother Bunch have given place to Mother Seigel, and Dr. Williams and his pink pills have superseded Dr. Faustus and Major Weir. When this gratis circulation and the gorgeous array of cheap literature are compared with the chapbooks of an earlier time, one may be inclined to commiserate the old-world reader. And yet he had compensating advantages. If he did not have the newest discoveries in photography or the latest achievements in colour-printing, neither was he invited to buy soap that wouldn’t wash clothes, or tempted to gorge himself on pills worth a guinea a box.

FOOTNOTES

[1] The Humorous Chapbooks of Scotland. By John Fraser. New York: Henry L. Hinton, publisher, 744 Broadway. 1873.

[2] The Collected Writings of Dougal Graham, “Skellat” Bellman of Glasgow. Edited, with notes, by George Mac Gregor. Glasgow. 1883. 2 vols.

[3] Robert Lindsay, Queen Street, Glasgow, printed several volumes (reprints) of representative chapbooks.

[4] Amusing Prose Chapbooks Chiefly of Last Century. Edited by Robert Hays Cunningham. Glasgow. 1889.

[5] “The prefix ‘chap,’” says Professor Fraser, “originally meant ‘to cheap or cheapen,’ as in the word ‘cheapening-place,’ meaning a market-place,—hence the English Cheapside and Eastcheap.” The word “chap,” meaning “a fellow,” is a mere shortening of the name. “In addition,” writes George Mac Gregor, “it may be stated that the word ‘chapman’ is derived from the Anglo-Saxon ‘ceap-man,’ ceap meaning ‘a sale, or bargain’; and it is related to the Suio-Gothic or Swedish keop-a, whence is derived the Scottish ‘coup’ or ‘cowp,’ now confined to horse-selling, colloquially spoken of as ‘horse-cowping.’” The chapman, like his successor of to-day, had to procure a licence, and in old byelaws and proclamations he is classed among “Hawkers, Vendors, Pedlars, petty Chapmen, and unruly people.” There are occasional references in English literature to these itinerant merchants. Chaucer speaks of the commercial travellers of the age of the “Canterbury Tales” as

“A compane of chapmen riche;”

and in “The Winter’s Tale” there is a description of them on their literary side. The servant (act iv. scene 3) gives the following account of the wares of Autolycus:—“He hath songs for man, and woman, of all sizes; no milliner can so fit his customers with gloves; he has the prettiest love-songs for maids; so without bawdry, which is strange; with such delicate burdens of dildos and fadings.” Thus introduced, Autolycus describes his wares. He has one ballad, “to a very doleful tune, How a usurer’s wife was brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burden; and how she longed to eat adders’ heads and toads carbonadoed:” and another, “of a fish that appeared upon the coast, on Wednesday, the fourscore of April, forty thousand fathom above water, and sung this ballad against the hard hearts of maids:” and yet another, of “two maids wooing a man.” Readers of “Tam o’ Shanter” will remember that Burns there speaks of “chapman billies.” In his Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, which was published at London in 1611, Cotgrave defines the chapman thus:—“Bissoüart, m. A paultrie Pedlar, who in a long packe or maunde (which he carries for the most part open, and hanging from his necke before him) hath Almanacks, Bookes of News, or other trifling wares to sell.” In “Troilus and Cressida,” and also in “Love’s Labour Lost,” Shakespeare refers to the chapman in the sense of a general dealer. In the former (act iv. scene 1) Paris says—

“Fair Diomed, you do as Chapmen do,

Dispraise the thing that you desire to buy;”

and in the latter (Act ii, scene 1), the Princess of France exclaims—

“Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye,

Not uttered by base sale of Chapmen’s tongues.”

[6] Chapbooks of the Eighteenth Century, with Facsimiles, Notes, and Introduction. By John Ashton. London. 1882.

[7] Two earlier works than the chapbooks here mentioned, viz., Expositio Sequentiarum, dated 1505, and The Interpretation of Many Ambiguous Words, by Master John Garland, also dated 1505, appear to have been printed by Androw Myllar, but it is conjectured that they were printed at Rouen, where Myllar may have gained instruction in the art of typography.

