AN HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL ACCOUNT OF THE ISLE OF MAN, FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRESENT DATE; WITH A VIEW OF ITS ANCIENT LAWS, PECULIAR CUSTOMS, AND BY JOSEPH TRAIN, F.S. A. ScoT. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. DOUGLAS, ISLE OF MAN : PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY MARY A. QUIGGIN, NORTH QUAY; MDCCCXLV. BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF THE THE Author of the present History, though a poet of no inconsiderable merit, is best known to the world by his correspondence with Sir Walter Scott, who greatly valued the assistance derived from his assiduous researches. In the works of Sir Walter, honourable mention is frequently made of Mr. Train, in reference to the many literary and antiquarian favours received from him; and Mr. Lockhart, in his Life of Scott, fails not to acknowledge the services rendered in terms due to their importance. In the Statistical Account of Galloway, recently published, many im. portant antiquarian communications from the pen of Mr. Train, are kindly acknowledged, either by the ministers of the respective parishes by whom they were received, or by John Gordon, Esq., the talented secretary of the University of Edinburgh, and editor of the New Statistical Account of Scotland. Mr. Train also contributed largely to the History of Galloway, a work in two volumes, by the Reverend William M'Kenzie ; but it remains for the biographer of Mr. Train to elevate him still more prominently in the eye of the public, as one whose unostentatious labours have been chiefly expended in promoting the undertakings of others. Mr. Train's ancestors were, for several ages, land stewards consecutively on the estate of Gilmilnscroft, in the parish of Sorn, in Ayrshire, where he was born 6th November, 1779. Eight years afterwards, he removed Nwith his parents to the county town, where, after completing his limited ✩ attendance at school, he was apprenticed to a mechanical occupation, by no means congenial to the feelings of a youth of his lively imagination, or accordant with that taste for literature which he had acquired at an early age. Every hour he could spare from toil was sedulously devoted to mental improvement; and before he had attained the years of manhood, he possessed a degree of information vastly superior to his position in society. Collated and revised by William Train, chiefly from The Contemporaries of Burns and the more Recent Poets of Ayrshire, with Selections from their Works.-Edinburgh, 1840, 1 vol. By permission of Mr. Hugh Paton, the proprietor and publisher of that highly octavo. interesting work. |