CHAPTER XVI
“HAWKIE”—A GLASGOW STREET CHARACTER
The streets and lanes, highways and byeways, of our large cities form platforms on which many a quaint and curious character appears and cuts capers to draw forth the surplus coppers of the impressionable portion of the lieges. Here it is a fiddler—there it is a ballad singer—here a clog-dancer—there a spouter—now a mute, hungry-looking soul, whose rags appeal to the crowd with a thousand tongues—anon one who rends the air with a manufactured tale of woe. But amongst all the tatterdemalion class of public entertainers, street beggars, etc.—and their name is legion—there has not perhaps appeared within the memory of living men one who was better known whilst he lived, and whose memory is likely to remain longer green, than the animated bundle of rags and bones known amongst men by the self-created pseudonym which stands at the head of this paper. Verily, who has not heard of Hawkie; and where in broad Scotland have not his jibes and jests, his flashes of wit and humour, not been told and retold? Every book of Scottish humorous anecdotes of any account, from The Laird o’ Logan downwards, contains specimens of his smart repartee, biting sarcasm, and reckless wit, as its choicest bits; and a brief biographical sketch, interspersed with the most telling of the tellable witticisms of this king of Scottish beggars, will be read with interest, if not with profit. His real name was William Cameron, and he was born at a place called Plean, in the parish of St. Ninians, in Stirlingshire, where his maternal forbears had been residenters for generations unknown. His mother’s name was Paterson. His father, Donald Cameron, was a native of Braemar, and claimed distant relationship to the Camerons of Lochiel. At the time of our subject’s birth, he (the father) was engaged as a mashman at a distillery in the neighbourhood of Plean. His parents were very poor, and during the harvest season his mother went forth to the shearing, leaving William in charge of a girl about six years of age. Whilst thus imperfectly nursed and attended he caught damage to his right leg, so serious that it left him a cripple for life. At the age of four he was sent to school. His teacher, he said, was an old, decrepit man, who had tried to be a nailer, but at that employment he could not earn his bread. He then attempted to teach a few children, for which undertaking he was quite unfit. Writing and arithmetic were to him secrets dark as death, and as for English, he was short-sighted, and a word of more than two or three syllables was either passed over, or it got a term of his own making. At this school he continued four years, but was not four months advanced in learning, although, he said, he was as far advanced as his teacher. He next went to a school at a place called Milton, about a mile distant, where he racked his memory learning psalms, chapters of the Bible, and the catechisms, till he could begin at the Song of Solomon, and by heart go on to the end of Malachi. At the age of twelve he was bound apprentice to a tailor in Stirling, and in the course of his Autobiography, which, at the request of the late David Robertson, of Whistle Binkie fame, Hawkie wrote whilst he was a winter inmate of the Glasgow Hospital, between the years 1840-1850, he gives the following graphic account of this engagement:—
“The first glisk that I got o’ this slubberdegullion o’ a maister gied me the heartscad at him. Quo’ I to mysel’, bin’ me as ye like, I’ll no rowt lang in your tether, I’se warrant ye. We’re no likely, for a’ that I can see, to rot twa door-cheeks thegither, and if a’ reports were to be believed, better at padding the inside o’ the pouch-lids than handlin’ the goose. The first job that he gied me was to mak’ a holder (needle-cushion) to mysel’, and to it I set. I threaded the best blunt, and waxed the twist till it was like to stick in the passage. I stour’d awa’, throwing my needle-arm weel out, so that my next neighbour was obliged to hirsel’ awa’ frae me to keep out o’ harm’s way. I stitch’d it, back-stitch’d it, cross-stitch’d it, and then fell’d and plaed it wi’ black, blue, and red, grey, green, and yellow, till the ae colour fairly kill’d the ither. My answer to every advice was, I kent what I was doin’, did I never see my mither makin’ a hussey? By the time I had gi’en my holder the last stitch, my maister hinted that it wasna likely that I wad e’er mak’ saut to my kail sowthering claith thegither, and that though the shears were run through every stitch o’ the indenture it wadna break his heart. Thinks I to mysel’, there’s a pair o’ us, as the coo said to the cuddie, and my crutch can do the job as weel as your clippers, so I laid the whip to my stilt, and took the road hame.”
William was again sent to school, his anxious parents still thinking that his habits would settle down, and that he might be fitted for acting as a dominie in some country district. There was, however, no “settlement” in his nature, and he broke away from the dominie as abruptly as he had previously done from the tailor. Wandering to Glasgow he joined a journeyman tailor’s house-of-call, then in the Pipe Close, High Street, and soon found employment. At this time, walking in Glasgow Green in company with a brother tradesman one Sabbath morning, they came across a field preacher holding forth to a large audience, “while the lining of his hat spoke more for the feelings of his hearers than himself.”
“I could beat him myself,” said Cameron.
The remark was carried to the workshop by his companion, and next day—
“You think you could beat the preacher,” said one of the tailors, addressing our subject.
“And so I could,” retorted Cameron, not expecting the thing would be continued further.
On Saturday night, however, he fell in with some tailors, and the “preaching” was again the subject of remark. Cameron still maintained that he could beat him, and it was agreed that he should be put to the test on the following day. About forty or fifty of the principal journeymen in the city accordingly assembled next day in the house-of-call, when the unfledged orator was dressed in a borrowed suit of “blacks,” in order to try his mettle in the preaching art. At about twelve o’clock they set out, and Westmuir, on the road leading to Airdrie, was selected as the scene of action.