Nothing has yet been done in the way of providing an exhaustive history of Scottish chapbook literature, but the wish for such a work has not remained unexpressed. So long ago as the late twenties of last century, when the chapman was still a person of considerable importance, and chapbooks—properly so called—were in wide circulation, it was believed that Sir Walter Scott would undertake the task. When it became evident that the author of Waverley was not to do anything, a hope was expressed that William Motherwell might become the historian of the vulgar literature. That poet entertained the idea himself, but subsequently abandoned it owing to paucity of materials and want of leisure. Other writers may have thought to do something, but up to the present time nothing of a general nature has been accomplished. Certain departments of our chapbook literature, however, have not lacked their editors and historians. The Humorous Prose Chapbooks of Scotland⁠[1] found an able editor in Professor Fraser, although the work done is but a portion of his original scheme; and George Mac Gregor—notwithstanding that his volumes are not much more than a paraphrase of Professor Fraser’s books—accomplished a notable work in The Collected Writings of Dougal Graham.⁠[2] The volumes published by Robert Lindsay of Glasgow⁠[3] are valuable for the specimens of chapbooks which they contain; and Robert Hays Cunningham has compiled a not unmeritorious work in his Amusing Prose Chapbooks Chiefly of Last [the Eighteenth] Century.⁠[4] But these are only fragments. It is true that Dougal Graham was the chief writer of secular Scottish chapbooks, and that the humorous production found a wider circle of readers than the sermon or the serious poem, but the Skellat Bellman of Glasgow and the comic effusion are not, on that account, wholly representative of Scotland’s cheap literature of a by-gone day. It is to be regretted that too often that section of our chapbooks has been held up as typical of the whole, and that our fathers have not received the credit which is due them for their appreciation of history and theology. The more serious chapbooks—such as those which recounted the deeds of Wallace and the achievements of Bruce, and those which contained the fiery eloquence of the Covenanters, and, later, of the Erskines—have been almost entirely overlooked. The song chapbooks, too, of which there were myriads, have only been referred to incidentally when they happened to be humorous. It is to be hoped—though every hour that passes makes the task more difficult of accomplishment—that some day a history of our national chapbooks will be written, so that a record may be preserved of a most interesting chapter of our literary annals.

Many difficulties beset a writer on this subject, and probably the greatest is to define exactly what a chapbook is. In Chambers’s Encyclopædia publications of the chapbook order are defined as

“a variety of old and scarce tracts of a homely kind, which at one time formed the only popular literature. In the trade of the bookseller they are distinguishable from the ordinary products of the press by their inferior paper and typography, and are reputed to have been sold by chapmen or pedlars.”

This may be Encyclopædia information, but it is hardly accurate, and was apparently written by one who knew nothing about the subject. The chapbook is much more than, and is sometimes very different from what is here defined. In a general sense it is anything from a broadside to a decent-sized volume, and it received its name, “chapbook,” not on account of its size or its contents, but in virtue of the fact that it was chiefly circulated by the pedlars who sought to carry civilization and soft goods into hamlets and farm-towns far from the madding crowd. These men were known as chapmen. The derivation of the word shews that a “chapman” was simply a “cheap-man”; and chap literature may therefore be truthfully set down as “cheap literature.”⁠[5] In these days of “World’s Classics” and Sixpenny Reprints, “Penny Poets” and “Halfpenny Novelettes,” chapbooks are unknown, while cheap literature is more in evidence than ever it was. But though it is true that chapbook literature derived its name from the fact that it was vended by chapmen, it in reality existed before it was added to the pedlar’s pack of multifarious goods, just as it flourished apart from the chapman altogether, and continued to survive after he had ceased to vend it to any extent.

The chapman, although still with us, and hated no less fervently than ever, is not in these days the indispensable travelling merchant of by-gone years. At the time when the telegraph and the telephone were undreamt of, and “iron horses” were things to be discussed with bated breath and wondering eyes, the smaller towns and villages of Scotland dwelt in complete isolation from each other. News—even bad news—travelled slowly; the stage-coach—where there was one—lumbered along, a prey to bad roads and drunken drivers; and the average Scot who desired to go from home expressed a lofty contempt for a conveyance, and increased his mileage by what was facetiously termed “shanks’ machine.” In such times and circumstances, the pedlar was a necessity. His pack of needles and laces, buttons and tapes, handkerchiefs and cravats, and other trifles, formed the stock from which many a matron replenished the store, that supplied her with the means of passing the long winter nights.