[8] “That patchwork of blasphemy, absurdity, and gross obscenity, which the zeal of an early Reformer spawned under the captivating title of Ane Compendvious Booke of Godlie and Spiritvall Songs”—vide Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern: Glasgow, 1827—Introduction, p. lix. Motherwell’s criticism is neither accurate nor just. There were more than one Reformer at the making of the “Gude and Godlie Ballates,” and probably many readers will prefer the words of another writer who says the hymns “quickened and refreshed the little companies of evangelical Christians that struggled for religious reform.” Blasphemy, absurdity, and obscenity were, doubtless, far removed from the minds of many early readers of these quaint broadsides.

[9] Scottish Vernacular Literature: a Succinct History. By T. F. Henderson. London. 1898.

[10] The Poems of Allan Ramsay. Paisley: Alexander Gardner. 1877. Vol. I., p. xvi.

[11] “The Chap-Book proper did not exist [in England] before the former date [1700], unless the Civil War and political tracts can be so termed. Doubtless these were hawked by the pedlars, but they were not those pennyworths, suitable to everybody’s taste, and within the reach of anybody’s purse, owing to their extremely low price, which must, or ought to have, extracted every available copper in the village, when the Chapman opened his budget of brand new books.”—Chapbooks of the Eighteenth Century, p. vii.

[12] The Collected Writings of Dougal Graham. Vol. I., p. 71.

[13] Auld Licht Idylls, p. 249. London. 1892.

[14] Another of these was The Paisley Repository, which was published in occasional numbers, which varied from 4 to 12 pages. The parts were printed locally, sometimes at one press and sometimes at another.

[15] Leaving Stirlingshire, Graham migrated to Glasgow where, it is said, he learned printing, and thereafter set up a press in the Saltmarket. He became a familiar figure in the Second City, the more so after his appointment, about 1770, to the post of “Skellat” Bellman. This office brought him a salary of £10 a year and a picturesque uniform. Dougal was one of two civic functionaries. There were in his time the advertising or “skellat” bellman, and the mort or death bellman. The “skellat” bellman, at a time when newspapers were unknown, was almost the only advertising medium in existence, and the post must therefore have been one of considerable monetary value. In addition to his salary, the official had a graded scale of fees for his proclamations. The word skellat, according to Jamieson, is of Norse origin, and is traced to the same root as our word squeal. It was applied to the bells of monasteries, and also to bells worn by persons of distinction to keep their inferiors out of the way. Dougal continued in office till his death, which took place in July, 1779.

[16] This is the date suggested by Professor Fraser, but it is purely conjectural. Sheriff Strathern, in a paper on “Chapman Literature,” read to the Glasgow Archæological Society on 6th April, 1865, regards this production as the earliest of Graham’s prose publications, and says “it was published in 1783.” This, too, would seem to be conjectural. Graham was in his grave four years before that date, and it is hardly likely that this, the most important of his prose writings, was not in print during his lifetime. The year suggested by Fraser is probably nearer the truth.

[17] The “creepy,” or “cock-stool,” or “black-stool,” or—to give it its more dignified name—“the stool of repentance,” was erected in front of the pulpit, and the delinquent who had to sit thereon was, in consequence, in full view of the congregation. No mercy—in the way of screening from sight—was extended to victims, indeed the rule in some parishes was that the offenders had to stand during the service, that they might be the better seen and the more humiliated.

[18] There were men in other parts of Scotland, besides Gretna Green, who were willing to tie the nuptial knot without question and for a small consideration. Ministers who had been deposed, or who had found it convenient to leave their parishes, were always ready to assist when invited. These men, of course, were not recognised in any way by the Church. The “Cheap Priest” of Graham’s pages is doubtless typical of his class, and no injustice is done to him by the portrait which is drawn.

