COLLECTED WRITINGS OF DOUGAL GRAHAM.

Impression strictly limited to 250 copies, of which this copy is No. 187

Types taken down.

Frontispiece to Vol. I.

THE

COLLECTED WRITINGS

OF

Dougal Graham

‘Skellat’ Bellman of Glasgow

EDITED WITH NOTES

Together with a Biographical and Bibliographical Introduction, and a Sketch of the Chap Literature of Scotland

BY

GEORGE MAC GREGOR

Author of ‘The History of Glasgow’ and Member of the Glasgow Archæological Society

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I.

For Subscribers and Private Circulation

GLASGOW: THOMAS D. MORISON

MDCCCLXXXIII

[Pg 5]

PREFACE.

Sir Walter Scott and William Motherwell, it has been recorded, both intended to do something towards the preservation of the works and fame of the literary pedlar and bellman of Glasgow: the former by reprinting the first edition of The History of the Rebellion, and the latter by a history of the Chap Literature of Scotland, in which, of course, Dougal Graham should have been a prominent figure. Neither of these eminent Scotsmen, however, found fitting opportunity to carry their intentions into effect. This is all the more to be regretted when it is considered that few men were better able to undertake the task they had proposed for themselves. In the fifty years that have elapsed since Scott and Motherwell made the world acquainted with their abandoned projects, no serious attempt has been made to preserve the writings of Dougal Graham. These works have been floating about the country in unconsidered fragments, and, notwithstanding the efforts of a few gentlemen of the past and present generations, have ever been in danger of utter destruction.

The Editor of these volumes has endeavoured to combine the intentions of Scott and Motherwell. After long and careful search, he has been able to bring together extremely rare and unique editions of Graham’s chap-books. Many of these works are rich in illustration of the manners and customs of the people during the period of their first publication; and the Editor, by foot-notes, and otherwise, has tried to explain obscurities, or trace the origin and development of peculiar customs. He has also noted many passages containing valuable contributions to the folk-lore literature of Scotland. The various editions that have come under his notice have been[6] carefully collated; and while the oldest editions are here given, any important differences between them and subsequent issues have been marked. The Editor considered it no part of his duty to ‘improve’ his author, for he believed that to the extent he sought to effect such so-called ‘improvements,’ the work would cease to be that of Graham. Every production has been given, as far as could be found, in the condition in

which it proceeded from his pen; and by doing this the Editor thought he would best perform his duty to his author and to the public. A glossary of obsolete, or imperfectly understood, words, has been given at the end of the second volume.

In the prosecution of his labours, the Editor laid himself under obligation to George Gray, Esq., Clerk of the Peace, Glasgow, whose unequalled collection of the popular literature of Scotland (many of the most valuable specimens having once been in the possession of the late Dr. David Laing) has been laid under heavy contribution; to Alex. Macdonald, Esq., Lynedoch Street; Matthew Shields, Esq., Secretary of the Stock Exchange, Glasgow; John Wordie, Esq., Buckingham Terrace; Prof. George Stephens, LL.D., F.S.A., Copenhagen; Thomas Gray, Esq., Ashton Terrace; and John Alexander, Esq., West Regent Street. His thanks are also due to J. Whiteford Mackenzie, Esq., W. S., Edinburgh; J. T. Clark, Esq., Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh; Bailie William Wilson, Glasgow; George W. Clark, Esq., Dumbreck; and James Richardson, Esq., Queen Street, Glasgow.

Glasgow, June, 1883.

[7]

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

[9]

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION.

I.—BIOGRAPHY OF DOUGAL GRAHAM.

