As the author of the following poem is unable (due to having been hanged in
Edinburgh in 1821 shortly after writing it) to submit it himself, I venture
to do so on his behalf.   The text is taken from +The Life of David Haggart,
Written by Himself+, and does not differ substantially from the manuscript
version of the poem (which can be found bound up, together with the
phrenologist George Combe's comments on Sinfu' Davey's cranial bumps) in the
British Library copy formerly in the possession of Haggart's defence
solicitor, Lord Cockburn, whose attestation to the authenticity of the text
I append after the poem.

            Robin Hamilton (for the Switcher)

POEM - Life (1821), pages 149-150

Able and willing you will me find,
Though bound in chains, still free in mind;
For with these things I'll ne'er be grieved,
Although of freedom I'm bereaved.

In this vain world there is no rest,
And life is but a span at best;
The rich, the poor, the old, the young,
Shall all lie low before it's long.

I am a rogue, I don't deny,
But never lived by treachery
And to rob a poor man, I disown,
But them that are of high renown.

Now, for the crime that I'm condemn'd,
The same I never did intend;
Only my liberty to take
As I thought my life did lie at stake.

My life, by perjury, was sworn away,
I'll say that till my dieing day.
Oh, treacherous S[impson], you did me betray,
For all I wanted was liberty.

No malice in my heart is found,
To any man above the ground.
Now all good people that speak of me,
You may say I died for my liberty.

Although in chains you see me fast,
No frown upon my friend you'll cast,
For my relations, were not to blame
And I brought my parents to grief and shame.

Now all you ramblers, in mourning go,
For the Prince of Ramblers is lying low;
And all you maidens, who love the game,
Put on your mourning veils again.

And all you powers of music chaunt,
To the memory of my dying rant --
A song of melancholy sing,
Till you make the very rafters ring.

Farewell relations, and friends also,
The time is nigh that I must go;
As for foes, I have but one,
But to the same I've done no wrong.

        DAVID HAGGART


                        Lord Cockburn writes:

This youngster was my client when he was tried & convicted. -- He was a
great villain. - His life is almost all lies; & its chief curiosity consists
in the strange spirit of lying, the indulgence of which formed his chief
pleasure to the very last.

            The manuscript poem & picture of himself (bound up at the end of
the life) were truly composed & written by him.--

            Being an eminent miscreant, the Phrenologists got hold of him, &
made the notorious facts of his character into evidences of the truth of
their system - He affected some decent piety just before he was hanged, &
therefore the Saints took up his memory, and wrote monodies on him.  His
piety & the composition of the lies in this book broke out at the same
time.-

                         Ld. C