Broadside ballad entitled 'Mr Aytoun's Campaign against the Airdrie Radicals'

Commentary

This ballad begins: 'COME Brother Conservatives, fill up your glasses, / And start to your feet with hearty hurra! / Tho no more we may draw our broad swords on the asses, / Our tricks and our cunning will win us the day.' An illustration of a haughty-looking man astride a horse that is too small for him, adorns the top of the sheet. He is waving at a mother and her two small children.

A note before the song mentions it was 'Sung, with great applause, at the last dinner given by the Edinburgh Sour Milks'. James, sometimes referred to as 'Jemmy' or 'Jamie' Aytoun, (1797-1881) was the Radical Party candidate in the 1841 parliamentary elections. This piece accuses him of having Tory sympathies and directs bitter satire at him, accusing him of being hypocritical and corrupt.

The National Library of Scotland holds another broadside relating to this incident, entitled 'Aytoun the Yeoman!, or, The Orator Left in the Lurch by One of his Own Voters'. There are several other sheets relating to Aytoun's political ambitions, at various times in the mid nineteenth century.

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