THE STRANGE CASE OF DEACON BRODIE

Feech, gledge this tale of the Deacon and his cribs (there's a glossary to translate some of it--not the leech) and you'll be reading an account of the Deacon or Town Councillor on whom Stevenson is said to have based his story of Jekyll and Hyde. Brodie, a well respected carpenter who ironically enough designed the gallows where he would repugnantly end, lived in Edinburgh in the 1780's where he was an accomplished gambler and cocker (game birds, that is) and shared his nights with his comfortable wife and children or a tart, Jean Ward. Until he began taking Blindman's holidays (nocturnal outings) with increasing regularity or rather irregularity--robbing shops, the bank (his erstwhile client), and finally the General Excise Office which brought an even larger price on the head he would hang by despite a temporary escape to England. . . . Bramble knows how tae transcribe the rowdydowness of the era and the tongue-thickening idiom even if the Deacon seems cheerfully cavalier rather than sinister or particularly interesting. A la Victorian mode which is so in vogue today.