Hall Caine

“ His earliest effort was entitled ‘Lucy Gray;’ and was a poetic rendering of a story he had heard from a Northumbrian rustic. Lucy had been the village beauty, who died in her seventeenth year, and was soon followed by her lover. ”

“ The name and metre of Wordsworth's ‘Lucy Gray’ seem also to have been taken from a poem of Anderson's. In 1798 Anderson published this poem in his first volume, but it was not until seven years later that he issued the ballads in the Cumbrian dialect by which his name is known, though he wrote and published his popular ballad, ‘Betty Brown,’ in 1801. Anderson was by no means the first to write verse in the dialect of his district. Thomas Sanderson gives the name of Josiah Relph, of Sebergham, as that of the first Cumbrian poet who wrote in the dialect, and Sir F. Madden mentions a Rev. ”