ealous and respectable antiquary and cultivator of historical
literature, Joseph Train is likewise worthy of a niche in the temple of
Scottish minstrelsy. His ancestors were for several generations
land-stewards on the estate of Gilmilnscroft, in the parish of Sorn, and
county of Ayr, where he was born on the 6th November 1779. When he was
eight years old, his parents removed to Ayr, where, after a short
attendance at school, he was apprenticed to a mechanical occupation. His
leisure hours were sedulously devoted to reading and mental improvement.
In 1799, he was balloted for the Ayrshire Militia; in which he served
for three years till the regiment was disbanded on the peace of Amiens.
When he was stationed at Inverness, he had commissioned through a
bookseller a copy of Currie's edition of the "Works of Burns," then sold
at three half-guineas, and this circumstance becoming incidentally known
to the Colonel of the regiment, Sir David Hunter Blair, he caused the
copy to be elegantly bound and delivered free of expense. Much pleased
with his intelligence and attainments, Sir David, on the disembodiment
of the regiment, actively sought his preferment; he procured him an
agency at Ayr for the important manufacturing house of Finlay and Co.,
Glasgow, and in 1808, secured him an appointment in the Excise. In 1810,
Train was sometime placed on service as a supernumerary in Perthshire;
he was in the year following settled as an excise officer at Largs,
from which place in 1813 he was transferred to Newton Stewart. The
latter location, from the numerous objects of interest which were
presented in the surrounding district, was highly suitable for his
inclinations and pursuits. Recovering many curious legends, he embodied
some of them in metrical tales, which, along with a few lyrical pieces,
he published in 1814, in a thin octavo volume,[114] under the title of
"Strains of the Mountain Muse." While the sheets were passing through
the press, some of them were accidentally seen by Sir Walter Scott, who,
warmly approving of the author's tastes, procured his address, and
communicated his desire to become a subscriber for the volume.

Gratified by the attention of Sir Walter, Mr Train transmitted for his
consideration several curious Galloway traditions, which he had
recovered. These Sir Walter politely acknowledged, and begged the favour
of his endeavouring to procure for him some account of the present
condition of Turnberry Castle