e_,
with several of Drummond's and Stirling's poems, were circulated in this
way, thus becoming familiarly known in rural districts where the volumes
of these authors never could have penetrated. On these _broadsides_,
then, it must have been that the dormant poetical gifts of the youthful
Ramsay were fed, and in after years he showed his liking for this form
of publication by issuing his own earlier poems in the same way.

CHAPTER II

HIS APPRENTICESHIP; A BURGESS OF THE TOWN--1701-7

As much, perhaps, to obtain release from employment so laborious as that
on the farm, as from a desire to be independent, young Ramsay consented
to his stepfather's proposal that he should be apprenticed to a wigmaker
in Edinburgh.

It has been urged, in proof of Crichton's harshness to his stepson, that
Ramsay, after he left Leadhills in 1700, never seems to have had any
further intercourse with them. Not so much as a chance reference in a
letter reveals that he ever had any future dealings with the Crichton
family. But this is not to be wondered at. The fact of the death of his
mother in 1700 does not wholly explain the matter, I admit. But we need
only recall the exclusive character previously attributed to the people
of Leadhills, their antipathy to any intrusion upon them by strangers of
any kind, to understand the case. They were a type of Scottish Essenes,
a close community, akin to the fisher-communities of Newhaven and
Fisherrow, with their distinctive customs, traditions, and prejudices.
For a gay young Edinburgh spark such as Ramsay, fond of fine clothes,
with a strong spice of vanity and egotism in his nature, to sojourn
amongst the _dour_, stolid, phlegmatic miners, would have been to foster
the development of asperities on both sides, calculated to break off all
further intercourse. Met they may have, and parted on the terms we
surmise, but of such meeting no hint was ever dropped, and a veil of
separation drops between the household at Crawfordmuir and the young
Jacob who thus was sent forth, from the shadow of what was to him the
paternal roof, to war with the world at his own charges. That David
Crichton had done his duty nobly by the lad was evident; but other
children were shooting up to youth's estate, and when the elder bird was
full fledged, it must e'en take its flight from the parent nest to make
room for others.

There is another view of the case not so creditable to the future poet,
but still within