Alexander Rodger was born on the 16th July 1784, at East Calder,
Midlothian. His father, originally a farmer, was lessee of the village
inn; he subsequently removed to Edinburgh, and latterly emigrated to
Hamburgh. Alexander was apprenticed in his twelfth year to a silversmith
in Edinburgh. On his father leaving the country, in 1797, he joined his
maternal relatives in Glasgow, who persuaded him to adopt the trade of a
weaver. He married in his twenty-second year; and contrived to add to
the family finances by cultivating a taste for music, and giving lessons
in the art. Extreme in his political opinions, he was led in 1819 to
afford his literary support to a journal originated with the design of
promoting disaffection and revolt. The connexion was attended with
serious consequences; he was convicted of revolutionary practices, and
sent to prison. On his release from confinement he was received into the
Barrowfield Works, as an inspector of cloths used for printing and
dyeing. He held this office during eleven years; he subsequently acted
as a pawnbroker, and a reporter of local intelligence to two different
newspapers. In 1836 he became assistant in the publishing office of the
_Reformers' Gazette_, a situation which he held till his death. This
event took place on the 26th September 1846.
Rodger published two small collections of verses, and a volume of "Poems
and Songs." Many of his poems, though abounding in humour, are
disfigured by coarse political allusions. Several of his songs are of a
high order, and have deservedly become popular. He was less the poet of
external nature than of the domestic affections; and, himself possessed
of a lively sympathy with the humbler classes, he took delight in
celebrating the simple joys of the peasant's hearth. A master of the
pathetic, his muse sometimes assumed a sportive gaiety, when the laugh
is irresistible. Among a wide circle he was held in estimation; he was
fond of society, and took pleasure in humorous conversation. In 1836,
about two hundred of his fellow-citizens entertained him at a public
festival and handed him a small box of sovereigns; and some admiring
friends, to mark their respect for his memory, have erected a handsome
monument over his remains in the Necropolis of Glasgow.