[19] The day referred to as “the mirk Munanday” was Monday, the 25th of March, 1652. In consequence of an eclipse of the sun there was total darkness for eight minutes. Great fear possessed the people, and there is an entry in the Records of the Burgh of Peebles which sets forth that the inhabitants of that place began to pray to God. There is a reference to the occasion in Law’s Memorials. He says: “The like, as thought by astrologers, was not since the darkness at our Lord’s Passion. The country people, tilling, loosed their ploughs, and thought it had been the latter day.... The birds clapped to the ground.”

[20] A prevalent opinion among the common people of a by-gone day seems to have been that witches, brownies, and other “unco bodies,” were inhabitants of foreign countries. Here we have a reference to them as being domiciled in Italy, and in The History of John Cheap the Chapman, there is a remark about London being their home. John Cheap explains to a woman at Tweedside that he had been at Temple-bar, in London, when she answers—“Yea, yea, lad, an ye be cum’d frae London ye’re no muckle worth, for the folks there awa’ is a’ witches and warlocks, deils, brownies, and fairies.”

[21] The subject of Sabbath observance and regular attendance at worship has long received the attention of the Scottish Church. In every part of the kingdom the Sabbath-breaker was found. The evil was to a certain extent a local one, arising from local causes, and consequently each Kirk Session framed enactments to suit its own needs. Occasionally—as Leper the Taylor sets forth—the Church called in the assistance of the civic authorities. In the records of the Guildry and Trade Incorporations of Dundee there are various references to church attendance and Sabbath observance. The Bonnetmaker Craft considered the question of the keeping of the Lord’s Day in 1665. Finding that it was not observed as it ought to have been, they passed an act rendering the brethren liable in a penalty of forty shillings for transgression of the Sabbath in any manner of way, but especially if the transgression took the form of drinking in a tavern, or of abstention from divine service. This enactment was deemed sufficient to meet the cases of brethren in ordinary, as they were called, but if the defaulter was a member of the Trade Council his sin was punishable by deposition from office. Despite these penalties, the evil continued, and eighteen years later, the same Corporation was forced to pass more stringent acts. At that time—1683—they declared it an offence to hang out bonnets, clothes, or fish to dry. Each of these articles had its own penalty. In the case of bonnets, the fine was 6/8; clothes, 4/-; and fish, 3/-. Here again attendance at church is introduced, although in an indirect way. Certain practices are declared to be punishable if they are indulged in “in time of sermon.” If water was carried from a well in time of sermon, the penalty was 8/-; gathering kail during the same period was apparently less offensive, as the fine was only 5/-. The kindly call of one neighbour on another was censured by the Craft if the visit were made “in time of sermon;” and, unless there was a good excuse, such as illness, a penalty was imposed. A first offender was mulct in a sum of 12/-; if the offence were repeated, the amount was doubled and a “rebuke before the Craft” added to it; and if the practice were indulged in a third time, the delinquent was haled before the Kirk Session, and thereafter rebuked in presence of the congregation. The civic and church authorities in Aberdeen fought the evil of Sabbath journeying by means which would appear strangely ludicrous if adopted in these days. Watchers were stationed at the various places by which citizens could pass out of the town, to take the names of those who sought to escape the sermon. Apparently the enquiries of these watchers were sometimes met with the excuse that the persons were journeying to a neighbouring church to attend service there, for we find the Session circumventing this by ordaining “that na inhabitant within the burgh sall ... go to sermons in Futtie Kirk on the Sabbath,” but resort to “their ain parish kirks” within the burgh, and hear sermons there “both before and after noone.” If they bowed to this order, it cost them the usual collection; if they preferred Futtie, they had to contribute a collection plus 6/8 of a fine, “for the use of the poor.” The penalties imposed at Stirling were more severe. In 1649 the Kirk Session of that place took into consideration the case of a citizen who bore the honourable name of “Johne Smythe.” They found him guilty of “vaiging through the fields unnecessarlie in time of sermon.” On a previous occasion Smythe had been admonished, and as the admonition had not proved a sufficient deterrent, the Session ordained him to make public repentance before the congregation for his fault, “and to stand before the pulpit all the tyme of sermon.” The Rev. George S. Tyack, B.A., in his article entitled “Discipline in the Kirk,” which appears in Mr. William Andrew’s work on By-gone Church Life in Scotland, mentions several instances of Sabbath breaking in different parts of the country. “In 1627,” he writes, “nine millers at Stow, in Midlothian, had to do public penance and pay forty shillings for that ‘their milnes did gang on the Sabbath;’ and in 1644, another miller, in Fifeshire, was sentenced to a fine of thirty shillings, with the same addition, for a similar offence. The uncertainty of the weather was not admitted as any excuse for Sunday harvesting, as is shown by a fine inflicted (together with the usual penance) upon one Alexander Russell and his servant, for ‘leading corn on the Sabbath evening,’ at Wester Balrymont. There are records of the stool of repentance being called into use for the correction of fishermen who mended their nets, of sundry people who gathered nuts, of a woman who ‘watered her kail,’ and of another who ‘seethed bark’ on a Sunday. The last named had to stand in the jagg for three Sundays as well.” An interesting case, and one with a deal of humanity in it, came before the Fraserburgh Kirk Session. A woman, the wife of one William Whyte, was accused of breaking the Sabbath by grinding corn. She admitted the charge, but pleaded that having got the “roche corn giffen her the same morning,” she ground it to satisfy the “hunger of herself and her young anes.” Even in those days of rigid observance and drastic punishment of offences, this particular Session was not wholly unfeeling. They found her guilty of the charge, but overlooked her “repentance upon ye alledgit necessitie.” Had Mrs. Whyte lived further south, she might have fared worse. The Kirk Session of Stow have an inglorious immortality in a record which states that they compelled one, William Howatson, to do public penance on account of his having walked on a Sunday “a short distance to see his seik mother.” These are but a few instances, but they show the rigour with which Sabbath observance was enforced, and prove that Graham’s statements are not exaggerated.

