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Scottish chapbook literature

Chapter 5: III. ROMANTIC.
By William Harvey
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About This Book

A concise survey traces the rise, circulation, and transformation of chapbook publishing in Scotland, charting how itinerant pedlars spread broadsides and small tracts and how those cheap publications blended into later popular print. The author organizes and summarizes principal chapbook categories—humorous, instructive, historical, biographical, religious, manuals, almanacs, romantic, superstitious, and song collections—provides illustrative extracts and woodcut reproductions, and appends extensive biographical and bibliographical footnotes. Reference aids including an alphabetical list of titles, a glossary, and an index are included, while commentary emphasizes the social and cultural insights these ephemeral works offer into everyday life.

III.
ROMANTIC.

Scotland’s contribution to this section of our chapbook literature is remarkable for its poverty. Few of the romantic chapbooks were of native growth. Apart from certain of Dougal Graham’s productions and Mansie Wauch, which have been considered under the heading “Humorous,” the most notable romances of Scottish origin were those by the Ettrick Shepherd.⁠[44] Duncan Campbell and his dog Oscar, and The Long Pack; or, The Robbers Discovered, are two of Hogg’s tales which were in much demand as chapbooks. They were printed by the thousand, and editions came from almost every press in the country. Although in many cases they were published anonymously, the authorship was occasionally acknowledged, and these tales did much to increase the popularity of the Ettrick Shepherd with the Scottish people. His Brownie of Bodsbeck, appearing shortly after Old Mortality, was sometimes compared by the literati of Edinburgh with that work, to the disadvantage of the former, but his shorter tales, such as those mentioned, circulating widely among that class of people whom Messrs. Henley and Henderson would call “the uncritical,” were read and enjoyed for themselves alone. At many a fireside the touching tale of Duncan Campbell and his faithful dog has moved readers and hearers to tears. So familiar did it become in time that matrons all over the country were able to tell the story to their children without the book, and garnished occasionally with little touches of added pathos that detracted nothing from the genius of Hogg. The popularity accorded to Duncan Campbell was equalled by that meted out to The Long Pack. The concealment of a robber in a pedlar’s pack was a thing that concerned the everyday life of the people, and many a later chapman who had the good fortune to possess a large stock of goods would be looked upon with suspicious eyes until he opened his bundle and proved that there was no robber where no robber should be. The people of those days, like their successors of our time, enjoyed a spice of sensation, and doubtless gloated over the “moving pack” from which, when the fatal shot was fired, “blood gushed out upon the floor like a torrent, and a hideous roar, followed by the groans of death, issued from the pack.” Hogg was a master of the gruesome, and in this sketch he maintains the rôle to the very end. The body “lay open for inspection for a fortnight,” and, even after it was buried, the neighbours “confidently reported that his grave was opened and his corpse taken away!” Hogg has fallen upon evil days, and to many his romances are practically non-existent. The copious tears of the up-to-date “Kailyairder” blind the eyes of his readers, who, in their endeavour to master the “pidgin” Scots that flows from his pen, forget that Scottish life was lived generations before London publishers found a Klondyke in the joys and sorrows of every Scottish village. But to those who care to read them, the Ettrick Shepherd’s tales are still accessible in the two volumes of his collected romances.⁠[45]

Jack the Giant Killer and the Giant—from the “History of Jack the Giant Killer, containing his Birth and Parentage—His meeting with the King’s Son—His noble Conquests over many monstrous Giants—and, his relieving a beautiful Lady, whom he afterwards married,” etc.

Christopher North⁠[46] was laid under tribute to the extent of Blind Allan, which was extracted from the now forgotten Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life. In addition to these, there were a few, such as Allan Barclay, and The Broken Heart: a Tale of the Rebellion of 1745; The Ghost of my Uncle, and John Hetherington’s Dream; The Murder Hole, and The Strange Adventures of Tam Merrilees, by innominate writers, but the great bulk of romance was of alien manufacture. Many of the fairy tales which still delight and terrify young readers were in constant circulation. Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, and Sinbad the Sailor; Beauty and the Beast, Whittington and his Cat, and Jack the Giant Killer; Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe, and Baron Munchausen; Hero and Leander, The Siege of Troy, and The King and the Cobbler, may be cited as representative types of the romantic literature of the pedlar’s wallet. But, beyond the fact that they were extremely popular with readers north of Tweed, these are in no sense Scottish.