John Younger 



The Shoemaker of St. Boswell's 



"BROTHERS of the angle" recognise no distinction of 

 rank. He who would be a king among them must be 

 " king of his own two hands," king in the good old 

 Carlylean sense of " cunning-man, knowing-man," the 

 sense in which I have used the word in these pages. 

 And a king of the craft assuredly was John Younger, 

 of St. Boswell's, albeit his throne was but a shoemaker's 

 bench. Socially he stuck to his last and never rose 

 above it. Intellectually he could claim equality with 

 the best who came to buy his famous fishing-boots or 

 learn from him the lore of fly-dressing. He had all 

 the fine, fierce, Scottish independence of John Knox> 

 with a kindliness and charity, a love of Nature and of 

 man, which the grim reformer never had. He had a 

 poet's soul and saw all things with a poet's eye. And 

 yet withal he had his full share of shrewd, Scottish 

 common sense, and as an expert, practical angler there 

 was none to equal him on the banks of bonnie Tweed. 

 To Englishmen his name is probably almost unknown ; 

 but among Scotsmen, and especially Scots anglers, his 

 fame was wide-spread you would find few, if you 



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