[22] Cameron’s life-story is told in Hawkie: the Autobiography of a Gangrel, edited by John Strathesk (Glasgow: David Robertson & Co.). He was born in 1781 at Plean, in the parish of St. Ninians, Stirlingshire, was educated at a school in the adjoining village of Milton, and thereafter apprenticed to a tailor in Stirling. He was of a roving, reckless disposition, and was, by turns, tailor, schoolmaster, actor, mender-of-broken-china, field-preacher, flying-stationer and street-orator. The last years of his life were spent in Glasgow, where he died in 1851.

[23] David MacBeth Moir, better known as “Delta,” was born at Musselburgh in 1798. He studied for the medical profession, qualified early, and from his eighteenth year was a practitioner in his native town. Amid the cares of his profession he found time to cultivate literature. He contributed to the Edinburgh Magazine from its commencement, and for many years was a frequent writer to Blackwood. His contributions to the latter of these miscellanies were occasionally signed with the Greek Δ (Delta), and in time he came to be better known by the initial than by his name. He died at Dumfries in 1851.

[24] The author of this notable chapbook was born at Paisley on 6th July, 1776. He was apprenticed to the craft of weaving, and worked for some time at this calling in Paisley, Lochwinnoch, and Queensferry. Subsequently he became a pedlar, and, in company with his brother-in-law, travelled about in this capacity for three years. In 1790 he published a collection of his poems which, however, did not meet with great success. Four years later he emigrated to America, where the remainder of his days were passed. At first he travelled as a pedlar over a large part of the State of New Jersey, but afterwards he took up teaching. He devoted much time to ornithology, and by many he has been recognised as a naturalist rather than as a poet. He died—to some extent a martyr to ornithology—on the 23rd of August, 1813, and was interred at Southwark, Philadelphia.

