“I came to Aberdeen, a country lad of sixteen with a cockit bonnet and…” — Charles Murray | V2Melody

“I came to Aberdeen, a country lad of sixteen with a cockit bonnet and, because it was winter, a big gravit.”

The exile's first city self-portrait, still wearing the country mark · Later recollection of arriving as an apprentice

About Charles Murray

Charles Murray

27 September 1864–12 April 1941

In the pantheon of Scottish literature, certain voices emerge from the countryside with such authenticity and power that they transcend their regional origins to speak to universal human experiences. Charles Murray (1864-1941) stands as one such figure—a poet whose verses, steeped in the dialect and landscape of…

More by Charles Murray

Poems by Charles Murray

More remarks by Charles Murray

“The difficulty of translating my thoughts was a real trouble.”

A Scots speaker's first collision with official English · Recollection of speaking to his chief in Aberdeen

“I was raised upon Ramsay, Fergusson, and Burns, and the old Scots, and all my life as a boy I was taught to look out for quaint phrases, out of the way expressions, and to study and delight in the old, original characters of the countryside.”

How a Doric childhood and the Scots canon trained his ear for speech and character · Recollection, 1912

“Two soldiers throwing Shakespearian quotations at each other from opposite ends of the cabin; a cockney sailor struggling into a clean shirt, quite a rare occurrence with him.”

A surveyor's comic eye for shipboard types before exile began in earnest · Voyage chronicle, outward passage to South Africa