That the chapman’s life was not all lavender, is evident from the literature and the successor he has left behind. Various references in Dougal Graham’s booklets prove that his lot was not a happy one. By many people he was tolerated as a necessary evil, and in The Loss of the Pack—a chapbook which doubtless had a wide circulation—we learn something of the esteem (or, rather, want of esteem) in which the travelling merchant was held. The author of that poem says:—

But this angry outburst on the part of “the pert guidwife” at an end, she lapses into kindlier speech and indicates the more humane side of the pedlar’s life:

It was the “lilting up wi’ blithesome glee” that constituted the pedlar’s passport to every farm-town. The songs he sang and the stories he told brought him bed and breakfast and sometimes helped to lighten his pack. When newspapers were unknown the chapman was a moving “Intelligencer,” who carried the doings of the outer world into remote parts, and extended the horizon of many who otherwise might have been inclined to think that the earth was their own and the fulness thereof.

The chapman did not change much in the course of years, The frontispiece to Mr. John Ashton’s Chapbooks of the Eighteenth Century⁠[6] is a portrait of a pedlar reproduced from The Cries and Habits of the City of London, published in 1709. The attire of the man in the picture is that of the period to which he belongs, but beyond that there is nothing to distinguish him from the street-vendor of to-day. There he stands, with his tray of nick-nacks and cheap jewellery suspended in front of him like the street-pedlar to be seen at any time in the busy thoroughfares of Edinburgh, Glasgow, or Dundee. The city hawker, like his brother who vended in rural parts, was not slow to recognise a valuable and saleable commodity in broadsides and booklets. These he added to his goods, and ere long gave them a name derived from himself.

Just when he did this is somewhat difficult to say. Broadsides and booklets similar to those which at a subsequent period formed the staple of chapbook literature were issued from the Scottish presses at a very early date. Indeed, the earliest printed examples of our popular poetry are comprised in a series of black-letter chapbooks published by “Walter Chepman and Androw Myllar, Edinburgh, in the year M.D.VIII.” In the previous year these two printers—burgesses of Edinburgh—received a patent under the hand of James IV. which entitled them to establish a printing-press. The instrument set forth that Chepman and Myllar had, at the request of His Majesty,

“for our plesour, the honour, and profitt of our Realme and leigis, takin on thame to furnis and bring hame ane prent, with all stuff belangand thereto, and expert men to use the samyne, for imprenting within our Realme of the bukis of our Lawis ... and all utheris bukis that salbe sene necessar, and to sel the sammyn for competent pricis,” etc.

The printers duly implemented their bargain, and started business in the Cowgate,⁠[7] from which place these black-letter chapbooks issued. A few years later Scotland was in the throes of the fight for Protestantism. The press was called into use both for and against the new order. “During the heat of the Reformation,” says one writer, “there were many ‘ballatis, sangis, blasphematious rhymes, alsweill of kirkmen as temporal and utheris tragedies’ published.” Robert Lekprevick, another early Scottish printer, issued many broadsides of a political and ecclesiastical character in the interests of Protestantism. So partisan were these productions that Sir Robert Maitland was constrained to say in his verses “On the Malice of Poets”—

The chief of the broadside authors of this period was Robert Sempill. Along with him may be mentioned Sir William Kirkcaldy of Grange and Sir John Maitland, Lord Thirlestane and the Earl of Glencairn, John Davidson and Nicol Burne. Reference should also be made to the brothers Wedderburn of Dundee, whose Gude and Godlie Ballates⁠[8] were so popular in their day, and are believed originally to have been issued singly in broadside form. Writers of the Reformation period, too—notably Buchanan and Knox—issued tractates not dissimilar in appearance from the chapbooks of a later age. But these, in one sense at least, were not chapbook literature. They may have done much, in an indirect way, to fire the imagination of “the rascal multitude,” but they must have been sealed books to many of the commonalty, with whom reading was an unknown accomplishment.

The Scottish printers were not long at work ere their labours were viewed with apprehension. The Scots Parliament, jealous, doubtless, of the power of the press, early instituted a press-censorship. On 1st February, 1551-52, it ordained—

“That na Prentar presume, attempt or tak upone hand to prent ony bukis ballatis, sangis, blasphematiounis rymes, or tragedies, outhir in Latin or Englis toung in ony tymes to cum, unto the tyme the samin be sene, vewit, and examit be sum wyse and discreit persounis depute thairto ... and thaireftir ane licence had and obtenit ... under the pain of confiscatioun of all the Prentaris gudis, and banisshing him of the Realme for ever.”

Notwithstanding these restrictions, the art of printing developed in many directions.

