Peter Buchan, 1790-1854

Peter Buchan Peter Buchan was born in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, on 4 August 1790. He began life as a jobbing printer and tradesman but later devoted himself mainly to the collection of old songs and ballads of the north of Scotland, and the printing and publishing of these, together with verses, tracts, and other works of his own. His main claim to fame rests on his Gleanings of Scotch, English, and Irish scarce old ballads (1825) and Ancient Ballads and songs of the north of Scotland, hitherto unpublished (1828).

He married Margaret Mathew (d 1860) in 1813, by whom he had 10 children: Patrick, John, Charles Forbes, David Stuart, James, Janet, Margaret Irvine, Gordon (a daughter), Alexander Forbes, and William Gordon. Patrick shared his father's interest in Scottish balladry and folklore, and like Charles and David, also wrote poetry. Examples of their work are contained in this collection. Other relatives of Buchan frequently mentioned in the records listed here are his sister Anne, her husband Alexander Scott, and their children, William and David.

The family moved to Aberdeen in 1831, then south to Glasgow, in 1838, and in 1845 to a property which they named Buchanstown, near Dennyloanhead, Stirling. Buchan's various unsuccessful attempts to obtain employment in Edinburgh and London to supplement his literary career are well documented in this collection and elsewhere. He was eventually compelled to dispose of his property and manuscripts, after protracted litigation with his creditors, and retired in 1852 to live with one of his sons in Drumkerrin, Ireland. He died during a visit to London on 19 Sept 1854.

William Walker William Walker was born in Aberdeen in 1840. He began running errands for his father, one of the last handloom weavers in the city of Aberdeen and leader of the local Chartist movement, when he was 8 years old, but by 1860 had entered the service of the Equitable Loan Company, Aberdeen, in whose service he remained until retirement c 1912 - 1913. By dint of hard work and part time study at the Mechanics' Institute in the city, he rose, by 1909, to the position of managing director. In his retirement he devoted himself to his shared passions of book collecting, research and publishing works on Scottish ballads and local history. He also served on the committee of Aberdeen Public Library, and was for a time, editor of the magazine of the Aberdeen Buchan Association. His library, which excelled in song and ballad collections, Burnsiana, local history and literature, was bequeathed to the University of Aberdeen after his death in 1931, along with several manuscript collections. Some local history material, including a compilation of press cuttings and manuscripts of local interest collected by James Rettie, was also left to the Aberdeen Public Library. Throughout his life he had offered help and encouragement to many local writers, including James Ogg, William McKisseck, Thomas P. Nicoll and Alexander Gibson, testimony to which is acknowledged in their various works.

Walker is best known for The Bards of Bon-Accord (Aberdeen,1887), a landmark study and now standard text on the poets and poetry of Aberdeenshire from the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries. He was an authority on the life and work of Peter Buchan, the Peterhead ballad collector, and his other principal work, Peter Buchan and Other Papers on Scottish and English Ballads and Songs was published in Aberdeen in 1915. In 1890 he had entered into a series of correspondence on Buchan's work with Francis James Child, the American ballad collector, and author of English and Scottish Popular Ballads (orig. pub. 1857 - 1859; 2nd edn., 5 vols Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1882-98), offering guidance on local dialect words and points of historical and geographical information, pertinent to his work on Buchan's manuscripts. He also acted as an intermediary for Child in his enquiries to Gavin Greig (1856 - 1914), schoolmaster at Whitehill, New Deer, Aberdeenshire, who, from 1876 until his death, worked with James Bruce Duncan (1848 - 1917), minister of the United Free Church at Lynturk, Aberdeenshire, gathering and recording surviving songs of the ancient ballad tradition of the North East of Scotland. After Child's death, he continued this association, compiling an index for the 19th edition of Greig's Folk-Song of the North-East, 2 vols (Peterhead, Scrogie, 1909-14), and when Greig and Duncan died leaving their work unfinished, he added introductory notices to the texts of the ballads they had not been able to deal with, and prepared a report on the collection for the New Spalding Club. Greig and Duncan's manuscripts were subsequently deposited by him in Aberdeen University (GB 231 MS 0701 - 0790 and GB 231 MS 0998). They have been prepared for publication, in 8 volumes, by the School of Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh (1981-2002).

As well as his work on the Scottish ballad tradition, Walker was a keen local historian, and from 1886 until his death in 1931, published numerous pamphlets on wide-ranging topics of local history interest. Like The Bards of Bob-Accord, which had been published in newspaper articles prior to 1887, most of his pamphlets had first appeared in local periodicals and magazines such as Scottish Notes and Queries, The Aberdeen Book-lover and Brown's Bookstall.

For further details see Flora Ross, William Walker (1841 - 1931), in Aberdeen University Review, 39 (1961 - 1962), 317-322, ill., and obituary in the Press and Journal, 28 Dec 1931.

From the guide to the Papers of and relating to Peter Buchan (1790 - 1854), and his family, 1811 - 1915, (University of Aberdeen)