[25] John Burness was (according to the sketch of his life which he prefixed to his volume of Plays, Poems, and Metrical Tales, published in 1819 at Montrose), the youngest son of William Burness, farmer, Bogjorgan, in the parish of Bervie. He was born on the 23rd of May, 1771, learned the trade of baker in Brechin, and followed his calling for some years in different places in Forfarshire. In 1794 he enlisted in the Angus Fencible Volunteer Corps of Infantry. He was with this regiment when it was stationed in Dumfries in 1796, and while there made the acquaintance of his relative, Robert Burns, who perused Thrummy Cap, and—according to another authority—told him “it was the best ‘ghaist’ story he had ever seen in the Scottish dialect.” The Angus Fencibles were disbanded at Peterhead in 1799. Burness proceeded to Stonehaven, where he set up in business as a baker, and continued in that place for nearly four years. Later he joined the Forfar Militia, in which he served till 1815, when he was discharged. He then took up the calling of a book-canvasser, which he pursued until his death, which occurred at Portlethen in 1826.

[26] A lesser-known poetical chapbook was “The Magic Pill; or, Davie and Bess. A Tale. Relating Davie’s Courtship to Bess, and how he Forsook her—How Nanse, Bessie’s Mother, went to the Doctor for a Pill, which she got, with Directions how to Use it—How it had the desired effect, by being put into Davie’s Pouch by Bess, at a Wedding, which Discover’d Davie’s Love to Bess, and they were Married. Likewise, how Nanse, being a Widow, went to the Doctor with Twa Fat Hens, to return thanks for the Pill, and how she wanted to buy a Pill for herself, to gain a Neighbour Carle she liked; with an Account of what the Doctor said to her, and a Receipt how to make up this Pill, and an Advice to all young women how to Use it. EDINBURGH: Printed for the Booksellers in Town and Country. By R. Menzies, Lawnmarket. (Price One Penny).” 8 pp.

[27] The Art of Courtship, containing An Interesting Dialogue that passed between William Lawson and his sweetheart Bessy Gibb. Also two Love-Letters which he sent to his Sweetheart, and her Answers: Very beneficial for such blate wooers, or young beginners, as have not gotten the art of courtship. And two receipts: The one for young Men how to wale a good wife, and the other for young Women how to wale a good husband.... Stirling: printed and sold by M. Randall, 12mo, N.D. “Hawkie,” in his Autobiography, refers to this chapbook. At page 92, he says, in relating his adventures as a flying-stationer:—“An old copy of an eight-page book entitled Willie Lawson’s Courtship of Bess Gibb, was the first that I tried, It was a peck of ill-put-together nonsense, but I afterwards found that nonsense was the article that ‘took’ best in the street. Of this piece I sold a number of reams, and cleaned out the shop; I have never seen it since, and it is a small loss to the public.” There were other chapbooks very similar in title to this in circulation. The Accomplished Courtier; or, A New School of Love, published at Edinburgh in 1764, was not unlike the Letter Writers of a later date. Another, also published in Edinburgh in 1764, was entitled The Art of Courtship, and contained “Amorous dialogues, love letters, complimental expressions, with a particular description of Courtship,” etc., etc. A more pretentious work was A New Academy of Compliments; or, the Complete English Secretary, which was published at Glasgow in 1783. It is a duodecimo of 132 pages, and has the appearance of being made up of the contents of a number of smaller books. There are sections dealing with letter-writing and the art of good-breeding; and chapters which treat of moles and their meanings and the interpretations of dreams. Then there are “dialogues very witty and pleasing,” and “the Comical Humours of Jovial London Gossips, in a Dialogue between a Maid, Wife, and Widow, over a Cup of the Creature.” To all this is added “A Collection of the newest Play-House Songs.”

[28] “An Account of a diverting Courtship that lately happened in this Neighbourhood between a Woman of four-score and a Youth of eighteen, whom she married. Likewise an Account of the great and most wonderful Concessions this fond old Woman made, during the Courtship, in order to secure this young Man for a Husband.

“1. She solemnly promised, under the penalty of keeping separate Beds, which would break her Heart, to be blind to all his Faults,—never to scold or be jealous, even if she should catch him toying with a young Lass.

“2. To support and cherish Him, suppose he got sick or lazy; and to be ready, at all times, to light and help him Home from the Alehouse, drunk or sober.

“3. That, even if he should get a Child or two by the bye, she would nourish and cherish them as if they were her own.

