One of a family of ten, I was born at Wanlockhead, Dumfriesshire, in
the year 1861. My boyhood was spent in the midst of comparative
poverty, under whose grim shadow so many toilers live and die. Of my
parents I say nothing here, except that my love and reverence for
their memory remain undimmed to this day. The amount of love and
self-sacrifice involved in bringing up a large family on the earnings
of the lead miner at that period--from fifteen to seventeen shillings
per week--I leave to the imagination of my readers. In spite of poor
environment, my boyhood was, on the whole, happy and care-free. My
greatest delight was to roam the glens and hills of my nativity. My
pet aversion was the school, and to be confined within its four walls
when the sun was shining and the birds singing outside was to me the
refinement of cruelty. My parents and teachers must have been at
their wits' end with me, for, in spite of heavy punishment, I played
truant whenever opportunity offered. I was employed as a lead washer
at the age of thirteen, for the magnificent wage of fivepence per
day. This was increased at the rate of one penny or twopence yearly,
at the discretion of the manager. After working five years at lead
washing it came my turn to go underground as a labourer and miner's
assistant, where in course of time I became a fully qualified lead
miner.
I will not weary my readers with an account of my ups and downs in
life or of my many startling experiences in the lead and coal mines.
I was a coal miner in different parts of Scotland for six years. I
did not take kindly to the work, and when I left it I fervently hoped
it was for good. Of the coal miners I have a high opinion. Beneath
the rough exterior of the most of them they are true to the core;
brave hearted men, who have proved their sterling worth on many a
shell-torn, blood-stained field, and in many an appalling mine
disaster; ready to fight, suffer, or die on the field of battle for
their ideals: ready in the mine disaster to go to almost certain
death to rescue their comrades. Can human nature rise higher than
this?
My hobby has been the study of music and the playing of different
instruments. I have gained an elementary knowledge of composition,
harmony, and counterpoint, and in the playing of different
instruments made myself fairly expert. My favourite is the violin,
and my earnings with it at concerts, balls, kirns, and merry-makings
generally enabled my wife to keep the pot boiling and the bairns fed
and clad when the lead miner's wage was utterly inadequate for that
purpose.
At the outbreak of the Great War I commenced to rhyme. I am sorry if
the jingo spirit is too evident in some of my pieces. Such were
composed in the dark days, when our brave soldiers had their backs at
the wall, and required every moral and material support that could be
given them. For the political and religious bias of my pieces I make
no apology. I make no claim to the honour of being a Poet; that I
have no claim will be evident to cultured minds to whom these songs
and rhymes will no doubt appear poor in conception, crude in
expression, grammatically wrong in parts, and altogether commonplace.
But as I am writing to people on my own level of intelligence--that
is, the intelligence of a self-taught man--cultured people do not
come into the picture. Some of my friends are quite pleased with my
verses, but I will not require a larger size in headwear over the
opinion of others. I am pleased, however, to note that they all
agree about the general tone and sentiment being of a high order.
With that I am content. If there is anything in my pieces that will
raise a smile, a laugh, or a tear--anything that will make the human
more humane, any thought or sentiment that will tend to raise the
moral or mental standard of my readers--they have not been written in
vain.
One third of the pieces in this book have already been published, and
my thanks are due to local and other Editors for space given me, and
specially to the Editor of the "Dumfries and Galloway Courier and
Herald," for an artistic touch here and there in some of them. I
give the tunes when well known to which a number of my songs may be
sung. As for the others, the music being new, it will depend on
circumstances whether they ever see the light of publicity. The song
"Wanlock," by M'Arthur, schoolmaster in Wanlockhead (1850), and "The
Lowther Winds Wail," by the Rev. J. Moir Porteous, minister of the
Free Church, Wanlockhead (1877), I insert so that they will continue
to be familiar to the people of the district in which their authors
lived and worked.
I am indebted to Robert Wanlock Reid for permission to publish his
"Letter in Rhyme," and to J. M. Harkness for his appreciation
expressed in "Auld Cronie Tam;" also to Miss Annie J. Mitchell for
kindly typing the bulk of my pieces; and to all those who have given
me any encouragement in the making of this book.