When the King Comes to Galloway

Published once in a magazine in 1898, never collected, and long overlooked, “The Goodman of Ballangiech” is one of S.R. Crockett’s most accomplished short fictions. This close reading makes the case for its reconsideration. Working simultaneously as historical romance, political comedy, social commentary, and dialect literature, the story deploys a disguised King of Scotland against the landscape and people of Galloway to expose, with precise irony, the gap between social rank and moral worth. The court favourite is the villain. The shepherd and his sharp-tongued wife are the story’s true exemplars. The outlaws are desperate rather than wicked — created, and destroyed, by the King’s own justice.

Crockett draws on real Galloway family names, including the Macmillans of Glenhead, and on the full resources of Scots dialect, including a celebrated footnote on the pronunciation of Esconquehan that reveals a writer enormously proud of his native place. This article argues that those who have claimed Crockett used Scots improperly — or not at all — have simply not read carefully enough.

Now available in full in the S.R. Crockett Online Museum.

An article from the Reading Room of the S.R. Crockett Online Museum.