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.
[Illustration: _The Last Day—from “The New Pictorial Bible.”_]
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.