Collection of Manuscript Poems by Richard Gall and Related Materials

1. Forty-seven poems by Gall (of which some unpublished), nearly all with corrections and variant readings, some present in several different copies, two in apparently unrecorded ephemeral printed editions. This includes four poems by Gall addressed to Burns or written in his memory. Other interesting poems by Gall include "Verses to the Author of Will an’ Jean" (i.e. Hector MacNeill); the song "Captain O’Kain", which was set to a tune by the Irish harpist Turlough O’Carolan (a favourite of Burns, it was also used to set his "Chevalier’s Lament"); and some "Stanzas on receiving an invitation to celebrate New Y. Day in a certain Bacchanalian Society": this was published in 1819 as "unfinished", but is dated at the foot here "Stirling Jan 18 1797", suggesting that it might have been thought of as complete. Finally, there are also ten poems not included in the post-humous publication of his poems in 1819, Poems and Songs: some juvenile pieces ("Ye Prentice Lads o’ the Courant" and "An Epigram on Inspector Sly Snake" addressed to John Beveridge, Printer, Courant Office), as well as an "Elegy on Tam Neill" (two drafts), and another "on James Livingstone, late town-piper of Haddington", which was published in the Herald in April 1795 and achieved great local fame. "The Puppy, a Poem, in an Epistle to a minor Son of Thespis" is present in both manuscript and in an apparently unrecorded separate printing, with manuscript corrections; dated September 1796 it refers to MacNeill’s Jamie and Bess which had been performed at the Theatre Royal in August with a prologue by Gall.

3. Twenty-eight autograph letters and poems in Scots dialect addressed to Gall from other authors, including (but not limited to): David Crawford (Four autograph verse letters, signed, dated March 1795 to January 1797, and an earlier poem (signed ‘D C’) dated 1788), George Galloway (two autograph verse letters, signed, dated Feb-May 1795, writing from military postings in the West of Scotland), Alexander Campbell (two autograph letters, signed, 1798), George Thomson (letter dated 9 October 1799 rejecting Gall’s poems for Select Scottish Airs as his needs had already been met by Burns), Archibald Steele ("Verses to the Memory of Mr. Richard Gall Poet"), Hector MacNeill (annotated proof of "When Discord first with Hate infuriate hurl’d" (1800), for publication in the Courant). Also includes a long anonymous "Address to Burns on the establishment of a class of agriculture at Edinburgh University".