“But, sorrowful to relate, poor Granny could not keep her word; for the third week after Marriage, she detected him kissing yellow Meg in her own bed-chamber, broke his head with the tatoe beetle, and scolded most furiously—on which he ran off with Meg to Edinburgh, after robbing the old Wife of seventy pounds sterling.” 8 pp. N.D.

[29] The Pleasures of Matrimony, interwoven with Sundry Comical and Delightful Stories, with the charming Delights and ravishing Sweets of Wooing and Wedlock, in all its diverting Enjoyments. By Author Reid, Glasgow. Glasgow: Printed for the Booksellers.

[30] The Comical Notes and Sayings of the Rev. Mr. John Pettigrew, Minister in Govan. Glasgow: 1767.

[31] The Scotch Haggis: a Selection of Choice Bon-Mots, Irish Blunders, Repartees, Anecdotes, etc.

Care to our coffin adds a nail no doubt,

While every laugh so merry draws one out.

Glasgow: Printed for the Booksellers. 12mo. 24 pp. N.D.

[32] Odds and Ends; or, a Groat’s-worth of Fun for a Penny. Being a Collection of the Best Jokes, Comic Stories, Anecdotes, Bon-Mots, etc. Printed for the Booksellers. 12mo, 24 pp. N.D.

[33] Grinning Made Easy; or, Funny Dick’s Unrivalled Collection of Jests, Jokes, Bulls, Epigrams, etc., with many other descriptions of Wit and Humour. Glasgow: Printed for the Booksellers. 12mo. 24 pp. N.D.

[34] Elizabeth Isabella Spence (George MacGregor calls her Mr. E. J. Spence), an observant tourist if somewhat inaccurate author, writes as follows concerning Graham in her work, Sketches of the Present Manners, Customs, and Scenery of Scotland. (2 Vols. London, 1811.) Vol. I., p. 147. “On the side of the hill, above the old village of Campsie, are to be seen the traces of a turf cottage, the birthplace and early residence of Dougal Graham, who, about the year 1750, wrote a rhyming history of the rebellion of 1745. He was lame from his infancy; but, having an inherent propensity to wander, he, with many others of his countrymen, joined the Pretender on his arrival at Doune, and continued in his train until his departure from Scotland, but in what capacity is unknown. He was afterwards reduced to great poverty, and hawked ballads about the streets of Glasgow, till the magistrates, in reward of his services, gave him the charge of the music-bells, which situation he retained till his death near sixty years ago. He had little imagination; in his compositions he adhered to a bare recital of facts in doggrel rhyme; and, as he says, is likely to please only those who, like himself, had no other than a common education. The volume, however, contains some curious anecdotes not noticed by historians of events at that particular period; and though it possesses otherwise little merit, it serves to illustrate the propensity to literary pursuits amongst the lowest of the Scotch.” This somewhat amusing note is chiefly interesting for the statement that Graham was a native of Campsie. The author was either misinformed or misled. Dougal narrates some biography in the first edition of his metrical History, and among other things states that he was born at Raploch.

[35] Hawkie: the Autobiography of a Gangrel, p. 93.

[36] A notable chapbook of this order, and one that would find a ready sale all over Scotland is the following:—“West Port Murders! A Full and Correct Account of the Trial of William Burke and Helen M’Dougal, before the High Court of Justiciary, on Wednesday, the 24th Dec., 1828, for the wilful murder of Mary Campbell or Docherty, with the felonious intent of selling her body to a Surgeon, as a subject for Dissection, and of the Sentence, Confession, and Execution of Burke. Falkirk: Printed by T. Johnston.” 24 pp. N.D. This particular edition is embellished with a crude illustration, which is doubtless intended as a portrait of Burke.

[37] J. Ross, in The Book of Scottish Poems, Ancient and Modern, p. 13, says this chapbook is “very likely from the pen of Dougal Graham.” Ross gives no authority or reason for his statement, and “very likely” it is not a production of “the metrical historian of the Rebellion.”

