The Collected Writings of Dougal Graham, "Skellat" Bellman of Glasgow, Vol.…

In 18th century Glasgow, the streets had a voice, and that voice belonged to Dougal Graham. Known as the 'Skellat' Bellman, Graham walked the city with his bell, crying out news, proclamations, and eventually writing them down in verse that made the powerful wince and the common people laugh until they wept. This collection gathers his surviving works: broadsides, satirical ballads, comic narratives, and loose sheets that once fluttered from hands throughout the city. These are not the writings of a nobleman documenting high society, but the raw, irreverent voice of the streets themselves, preserved now as a remarkable window into Scottish popular culture before industrialization changed everything. Graham wrote about the courts, the kirk, the drunkards, the merchants, the fashions, and the follies of his age with a wit that still bites. George MacGregor's late 19th century editing preserves what remains of this singular figure, the closest thing the period had to a street journalist. For anyone curious about how ordinary people saw their world, before historians sanitized it for posterity, Graham is indispensable.