Part 7

“That night he was out, and had taken the key of the room along with him; I wearied waiting for him, and seeing a number of papers lying on the kitchen table, I bargained for them with Mrs. Caldwell; and she, honest woman, not knowing the purpose for which I wanted them, sold them to me. I went out into the street, told a long tale, and sold the papers. Times were good then. I drew upwards of four shillings. None challenged me that night, but on the Monday following, when I was at the ‘Cross,’ a young woman came to me and said, ‘You rascal, you cheated me on Saturday night; you sold me a newspaper instead of a book.’ I asked her, ‘What she gave for it?’ She said, ‘A halfpenny.’ And I told her ‘She could never be cheated with a newspaper for a halfpenny.’”[52]

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:—

“I, Jock Milne of the Glen, Wrote this poem wi’ my ain pen; And I’m sure I couldna sell it cheaper, For it’ll hardly pay the price o’ the paper.”[53]

The chapman was not always dealt with in life in a kindly fashion, and it is to be feared that he frequently found himself 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,

“a cadger-powny’s death At some dyke-side.”

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 eighty years,” and when at length he passed away his memory was embalmed in elegaic verse, from which the following is an extract:—

“Lament ye people, ane an’ a’, For Peter Duthie’s e’en awa’; Nae mair will Pate e’er travel round The circle o’ his native ground; Nae mair shall he last speeches cry, Nor in the barns will ever lie; Nae mair shall he again appear To usher in the infant year With _Almanacks_ frae Aberdeen, The best and truest ever seen; Nae mair shall he again proclaim The prophecies in _Rhymer’s_ name; Nor sell again the great commands, Nor praise the book ca’d _Meally Hands_; Nor _Arry’s_ ware for lads and lasses, Which for the highest wisdom passes; Nor shall he _Jock and Maggie’s_ tale Again expose to view or sale; Nae mair shall he e’er gain a dram Upon the tricks o’ _Louden Tam_; _Buchanan’s_ wit he cannot praise, As aft he did in former days; Nor tell how _Leper_ threw the cat Into auld Janet’s boiling pat. ... [Death’s] sov’reign will nae doubt it was, Altho’ we canna tell the cause, To drive poor Peter from the earth, An’ cause sic mourning into Perth, Where lang the honest body dwelt, Where mony a hunder beuk he selt, An’ where ten thousand wad defend him, And sae wad ilk ane done that kend him. Alas! poor Pate! nae mair will ye Tell tales again wi’ mirth and glee; Lang will the country lasses weary, To see that face was ay sae cheery, A face weel kent o’er Britain’s Isle, A face ay painted with a smile.

O, wha will now fill up thy place, And fill it with so good a grace? There’s only one that I do ken, Among the mortal sons o’ men, An’ that is Jackey, ance thy friend, The fittest fellow e’er I kend; Thy customers he knew right well, An’ can a canty story tell, On winter nights, while round the ingle, The wheels an’ reels an’ plates do jingle, So let him now tak’ up thy trade, An’ then I’m sure his fortune’s made.”

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 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 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, 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.

“He possessed this advantage over the ordinary historian,” writes Fraser, “that the latter, from his superior height and position, seldom condescended to enter the huts of the poor; and when he did enter, the inmates were frightened into their ‘Sunday clothes and manners’ by his stately and majestic presence. But Dougal, being himself one of the poorest, introduces us into the most secret, domestic, and everyday life and thoughts of the lower classes of the last [the eighteenth] century. Nothing is hidden from him. He is treated with a familiarity which shows that his hosts have no wish to hide anything.”[58]

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 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 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 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.”