The negligence of contemporaries by failing to appreciate the real worth of the great men of their time has often been a subject of remark. No special case need be cited to give point to the recurrence of the proposition here, for many such instances will readily suggest themselves to the mind. The reasons for this fact are many, and of divergent natures. Though it is beyond the scope of the present inquiry to discuss the general question, it may be observed, however, that some of the more potent causes which in the past have led to this unfortunate result are being rapidly removed through the spread of knowledge among the great mass of the people, and through the remarkable activity of the press in its various branches. Personal gossip regarding the hereditarily and individually great is now and then served up to the public, and it is always received with unmistakable relish. Autobiography, also, has become fashionable, and this, within recent years, has often shed light upon opinions and actions about which some doubts had formerly

existed. These and other circumstances, in themselves perhaps not unmixed good, will tend to keep the biographers of the great men of this and the last generation from being placed in the awkward position in which almost all who attempt to record the lives of men who have achieved local or universal fame prior to the present century must at times find themselves placed. Insufficient data is the great obstacle in the way of the latter class. Traditions difficult to credit and as difficult to refute; suggestions more or less[10] probable; and many obscurities, all incline to make their work perplexing, and, to a certain extent, unsatisfactory. Yet the task must be undertaken, and the earlier the better, in order that such scraps of information as have come down from the past to the present may be preserved.

Dougal Graham, the literary pedlar and bellman of Glasgow, like many a greater man, has suffered unmerited neglect, and the value of his work was not discovered, or appreciated, until it was almost too late to retrieve the loss involved by the remissness of his contemporaries and immediate successors. Motherwell, lamenting this fact, says very truly, ‘That a man who, in his day and generation, was so famous, should have left no dear recollections behind him; some Boswell to record his life, actions, and conversation, need be subject of admiration to no one who has reflected on the contemptuous neglect with which Time often treats the most illustrious dead.’[1] Graham was first noticed as having done something for the literature of his country by Mr. E. J. Spence, of London, who in 1811 published Sketches of the Manners, Customs, and Scenery of Scotland. Motherwell, in the short-lived Paisley Magazine, next set forth fully Graham’s title to the regard of his compatriots, and rescued a few recollections concerning him which, in the course of a year or two more, would

have been lost. M‘Vean, in the appendix to his edition of M‘Ure’s History of Glasgow, issued in 1830, added a few additional particulars. Then Dr. Strang, through the medium of his work on Glasgow and its Clubs, contributed his mite to the small collection of knowledge concerning our author. Graham has provided only one or two details about himself; an advertisement in a Glasgow newspaper fixes the date of one of the most important events of his life; and Dr. Strang has preserved some stanzas of an elegy on his death, written by some unknown poetaster. There, practically, our knowledge ceases. All beyond what is to be gained from these sources is tradition or inference, and not a little of what has[11] thus been put on record has been questioned. A ‘metrical account of the author,’ according to an existing tradition, was prefixed to an early issue of Graham’s History of the Rebellion of 1745–46, but owing to the disappearance of the first and second, and some of the subsequent editions, this account, if it ever existed, can now afford no assistance, nor

can the tradition itself be traced to its source. Sir Walter Scott felt interested in Dougal’s work, but unfortunately he has contributed nothing to his biography, though it is believed to have been his intention to have done so. Such being the state of matters, it is only fair at this stage to assume that comparatively few of the events in the life of Dougal Graham have been ascertained beyond doubt, and that much that is related about him might be overturned even by some minute discovery. The probabilities, however, are against such a happy occurrence at so remote a period. His career, in so far as it is known, is not without a touch of romance, and it furnishes the key to a proper acquaintance with his works.

Graham, according to all accounts, was born in the village of Raploch, near Stirling, in or about the year 1724. If, as has been supposed, his History of John Cheap the Chapman is autobiographical, this is his own story of that important event—‘I, John Cheap by chance, at some certain time, doubtless against my will, was born at the Hottom, near Habertehoy Mill. My father was a Scots Highlandman, and my mother a Yorkshire wench, but honest, which causes me to be of a mongrel kind.’ Should this account be accurate, the names of the places seem to be veiled; but the uncertainty as to its application to Graham himself makes it of comparatively little value. Unfortunately, Nature endowed him with a deformed body, and his physical defects developed with his growth. His parents, from their humble position in life, were unable to give him anything beyond the common education of the time, which was of a very scant description, but he seems to have learned more by his native wit than by the instructions of the schoolmaster. Taught no trade, his youth[12]

