John Cheap, the Chapman's Library: Comic and Humorous, Religious and Scriptural The Scottish Chap Literature of Last Century, Classified (Complete‪)‬

A name is very often only a definition of a thing in one of its aspects—generally the most obvious to ordinary observation, though not always the most comprehensive or characteristic. The name Chap-book is an example of names of this class, and owes its origin to the fact that the tracts which we now recognise by it were first—and, indeed, during the whole time of their circulation as popular literature—sold by chapmen, or pedlars. With the extinction of these itinerants, the popular circulation of chap-books has ceased; and it seemed as if—from the flimsy nature of their get-up—this form of literature was about to vanish, like the compositions of our earliest minstrels, when a taste for collecting specimens sprung up among the curious in literature. To meet the demand for collections which the spread of this taste originated, the present issue has been projected.

What purpose, it may be asked, does their preservation serve? Of no class might this be more properly inquired than of the Religious, which may be supposed to admit of less scope for originality of treatment than any other; yet an examination of a few of the tracts under this head soon shows us the popular creed in forms of thought and illustration quite unexpected, and with a definiteness and force the originality of which cannot be mistaken. The same character, of course, applies in a more marked degree to classes where the composer was less influenced by prepossessed ideas, and where his only boundaries were the limits of his own imagination, and the deference which he was careful to pay to the prejudices of his readers.

That these carelessly got-up publications constituted the popular literature of the peasantry and a large part of the urban population of Scotland for about half a century, is a fact which no student of our recent history will wisely ignore. They possess one advantage over the sensational reading of the present day penny journals, in that they represent the opinions and manners of those who read them, and, consequently, have a truthfulness and reality of which their London-manufactured substitutes are entirely destitute. The Chap-book is a mirror of rural opinions and manners; the Penny Sensational is only evidence of a vitiated popular taste.

These remarks are chiefly applicable to the chap-books of Scottish production, which, along with those adopted from foreign sources, but so naturalized as to language and characters as to pass for productions of home growth—in reference to the purposes of this issue—are by far the most important. Keeping this purpose in view, there is no call here to apologise for their coarseness and indelicacy, for which, on the score of taste and morals, from a popular point of view, there is no defence; but their real value to us consists in their being true delineations of the manners and ways of thinking of low rural life, whose grossness was rather the result of the buoyancy of animal vigour than of the indulgence of vicious passions.

The English ones are very varied in character, and have been chosen with considerable judgment, to suit the taste and understanding of those for whom they were selected. Their circulation in Scotland has been so large that we are justified in including them in a collection of Scottish peasant literature.

The original Scottish chap-books attributed to the pen of Dougal Graham are so decidedly superior, that a sketch of his life, containing all that is known of him, has been considered the most fitting introduction to the present issue. The earliest literary inquiry into his history was made by Motherwell, the poet, who contributed a sketch of him and his writings to the Paisley Magazine of January, 1829, based upon information derived from George Caldwell, bookseller, Paisley, who knew Dougal well, and was the chief publisher of his “penny histories.” Some further information regarding him, and corrections of mistakes in Motherwell’s article, are given in an appendix to the 1830 edition of M’Ure’s History of Glasgow, very possibly from the pen of M’Vean, its publisher, who was a collector of Dougal’s tracts. A more recent life of him—chiefly based on those already mentioned—forms chap. iii. of Scottish Chap-books, by John Fraser—a dissertation which brings into one view the gist of what has been written on this subject by Scott, Motherwell, Strang, Strathearn, and others.