[38] Ebenezer Erskine.

[39] The Collected Writings of Dougal Graham. Vol. I., p. 73.

[40] The illustration referred to is in The New Pictorial Bible. There are, as stated in the text, no pictures in Jonah’s Mission to the Ninevites.

[41] Hector Macneill, who was born at Roslin in 1746, was the son of a retired Captain of the 42nd Highlanders. Shortly after his birth, the family removed to the west of Stirlingshire, and in due time Macneill entered the Stirling Grammar School, which was then under the capable management of Dr. David Doig. When a young man, he emigrated to the West Indies, where he was engaged for a short time in a counting-house. He returned to Scotland in 1795, when he published Scotland’s Skaith. A year later he went out again to Jamaica, coming back to Scotland in 1800. He died at Edinburgh on March 15, 1818, aged seventy-two.

[42] See ante, page 68, note 1.

[43] The Life and Works of Robert Burns, edited by Robert Chambers, revised by William Wallace. Edinburgh, 1896. Vol. II., p. 17.

[44] James Hogg, born 1770. Died 1835.

[45] The Tales of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. London. 1880.

[46] John Wilson, born 1785. Died 1854.

[47] George Sinclair, who was born in 1630, was appointed to the Chair of Philosophy in Glasgow University in 1654, but eight years later—in 1662—was ejected from office on account of his non-compliance with Episcopacy. He thereafter devoted his time and energies to the business of mineral surveying and engineering, and in 1670 he superintended the introduction of water into Edinburgh. In addition to the above contribution to the literature of witchcraft, he wrote various works on astronomy, hydrostatics, and mathematics.

[48] Major Weir, who has been called the prince of Scottish wizards, was the son of a farmer in Clydesdale. He entered the army, held a commission as Lieutenant for some time, and took part in the quelling of the insurgents in Ireland in 1641. Later, he settled in Edinburgh, joined the Town Guard, and in time was promoted to the position of Major of that body. In that credulous age when Satan, forgetting his Bible, went about, not as a “roaring lion,” but as a docile cat or timid hare, or took upon himself some more lovely form of passion, and made compacts with many people, he found a ready recruit in the Major. Gradually it was voiced abroad that Weir was in league with the Devil. He was put on trial on April 9, 1670, when he “confessed himself guilty of a life of wretched hypocrisy and vice—guilty, in fact, of crimes possible and impossible. He felt some relief in the idea that the Devil had the larger share in his misdeeds.” He was sentenced to be burned, and five days later the doom was carried out “between Edinburgh and Leith, at a place called Gallowlee.” The memory of the wizard of the West Bow was long held in dread, and for more than a century his house remained tenantless. At length a person foolhardy enough to occupy the place was found in William Patullo, an old soldier, and this is what happened:—

“On the very first evening after Patullo and his spouse had taken up their abode in the house,” says the author of Reekiana, “a circumstance took place which effectually deterred them and all others from ever again inhabiting it. About one o’clock in the morning, as the worthy couple were lying awake in their bed, a dim, uncertain light proceeded from the gathered embers of their fire, and all being silent around them, they suddenly saw a form like a calf, but without the head, come through the lower panel of the door and enter the room: a spectre more horrible, or more spectre-like conduct, could scarcely have been conceived. The phantom immediately came forward to the bed, and setting its forefeet on the stock, looked steadfastly in all its awful headlessness at the unfortunate pair, who were of course, almost ready to die with fright. When it had contemplated them thus for a few minutes, to their great relief it took itself away, and slowly retiring, vanished from their sight. As might be expected, they deserted the house next morning, and for another half century no other attempt was made to embank this part of the world of light from the aggressions of the world of darkness.” There is something amusing in the expression “looked steadfastly in all its awful headlessness.” How a headless object without eyes could look at all is known only to the Patullos and the author of Reekiana.

[49] “Scots Wha Hae” in one chapbook version began as follows:—

“Near Bannockburn King Edward lay,

The Scots they were not far away;

Each eye bent on the break of day,

Glimm’ring frae the east.