would probably be spent at farm work, or at such odd employment as he could find, it may have been in the weaver’s shop, or in the saw-pit, much the same, in all likelihood, as his father had done before him, and as we may still find men doing in remote country hamlets. Leaving the old home under the shadow of Stirling Castle, Graham went in his early youth as a servant to a small farmer in the neighbourhood of the quaint little village of Campsie. A tradition regarding his residence there lingered about the place for nearly a century, for Spence saw traces of a turf cottage said to be the birth-place and early residence of Dougal Graham.[2] As there are no good grounds for questioning the statement that Graham’s birth-place was Raploch, may it not be considered a feasible idea, in view of Spence’s remark, that our author’s parents removed to Campsie, and that he went with them? How long Dougal remained with the farmer is unknown. Of an unsettled disposition, he, like his creation John Cheap, made himself a chapman when

very young, in great hopes of being rich when he became old; and for some years he wandered over the country in the exercise of his craft. The political events of the time, however, effected another and more important change in his career, and rapidly developed in him the mental capabilities with which nature had, by way of compensation, endowed him.

The outbreak of the Jacobite Rebellion in 1745 found Graham ready to follow the Young Chevalier. When the Highland army was on its southward march, he joined it on the 13th of September of that year, at the Ford of Frew, on the Forth. At that time he was probably about twenty-one years of age. The capacity in which he became attached to the Prince’s forces has been matter for conjecture. His physical deformities are assumed to have unfitted him for active service, and everything points to the conclusion that he was not a soldier, but rather a sutler, or camp-follower, blending, probably, his political aspirations with commercial pursuits. In the preface to his History of the Rebellion, he avoids saying[13] he participated actively in the events he records, but plainly states that he had ‘been 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.’ Throughout the whole course of the seven months’ campaign, Graham accompanied the rebel army, and while he has carefully recorded

its movements, he has given no indication of how he himself was occupied, or of any adventures that may have fallen to his share. There can be little doubt that, to a man of his temperament, the march to Derby and the retreat upon Inverness, would be highly educative in its effects, by showing him life in various parts of the country he had in all likelihood never visited before, and by bringing him into contact with men of all ranks. In this short period his knowledge of men and manners would be largely increased, and the experience thus gained would greatly facilitate the production of those graphic and truthful descriptions which sometimes adorn—sometimes, it must also be admitted, tarnish—the literary efforts of his later years.

Until this time, Graham is not known to have made any effort in the direction of literature, though, in view of the magnitude of the task he set before himself on the conclusion of the rebellion, it is not improbable he may have courted the Muses from afar, and indulged in poetical, or rhythmical, fancies for the amusement of his customers and entertainers in his youthful chapman days. However that may be, Dougal, immediately after the disaster at Culloden, rapidly made his way homewards, and set about committing to verse a narrative of the expedition of Prince Charles. The self-imposed duty was great, but he was equal to it. The battle of Culloden was fought on the 16th of April, 1746, and five months later Graham’s work was announced. In the Glasgow Courant, of the 29th September, the following advertisement appeared:—

‘That there is to be sold by James Duncan, Printer in Glasgow, in the Saltmercat, the 2nd Shop below Gibson’s Wynd, a Book intituled A full, particular, and true Account of the late Rebellion in the Year 1745 and 1746, beginning with[14] the Pretender’s Embarking for Scotland, and then an Account of every Battle, Siege, and Skirmish that has happened in either Scotland or England.

‘To which is added, several Addresses and Epistles to the Pope, Pagans, Poets, and the Pretender: all in Metre. Price Four Pence. But any Booksellers or Packmen may have them easier from the said James Duncan, or the Author, D. Grahame.

‘The like has not been done in Scotland since the Days of Sir David Lindsay.’

