Scarce first edition of this charming collection of poems by Robert Skimming, dedicated to the Glasgow lawyer, Alexander Strathern. The songs and poems include ‘On J-M-S Caldwell's emigration to America’, ‘Watty’s Ditty’, ‘The Lass of Woodside Lone’ and ‘Elegy on the death of a favourite cat’: ‘She was nae brood o’ thievish cats, That rin and slake ‘mang bowls and pats, But aye content wi’ what she gat, Be’t brose or bread, Till Death on her his venom spat; Puir Pussie’s dead’ (p. 19) ‘Robert Skimming was boom in Stewarton on 29th April, 1812. His father was a weaver. Robert himself was bred to that trade under his father. He came to Paisley from Stewarton in 1827, and began to rhyme about that time. His first pieces of poetry appeared in the Penny Songster, published in Paisley in 1839. He however published himself a collection of his poetry, of thirty-six pages, in 1841, entitled Lays of Leisure Hours. And in 1851 he published another volume of poetry of sixty-four pages, containing some of the pieces in the previous volume. After being forty years in Paisley, he went to Rothesay, and received the appointment of Janitor to the Working Men's Institute. He was on the platform on Gleniffer Braes at the Centenary of Tannnahill on 3rd June, 1874. Robert Skimming died at Rothesay in 1882’. [Robert Brown Paisley Poets Paisley, 1889]