Graham, DOUGAL, the literary bellman of Glasgow, was born in the village of Raploch, near Stirling, about 1724. He was a hunchback, and from an early age laboured irregularly as a farm-servant. He followed Prince Charlie's army on its southern march to Derby, apparently as a kind of sutler, and made his way home soon after the disaster at Culloden. Five months later he had his metrical narrative ready, which, grotesque and pitiful doggerel as it is, has no mean value as a record of the fresh observations of an honest and not unintelligent eye-witness. Soon after this he took up his abode in Glasgow, where his ready wit soon made him something of a public character, but he still plied his calling as a prosperous chapman or pedlar. Here also he made himself the poetical chronicler of passing events, and wrote many of the chap-books which he sold, and which quickly became extraordinarily popular. He was appointed 'skellat' bellman (for ordinary announcements) of the city, not earlier than 1770; but there is no mention of his name in the town-council records. He died 20th July 1779. Many of his rambling ballads and prose chap-books were anonymous, and are now impossible to trace; of the former the best known are John Hielandman's Remarks on Glasgow and Turnimspike. His numerous prose chap-books are both humorous and good-humoured, but never touch the region of the literary, and are moreover disguised by a constant coarseness and by occasional grossness of obscenity which admit of no extenuation.
The most popular were The Whole Proceedings of Jockey and Maggy, Paddy from Cork, Lothian Tom, The History of John Cheap the Chapman, the Comical and Witty Jokes of John Falkirk the Merry Piper, Leper the Tailor, John Falkirk's Cariches, Comical History of Simple John and his Twelve Misfortunes, and George Buchanan. Both Scott and Motherwell meant to have edited some of Dougal Graham's work. This was finally done in a complete edition in two handsome volumes by George MacGregor (Glasgow, 1883).