Transcribed from the 1876 edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org. Many thanks to Bradford Local Studies for providing the copy from which this transcription was made. Also to Keighley Local Studies for supplying the title page (the Bradford copy lacks the title page).
RANDOM RHYMES
AND
RAMBLES.
—o—
By Bill o’th Hoylus End.
—o—
Sae I’ve begun to scrawl, but whether
In rhyme or prose, or baith thegither,
Or some hotch-potch that’s rightly neither,
Let time mak proof;
But shall I scribble down some blether
Just clean aff-loof.I am nae poet, in a sense,
But just a rhymer, like, by chance,
And hae to learning nae pretence.
Yet, what the matter?
Whene’er my muse does on me glance,
I jingle at her.Burns.
—o—
KEIGHLEY:
A. APPLEYARD, PRINTER, CHURCH GREEN.
1876.
Dedicated to
James Wright,
Local Musician and Composer,
North Beck Mills,
Keighley,
By the Author.
Dec. 25th, 1876.
INTRODUCTION.
The RANDOM RHYMES and RAMBLES, in verse and prose, are but the leisure musings of the uneducated, and cannot be expected to come up to anything like the standard of even poetry; yet, when the fact is known that the Author, like his Works, are rough and ready, without the slightest notion of either Parnassus or the Nines, at least give him credit for what they are worth.
WILLIAM WRIGHT.