Author: MILNE, John
Biography:
MILNE, John (1791-1871: ancestry.co.uk)
One of five sons of William Milne, a seaman, and his wife Catherine (Campbell), he was born at Dunottar, Kincardineshire. (His birth year is sometimes given as 1792 but Milne’s memoir has 1791). When his father was lost at sea, Catherine was persuaded to send her sons to the Aberdeen “Poor Hospital” or workhouse where they received a rudimentary education but lived in miserable conditions. His mother died when he was still very young; although some biographical summaries claim that he was then brought up by his grandfather, a blacksmith, the memoir indicates that he remained at the Poor Hospital. In 1803 he was apprenticed to a shoemaker. After qualifying as a journeyman, he enlisted in 1809 with the local militia and in 1813 with the regular militia—a decision he almost immediately regretted. He was sent to Woolwich and finally succeeded in being discharged in 1814. He stayed briefly in London before returning to Aberdeen where he worked for the post office. He married Elspet Grant in 1816 and, after being treated unfairly by the postmaster, set up as an itinerant shoemaker in 1817. Eager to improve his education, he joined a debating society and spent any spare time in writing and reading. The family moved to Glenlivet in about 1820; Milne is called “the Glenlivet (or Glenlivat) poet.” His 8-page Song in Praise of the Highland Lads was issued in Aberdeen in 1826 and became well known for its account of a skirmish between whisky smugglers and the excise men or “preventatives.” (This poem has led to speculation that he was also a smuggler.) His memoir states that his 1831 The Widow and her Son (four cantos in ottava rima; second edition 1851) was followed in 1832 by a collection of prose pieces and verse which he struggled to have published; no trace of this book has been located but it may be the original for his Twelve Essays with Occasional Illustrations in Verse (Aberdeen, 1845). By 1835, he had a family of twelve to support and he rejoined the post office; much of his memoir is given over to an account of the post office and the duties of a letter carrier. Of his numerous children, only four seem to have survived him and Elspet died in 1865. Milne’s hands were crippled by attacks of erysipelas. He died at the home of one of his sons in Echt, Aberdeenshire. No trace has been found of another book listed on the title page of the 1851 edition: Cromlett, a Tale of the Last Century. (John Milne, “Autobiography” in The Widow and her Son, 2nd edn [1851]; Elgin Courant 3 Feb 1871; David Herschel Edwards, One Hundred Modern Scottish Poets [1881]; ancestry.co.uk 10 July 2020)