Roamin’ in the gloamin’ (1928)

ROAMIN' IN THE GLOAMIN' 107 o' Killiecrankie." And I was getting as much as two guineas for my services in the larger towns and cities — fairly on the highway to fame and fortune, I proudly assured myself. No matter how much money I earned Nance was a rare one to "save it up" and, to be candid, I think I gave her encouragement in this laudable enterprise! The result was that by the time spring came round and the dull season for concerts arrived we found ourselves with a bank-book and over £150 to our credit. In fact we went and had a full week's holiday at Rothesay — the first full week we had ever had in our lives together. Just to break the monotony I accepted an engagement while there — and earned the cost of the week's jaunt ! Mackenzie Murdoch and I had several meetings during the early summer and we planned out our first tour. We thought it expedient to stick to the West Country where, we told ourselves, we were best known and where we would be sure to pick up a lot of money. Joyfully we looked forward to the adventure. We were on a dead cert, Mac told me and I told Mac; it was going to be money for nothing. We counted what "Capacity" the halls would hold and calculated the profits down to a shilling or two! "Easy Jack," as my American friends would say ! Had we foreseen what our actual experience was going to be we would never have "crawn sae crouse" to use an old Scottish phrase meaning that pride goeth before a fall. When the first proofs of the Lauder-Murdoch Concert Party bill came from the printers we stood admiring them for hours at a time and we even got an old woman to slip one into her window in the Garscube Road, Glasgow, just to see how it looked in passing! Murdoch and I both agreed that it was a "clinker" and that it would pull the people into the local halls until the police would "summons" us for overcrowding. With piles of these same bills Murdoch and I set out together to cover the towns embraced in the first week of