As time went on, education became more general and broadsides more numerous. The single sheet was the vehicle by which many authors sought to reach the public. Ballads and songs, old and new, genuine and fictitious, made their appearance in broadside form, and thus ceased to be dependant on oral tradition for their existence. It is not too much to suppose that these broadsides circulated among all classes. Their cost could not have been great, and if they were vended at fairs and markets, as is not unlikely, they may be accepted as the earliest form of our chapbook literature. In many ways they resembled the productions common in later times, and as Mr. T. F. Henderson says in his Scottish Vernacular Literature,⁠[9]

“they indicate the existence in Scotland, in the seventeenth century or earlier, of a great variety of forgotten lyrics, most of them coloured with the ingenuous indelicacy which, more or less, tinges all our early literature, and some of them very much akin to the ditties collected by Burns.”

This, the vulgar literature of an earlier age, would seem to have met at the hands of our fathers a fate similar to that which we have awarded to the chapbook literature of later times, and which our children may mete out to the cheap ephemeral publications of these days.

During the seventeenth century and down to the time of Allan Ramsay, broadsides were in general circulation, and by their means popular interest in our national song was kept alive. Many of our most widely-known lyrics appeared originally in song-sheets. The earliest version of “Auld Lang Syne” was so published, and so also was “Maggie Lauder,” “The Blythesome Bridal,” and numberless others. Habbie Simpson, the famous piper of Kilbarchan, was immortalised by Robert Sempill of Beltrees and the broadside press; and thousands all over Scotland learned how—

and then, with the author, asked—

This, and other productions by Sempill and his contemporaries, popularised the single sheet publication, and Allan Ramsay seems instinctively to have turned to the broadside printer when he added poetry to the prosaic duties of a wig-maker. He soon became the laureate of the Edinburgh streets, and his biographer tells us that “the women of Edinburgh were wont to send out their children with a penny to buy ‘Ramsay’s last piece.’”⁠[10] These broadsides of the author of The Gentle Shepherd were published in the early years of the eighteenth century, but before this date chapbooks of eight, sixteen, twenty-four, and sometimes a greater number of pages, had become common.

Mr. John Ashton, in his Introduction to the volume of English Chapbooks of the Eighteenth Century, says that in England the chapbook proper did not exist before the year 1700.⁠[11] There is ample evidence that it was known in Scotland before that date. In 1644 we find the famous Glasgow divine, Zachary Boyd, complaining to the General Assembly, in the vigorous language of the period, that “their schools and country were stained, yea pestered, with idle books, and their children fed on fables, love-songs, baudry ballads, heathen husks, youth’s poison;” and a complaint of this kind clearly indicates that chapbook literature, in the form of “idle books” and “fables,” “love-songs,” and “baudry ballads,” was in general, if not approved, circulation. The troubles which came upon the country with the Restoration, and the long period of unrest that preceded the Revolution of 1688, doubtless turned men’s thoughts to more serious matters. The Covenanting divines who were ejected from their pulpits by Claverhouse and his dragoons, sought to spread the truth according to their light by means of the press, and numerous sermons were issued in chapbook form. Admirers of the “Scots Worthies,” too, prepared tracts relating to them, their sufferings, and their prophecies, which, we may suppose, were read with avidity in quiet corners by their followers, and treasured almost as carefully as the Bible, for their peculiar interpretation of which they were ready to lay down their lives. “The internal evidence of the chapbooks relating to Peden, Cargill, and other worthies of the ‘Killing-time,’” writes George Mac Gregor, “indicates that their first editions were published within a few years at least of the events recorded in them.”⁠[12]

The Revolution of 1688 may be said to mark the beginning of the period which may be called the chapbook era. There were earlier indications, as has been pointed out, but from that date the commonalty were supplied with booklets and broadsides in gradually increasing numbers, and the work of their distribution was taken up more generally and thoroughly by the scores of pedlars who did their best to keep village joined to village and hamlet in touch with hamlet.

“Books and pamphlets,” writes Mr. J. M. Barrie in the chapter, “A Literary Club,” which appears in Auld Licht Idylls, “were brought into the town by the flying stationers, as they were called, who visited the square periodically, carrying their wares on their backs, except at the Muckly [an occasional fair], when they had their stall and even sold books by auction. The flying stationer best known in Thrums was Sandersy Riach, who was stricken from head to foot with palsy, and could only speak with a quaver in consequence. Sandersy brought to the members of the club all the great books he could get second-hand, but his stock in trade was Thrummy Cap and Akenstaff, The Fishwives of Buckhaven, The Devil upon Two Sticks, Gilderoy, Sir James the Rose, The Brownie of Badenoch, The Ghaist of Firenden, and the like.”⁠[13]

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:—

“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—

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:—