Erchie, My Droll Friend

by Neil Munro, Brian D. Osborne (Editor), Ronald Armstrong (Editor)

A worthy successor to the best-selling Para Handy. One hundred years after he first appeared in print, Erchie brilliantly displays Munro's gift for humour and characterization as well as providing a marvellous insight into the Scotland of the time. Erchie MacPherson, Glasgow waiter and Kirk beadle, first appeared in the Glasgow Evening News in February 1902 - nearly three years before the appearance of the better-known Para Handy series.

The Erchie stories were an instant success. In 1993 Brian Osborne and Ronald Armstrong produced for Birlinn an edition of the Erchie stories and included 52 stories that had appeared in the News between 1910 and 1926. None of them had ever previously appeared in book form. Recent research by them in the files of the News has produced a further 61 stories, new to book form, which were originally published in 1902-1904 and in 1908-1909. The total Erchie collection is thus an amazing 142 stories, 113 of which never appeared in book form in Munro's lifetime.

Throughout the collection Munro uses Erchie, his wife, Jinnet, and his friend Duffy the coal merchant, three pawky Glasgow characters, to comment on contemporary politics, stories in the news, fashions, sport, and any aspect of daily life that comes under their notice. The range is bewildering - the race for the North Pole, Edward VII's Coronation, the Olympic Games, flying machines, temperance, Harry Lauder, Robert Burns, tipping, the Fair holidays and Andrew Carnegie are just some of the topics dealt with in the latest batch of stories unearthed from the archive.

625 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1904

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.

Neil Munro was a Scottish journalist, newspaper editor, author and literary critic. He was born in Inveraray and worked as a journalist on various newspapers.

He was basically a serious writer, but is now mainly known for his humorous short stories, originally written under the pen name of Hugh Foulis. (It seems that he was not making a serious attempt to disguise his identity, but wanted to keep his serious and humorous writings separate.) The best known were about the fictional Clyde puffer the Vital Spark and her captain Para Handy, but they also included stories about the waiter and kirk beadle Erchie MacPherson, and the travelling drapery salesman Jimmy Swan.

Reviews

[Chrystal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not half as good as the Para Handy stories which had both hilarious characters in hilarious situations. The Erchie stories were written earlier; Munro apparently still cutting his teeth with the genre. These aren't so much stories as rambling monologues in very thick Scots dialect. I found only two good stories, the funeral and the wedding, which have actual dialogue between characters.

[Graeme · Rating 4 out of 5]

Neil Munro's Erchie MacPherson stories didn't have as wide an appeal as his tales of Para Handy, perhaps because the dialogues are in Glaswegian vernacular Scots. However, as a body of wry satires on tenement life and current affairs covering the period when Glasgow was the 'second city of the Empire' they constitute a valuable social and literary record.

[Charmagne BookLover · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great look at Scotland life years ago. Warning, it's dialect is thick so takes a little time to learn vocabulary.

[Rog Harrison · Rating 3 out of 5]

This consists of 142 short pieces which the author wrote for a Glasgow newspaper from 1902 to 1926. Erchie is an elderly church beadle who also works as a waiter. The pieces are mainly Erchie's musings on events happening at the time although there are a few pieces which actually tell a story about Erchie.

I found this charming and amusing. This is more a book for dipping into rather than trying to read from cover to cover quickly.

[Claudia · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A flet fit and a warm hert!"