“At last the sun shone o’er the heath,

Which lighted up the field of death,

While Bruce, with soul-inspiring breath,

His heroes thus addressed.”

Then followed the version, according to Burns, to which these stanzas were added by way of finish:—

“Now fury kindled every eye,

‘Forward! forward!’ was the cry;

‘Forward, Scotland, do or die!’

And where’s the knave shall turn?

“At last they all run to the fray,

Which gave to Scotland liberty;

And long did Edward rue the day

He came to Bannockburn.”

Thomson’s monstrous interpolations are kindly, compared with these verses.

[50] The Collected Writings of Dougal Graham. Vol. I., p. 77.

[51] In the early years of the nineteenth century there were no newsagents in the Scottish towns, and the sale of the few newspapers in existence was undertaken by the regular booksellers and by law-agents. The latter have ceased to regard this as part of their duty, but many booksellers still have a newspaper counter.

[52] “Hawkie”: the Autobiography of a Gangrel, p. 35.

[53] It is due to Milne’s memory to say that as a man he was distinctly more respectable than the average pedlar.

[54] The Bards of the Angus and Mearns, p. 75. By Alan Reid. Paisley.

[55] Memoirs of the late John Kippen, Cooper in Methven, near Perth, to which is added an Elegy on Peter Duthie, who was upwards of eighty years a flying-stationer. Stirling: Printed by C. Randall. 12mo. 24 pp.

[56] The Collected Writings of Dougal Graham. Vol. I., p. 79.

[57] The Humorous Chapbooks of Scotland. By John Fraser. Part I., p. 114.

[58] The Humorous Chapbooks of Scotland. By John Fraser. Part II., p. 215.

	PAGE
Introductory,	9
Humorous,	35
Instructive,	72
Historical,	72
Biographical,	84
Religious and Moral,	89
Manuals of Instruction,	99
Almanacs,	100
Romantic,	103
Superstitious,	107
Songs and Ballads,	116
Conclusion,	122
List of Chapbooks,	145
Glossary,	149
General Index,	151

	PAGE
The Wedding of Jockey and Maggy,	39
Bruce and de Boune,	85
The Wreck of Robinson Crusoe,	88
Noah Entering the Ark,	89
Hagar and Ishmael Cast Out,	90
Joseph Sold into Egypt,	91
The Plague of Frogs,	92
The Sun and Moon Stand Still,	93
Jonah is Swallowed by a Fish,	94
Daniel Cast into the Den of Lions,	95
Sarah Promised a Son,	96
The Old Hound,	99
The Burial of Jacob,	100
Solomon’s Temple,	102
Jack the Giant Killer and the Giant,	104
The Trial of Sir John Barleycorn, Knt.,	117
The Last Day,	144

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Scottish chapbook literature

PREFACE.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Scottish Chapbook Literature.

INTRODUCTORY.

I.
HUMOROUS.

II.
INSTRUCTIVE.

III.
ROMANTIC.

IV.
SUPERSTITIOUS.

V.
SONGS AND BALLADS.

CONCLUSION.

FOOTNOTES

LIST OF CHAPBOOKS REFERRED TO IN THE PRECEDING PAGES.

GLOSSARY.

GENERAL INDEX.

ERRATA.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

I.	—Humorous.
II.	—Instructive.
III.	—Romantic.
IV.	—Superstitious.
V.	—Songs and Ballads.

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Scottish chapbook literature

PREFACE.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Scottish Chapbook Literature.

INTRODUCTORY.

I. HUMOROUS.

II. INSTRUCTIVE.

III. ROMANTIC.

IV. SUPERSTITIOUS.

V. SONGS AND BALLADS.

CONCLUSION.

FOOTNOTES

LIST OF CHAPBOOKS REFERRED TO IN THE PRECEDING PAGES.

GLOSSARY.

GENERAL INDEX.

ERRATA.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

I.
HUMOROUS.

II.
INSTRUCTIVE.

III.
ROMANTIC.

IV.
SUPERSTITIOUS.

V.
SONGS AND BALLADS.