There is every reason to believe that this work became popular immediately on its publication. Scattered broadcast over Scotland by chapmen and others, while the events of which it treated were still agitating the minds of the people, Graham’s name by it would be brought boldly to the front, and there would be opened up for him the possibilities of a career wider than any he could have contemplated under ordinary circumstances. In every way the work appears to have been a success, and the judgment pronounced upon it by Dr. Robert Chambers has been concurred in by all who have read the production—‘The poetry is, of course, in some cases a little grotesque, but the matter of the work is in many instances valuable. It contains, and in this consists the chief value of all such productions, many minute facts which a work of more pretension would not admit.’[3] Sir Walter Scott’s estimate of it was not less favourable, for, writing to Dr. Strang in 1830, he said—‘It really contained some traits and circumstances of manners worth preserving.’[4]

Although the issue of the History of the Rebellion was probably large, it is remarkable that now, and for many years past, no copy of the first edition has been known to exist. It would be difficult to explain the cause of such a total disappearance. The fact must be regretted both from literary and bibliographical points of view, for a copy of it, besides being of interest in itself, would clear up several obscurities and differences of opinion that have arisen in relation to it and subsequent editions.

Prior to the publication of the History of the Rebellion,[15] Graham was not a resident in Glasgow, though it is probable he would be known to many there, for he must have had frequent occasion to visit the city for the purpose of purchasing his stock-in-trade. These visits would bring him into contact with booksellers, and the numerous tradesmen whose wares would be represented in his miscellaneous pack. The title-page of his work is said to have contained these lines:—

‘Composed by the poet, D. Graham,

In Stirlingshire he lives at hame.’

It would be useless to say whether the wide term ‘Stirlingshire’ bore reference to Raploch, or to Campsie, as has been suggested; but the verse may fairly be considered, by the prefix ‘poet’ to the author’s name, to give countenance to the inference that Graham was not quite a tyro in the art of verse-making, and that previous to the publication of his History he was regarded by his intimate friends, at least, as having qualified for the title. However that may be, Dougal seems now to have made Glasgow his home. Possibly he still continued to ply his calling as a pedlar; but he added to this a profession for which his natural capabilities specially adapted him. In Glasgow, he became the poet of passing events. Little of local importance seemed to have escaped him, and the few metrical pieces now extant, and attributed to him by various authorities, can only be regarded as the representatives of an extensive issue of facetious broadsides and chap-book ballads. Among those believed to be referable to this period of his life,

are John Hielandman’s Remarks on Glasgow, and Turnimspike. Although these have never been acknowledged by Graham himself, in the formal way that he has acknowledged the authorship of the History of the Rebellion, there is a consensus of opinion that these two poems are undoubtedly his production. In them the acquaintance he made with Highland modes of thought and expression during the progress of the Jacobite campaign, served him in good stead. M‘Vean attributes a humorous piece, entitled Tugal M‘Tagger, to Graham, but this has been questioned on several grounds, perhaps the most forcible suggestion being, that its style and rhythm are liker[16] the work of Alexander Rodger than of Graham. Personally, we feel inclined to support M‘Vean, and that for a variety of reasons, which may be better explained when dealing with the bibliography of our author’s works; while other metrical compositions of a similar character will also fall to be considered under the same head.

Dougal was now a man of some note, and, in addition, he is believed to have gradually worked himself into a position of comparative freedom from pecuniary troubles. In the time of his poverty he vented his ill nature on his Roman Catholic fellow-subjects in verse far from elegant, charging them with having brought about, for reasons best known to himself, the unsatisfactory state of his exchequer:—

‘You Papists are a cursed race,

And this I tell you to your face;

And your images of gold so fine,

Their curses come on me and mine.

Likewise themselves at any rate,

For money now is ill to get.

I have run my money to an en’,

And have nouther paper nor pen

To write thir lines the way you see me,

And there’s none for to supplie me.’

Like many another man, Graham becomes incoherent when indulging in strong language. But matters did not always remain in this sad state, and when he published the second edition of his History of the Rebellion he was able to call himself ‘Dougal Graham, merchant,’ showing he had advanced a step in his commercial position. There is no reason to suppose he had a place of business, such as a shop or warehouse, but the probability is that he had become one of the better class of chapmen, whose packs contained a large variety of finer goods than were usually hawked through the country.