CHAPTER II 



WIIvSON'S BARI.Y YEARS IN SCOTI^AND 



Alexander Wilson was born on the 6th of July, 

 1766. His birth-town, Paisley, in the shire of Ren- 

 frew, Scotland, is about seven miles to the west of 

 Glasgow. With the noise of its many looms and 

 the rush of its bustling trade there is little about 

 Paisley that is poetic; even the White Cart, of 

 which Burns sang as "rinning, rowin' to the sea," 

 is no longer white; soiled and defiled by the grimy 

 hand of commerce, it flows in a dark and turbid 

 stream. A century and a half ago it was perhaps 

 very little more poetic than it is to-day. Already 

 the looms were plying; already the spirit of com- 

 mercialism had taken Paisley in its grasp. Nor was 

 the lack of what is physically romantic made up for 

 by beautiful old traditions or quaint stories of the 

 past, with which so many parts of Scotland teem. 

 The royal name of Stuart, it is true, was anciently 

 linked with the annals of Paisley, and an air of ro- 

 mance and mystery still clung about the picturesque 

 walls of the antique abbey, but, to a poet's eye. 

 Paisley of the eighteenth century must have been, 

 comparatively speaking, as matter of fact and as 

 briskly businesslike as it is to-day. 



That part of Paisley in which Wilson was born, 

 known as the Seedhills, was, save for the white 

 gulls that sported above the Cart, equally unro- 

 mantic; as late as 1782 it is recorded as consisting 

 of only forty-five houses, in which there were eighty 



