A Full, Particular and True Account of the Rebellion in the Years 1745-6 by Dougal Graham. The man, the myth and the modus operandi

Rorke, Mary Gordon (2017) A Full, Particular and True Account of the Rebellion in the Years 1745-6 by Dougal Graham. The man, the myth and the modus operandi. MLitt(R) thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Dougal Graham’s Full, Particular and True Account of the Rebellion in the Years 1745-46 is a ‘forgotten’ text of considerable historical and cultural significance. Between Christmas and Candlemas of 1745/1746 the West Central Lowlands experienced the presence of the Jacobite army, with those retreating from Derby reinforced by new recruits from the north east and French and Irish forces – about 80,000 in all. Quartered round Stirling in the depths of winter, this put considerable strain on local resources. With money and supplies from Glasgow, the rebels occupied Stirling, besieged the Castle, and fought off a British army at Falkirk, but then had to retreat north of the Forth, ultimately to face annihilation at the hands of the Duke of Cumberland. The Account was composed by an inhabitant of Stirlingshire and published in Glasgow six months after Culloden. It seems to be the earliest connected narrative of the 1745 Rebellion produced in Scotland.
The text shows clear evidence that the target audience was not a literary, or even necessarily literate elite, but the ‘meaner sort’ in the Glasgow hinterland, routinely supplied by chapmen with such cheap ‘sma’ books’. The Account reads almost like a special supplement for a 1746 tabloid. Unashamedly populist, it provides acceptably accurate information, entertainment, and a degree of sectarian triumphalism. It is journalistic, racy and fast moving with most of the editorial comment (in the form of supplementary poems) added at the end so as not to impede the action. The language is a somewhat archaic demotic Scots, written in the form of octosyllabic couplets, as used by Blind Harry and David Lyndsay, apparently the preferred reading matter of potential customers. This thesis will argue that since Dougal Graham’s Account can reasonably be regarded as reflecting the views of its projected clientele, the common people of the western Lowlands, it is scarcely feasible to achieve a full picture of Scotland in the aftermath of the rising without considering the text. It is therefore unfortunate that it was regarded as lost throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and ignored in the twentieth.
This thesis presents the first modern edition of Graham’s Account, in the form of a glossed and annotated transcript of the 1746 edition. The introductory essay considers myths about the author that developed in the subsequent century, and which are entirely at odds with a reading of the material. It looks at the way the book was promoted, both in contemporary advertising and in the prefatory material within the text, and goes on to consider the projected audience and potential customer base. Finally the circumstances surrounding the publication of the second edition are investigated, throwing further light on the situation in Scotland seven years after Culloden.

• Item Type: Thesis (MLitt(R))
• Qualification Level: Masters
• Keywords: Dougal Graham, Scottish chapbook literature, Jacobite Rebellion 1745, Eighteenth-century Scots language.
• Subjects: D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain; H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform; P Language and Literature > PR English literature
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > Scottish Literature
• Supervisor's Name: Carruthers, Professor Gerard and Pittock, Professor Murray
• Date of Award: 2017
• Depositing User: Mrs M .G. Rorke
• Unique ID: glathesis:2017-7945
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 27 Feb 2017 13:24
• Last Modified: 21 Apr 2017 07:41
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/7945