Roddy Lumsden Reviews: Folk in Print

Again and again, reading a new book on the heyday of Scottish chapbooks, I was struck by how little has changed in two hundred years – prurient interest in the criminal classes, slurs on ill-clad womenfolk, jibes at mistrusted professions like politicians and the clergy – all correct and present in both the 18^th century chapbook and in today's tabloid!

Folk in Print – Scotland's Chapbook Heritage 1750-1850 (John Donald £25) is a strong candidate for Scottish book of the year – brilliantly researched, solidly introduced and laced with quirky, interesting commentary; without compromise, it eschews all the failings which can sometimes make social history books stuffy. If the dates in the title make it seem a partial history, it should be said that this is the era in which chapbooks were most commonly snapped up and read. Or, I should say, read from and sung from – much of their appeal lay in communal reading and singing of the yarns, gossip and songs they contained. Chaps containing the latest comic songs were as sought after as the latest hit pop singles were in later times.

In their lengthy, fascinating introduction, editors Ted Cowan and Mike Paterson offer a list of the most common contents of the era's chapbooks which is worth quoting: “Chapbooks are sometimes loosely themed, but others are collations, with naïve romanticism, virulent jingoism, pastoral reveries, love-songs, temperance diatribes, clumsy humour, political satire, ribaldry, misogyny, indecency, comic drinking songs, folktales, superstition and the occult, and a body of vibrant Scots poetry and song...”

One theme missing from their list is confessions. This was a popular chap genre – with miscreants and felons often writing self-aggrandising, or forgiveness-seeking tracts while in prison or exile. One of the more popular ones was supposedly written by William Forbes, an Aberdeen schoolmaster who had got a girl pregnant, joined the army to skip town, and supposedly wrote his plea in the form of a cautionary song, to aid his case should the local authorities catch up with him.

One of the longer and most intriguing pieces reprinted in Folk in Print (the editors having trawled through a huge archive for the most interesting and representative material) is the alleged memoir of David Haggart, a young Edinburgh man who was a habitual swindler and pickpocket and who was executed for the murder of an officer during a jailbreak in Dumfries. It appears to be genuine and was a hugely popular read in the early 1820s and the subject of a furious, disapproving review in The Scots Magazine.

Folk in Print is divided into several section covering subjects such as work, folklore, soldiers, the sea and so on. Two large sections of the book are given over to sex ('Houghmagandie') and 'Courtship and Wedded Bliss'. The former section shows that the double entendre was alive and well, long before George Formby ditties or Carry On films. Some of the specific quips are now hard to grasp – the once popular ribald song 'Kattie's Answer to Wabster Jock' is so dependent on knowledge of weaving terms for its smutty humour that it would be lost on us today.

This is also true of another of my favourite pieces in the book, The History of Haverel Wives, which was popular in the 1780s, but seems to belong to an earlier time, with its Chaucer-like yarns told by two ancient ladies at their spinning wheels. In fact, many chapbooks contained material which was endlessly recycled or brought up to date. Anyone who recalls the sentimental country song Deck of Cards might be surprised to find the same story (a pack of cards used not for gambling but as a device for biblical study for a non-reader – a likely story!) here in a chapbook version which probably dates back further centuries before.

The chapman himself was a fascinating figure – luckily, one of the most popular chaps was on the life of the chapman, a rogue figure who would hawk his books – the smaller the better, for packing purposes – all over the country. Chaps were often as near to newspapers as distant communities could have in the 1700s. Folk in Print is an excellent volume, very highly recommended.