Few men have been more widely known on the Western Borders. of Scotland than Roger Quin, "the Tramp Poet," just buried in St. Michael's Churchyard, Dumfries. "Three years gao—in June.(he wrote last year), I became an inmate of this haven of refuge," the Dumfries Peorkouse, round whose dosed gate I played a2 a light hearted child nearly 75 years ago. 'The 'e' eum' brings a' Hame' and I find myself planted within less than a stone throw ci the spot where I first saw the light."
As a child, on Sundays, he had loitered round St. Michael's tombs.
Robert Burns ie buried there.
Before Burns's eldest son was in ferred in the mausoleum vault of his father, Quin as a boy, was prevent at the preliminary exhumation, and the sexton for a moment pat the poet's skull into his hands, perhaps with some vague intuition that all Seats poetry had not died with the ploughman bard. Thereafter it sas Roger's boast that he had held his hand that shattered casket, whence had issued inspirational streams which flowed tincaga much his own poetry.
Quin's father trained him a clerk a railway, Then Zor many years he tramped about the South of Scotland, cheating Nature out of a living, as it seemed, an aimless lable, gangrel body, whose only fee for a night or two's lodging was hia tale and gossip; " recitation riven with real dramatic fre, or a written snatch of homely, humorous verse whose personal allusions geati"
his humble patrons. ife must Dave been nearly 60 years of age tofore two or three "more earnest poems of hic found sheik way into print, and the parish troubadour luttracted the attention of people who had never seen him, Hie poem "The Borderland" and sonnet "To a Skylark, singing shove Barnhill Poorhcuse" had such real and rave poetic staff in them that a few influential admirers set about his domestication. They ¢stablished him in a cottage on the Tweed at Yair. He was to retrieve poems under more congenial cir-nees than had produced his ind in @ year br so publish is, however, hard to take 8 out of an old tree, Rog with a roof of his own above his inspired to poetry than when dependent on a cave in Galloway or the Hotel of the Beautiful Star. Time passed; the material for his book had finally be extorted from him; it was published at the expense of an impetuous Glasgow gentleman; unedited, indiscriminately, with all its imperfections. A more discriminate selection of Quin's work was published years afterwards, but the volume from Yair did his re-ya tation irreparable harm, and made plain that his time' for lofty lights was over.
There are at least half-aedezen poems of his which should be in every. modern Scots place in the that other, ardent Borderer, John han. For over 20 years roath of Crectown, where he spent Jong periods among owls, ravens, d rats, and making shift at times ona diet of chell-fish, His cave life figured much in his' conyers: though of itself it produced no poetry; that was to come from walks in Yarrows and star-bright nights by St. Mary's Loch and Beachcomber of the Clyde suaitad with the Sonny Booth Sees, Beachcombers at¢ naturally
buf not 25 miles from Glasgow there it a miniature colony of men and youths who live along the ores of the, Clyde in approved the favourite living-out grounds of these modern squatters. This mode of living is a direct sequel of the' late war, for, before that a very'
w did live on the shores of the Clyde, it is now mainly through unemployment that the numbers are increasing.
The advantages of this carefree life are obvious. Living as, they do below the winter tide mark— which is Tom Tiddler's ground—they can erect shelters and live unhampered by such mundane things as rents, rates and taxes. The river is a good friend to the beachcombers, and augments their supply of household necessities. Driftwood and charcoal can easily be gathered at low tide, and also two varlet of shellfish' named for some unknown reason, "'clappy-doos" and aches." Fish, too, vary. -the menu, the usual' catch being flounders and saith, with ceeasional: Lit-bits like cod and' mackerel. Some the beachcombers seem easy to please, AN sorts. of habitations dotted along the shore; some picturesque and stable, others nondo-ceipt, and others' absurdly grotesque. it bearheombing ence, bell bivouacs are indeed, in summer time the shore has the spreerance of a small military encampment.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.