Part 2

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 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entirely different from what had been, and the chapbooks, though still lingering for many years, were gradually superseded by, or became merged in, the cheap literature with which we are familiar to-day.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 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 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 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 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:—

“Your poet humbly means and shaws, That, contrair to just rights and laws, I’ve suffered muckle wrang, By Lucky Reid and ballad-singers, Wha thumb’d with their coarse, dirty fingers, Sweet Adie’s funeral sang; They spoil’d my sense, and staw my cash, My muse’s pride murgully’d, And printing it like their vile trash, The honest lieges whilly’d.”

“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 his plaint to the civic fathers, he pleads that he may be allowed “to guide his gear” himself, when—

“clean and fair the type shall be, The paper like the snaw, Nor shall our town think shame wi’ me, When we gang far awa.”

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 to hear the terms on which this old-world editor was prepared to accept MSS.

“As the work is to be published in numbers,” he says, in somewhat halting English, “the editor hereby intimates to any person who has any entertaining piece by them (either in prose or verse), that they will send such pieces to him (free of postage); and if he approves of the same, and print it, they shall receive a few copies without any expence whatever.”

Verily, publication was its own reward.[14]

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 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 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:—

I.—HUMOROUS. II.—INSTRUCTIVE. III.—ROMANTIC. IV.—SUPERSTITIOUS. V.—SONGS AND BALLADS.

I.

HUMOROUS.

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. 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

“The wittiest fellow in his time, Either for prose or making rhyme.”

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, 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,

“was preciouser to him Than all the Princes in Christendom;”

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 wooing being over,” he writes, “and the day being set, Jockey’s mither killed the black boul horn’d yeal Ewe, that lost her lamb the last year, three hens an’ a gule-fitted cock to prevent the ripples, five peck o’ maut maskit in the meikle kirn, a pint o’ trykle to mak’ it thicker an’ sweeter an’ maumier for the mouth; 5 pints o’ whisky, wherein was garlic and spice, for the raisin’ o’ the wind an’ the clearing o’ their water.”

Then follows a description of the bridal procession.

“The friends and good neighbours went a’ wi’ John to the kirk, where Maggy chanced to meet him, and was married by the minister. The twa companies joined the gither and cam hame in a croud; at every change-house they chanced to pass by, Providence stopt their proceedings with full stoups, bottles and glasses, drinking their healths, ‘wishing them much joy, ten girls and a boy.’ Jockey, seeing so many wishing well to his health, coupt up what he got to augment his health, and gar him live lang, which afterwards coupt him up and proved detrimental to the same.

“So hame cam they to the dinner, where his mither presented to them a piping-het haggis, made o’ the creish o’ the black boul horn’d Ewe, boil’d in the meikle bag, mixt with bear-meal, onions, spice and mint.”

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.

“His friends and her friends being in a mixt multitude, some took his part, some took her’s; and there did a battle begin in the clap of a hand, being a very fierce tumult, which ended in blood; they struck so hard with stones, sticks, beetles, and barrow-trams; pigs, pots, stoups and trunchers were flying like bombs and granadoes. The crook bouls and tangs were all employed as weapons of war, till doon cam the bed, with a great mou of peats! So this disturbet their bedding.

“The hamsheughs were very great, until auld uncle Rabby came in to redd them; and a sturdy auld fallow he was. He stood stively with a stiff rumple, and by strength of his arms rave them sindry, flinging the tane east and the tither west, until they stood a’ round about like as many breathless forfoughten cocks, and no ane durst steer anither for him; Jockey’s mither was driven o’er a kist, and brogit a’ her hips on a round heckle; up she gat, and rinning to fell Maggy’s mither wi’ the ladle, swearing she was the mither o’ a’ the mischief that happened, Uncle Rabby ran in between them, he having a lang nose, like a trumpet, she recklessly came o’er his lobster neb a drive wi’ the ladle till the blood sprang oot, an’ ran down his auld grey beard and hang like snuffy bubbles at it. O! then he gaed wood, and looked as waefu’ like as he had been a tod-lowrie come frae worrying the lambs, wi’ his bloody mouth. Wi’ that he gets an auld flail, and rives awa’ the supple, then drives them a’ to the back o’ the door, but yet nane wan oot; then wi’ chirten an’ chappen down comes the clayhallen and the hen bawk, wi’ Rab Reid the fiddler, who had crept up aside the hens for the preservation of his fiddle.”

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 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.

“Upon Sunday thereafter, John comes with Uncle Rabby’s auld wide coat, a muckle grey-tailed wig, and a big bonnet that covered his face, so that he seemed more like an old Pilgrim than a young fornicator; mounts the creepy[17] wi’ a stiff, stiff back, as he had been a man of sixty. Every one looked at him, thinking he was some old stranger that knew not the stool of repentance by another seat, so that he passed the first day unknown but to very few; yet on the second it came to be known, and the whole parish, with many more, came to see him, which caused such a confusion that he was absolved and got his children baptized the next day.”

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 advises him

“to go in wi’ braw good manners, and something manfu’; to put on a Sunday’s face and sigh as he were a saint; to sit down beside her as he were a Mess John; to keek aye till her, now and then, with a stolen look, and haud his mouth as mim and grave as a May paddock.”

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