Allan Ramsay. [A biography.] - National Library of Scotland

CHAPTER II
HIS apprenticeship; a burgess of the town
— I70I-7
As much, perhaps, to obtain release from employment
so laborious as that on the farm, as from a desire to be
independent, young Ramsay consented to his stepfather's
proposal that he should be apprenticed to a wigmaker
in Edinburgh.
It has been urged, in proof of Crichton's harshness
to his stepson, that Ramsay, after he left Leadhills in
1700, never seems to have had any further intercourse
with them. Not so much as a chance reference in a
letter reveals that he ever had any future dealings with
the Crichton family. But this is not to be wondered
at. The fact of the death of his mother in 1700 does
not wholly explain the matter, I admit. But we need
only recall the exclusive character previously attributed
to the people of Leadhills, their antipathy to any in-
trusion upon them by strangers of any kind, to under-
stand the case. They were a type of Scottish Essenes,
a close community, akin to the fisher-communities of
Newhaven and Fisherrow, with their distinctive customs,
traditions, and prejudices. For a gay young Edinburgh
spark such as Ramsay, fond of fine clothes, with a strong
spice of vanity and egotism in his nature, to sojourn