Alexander Wilson was the son of a weaver at Paisley, Scotland, where he was born in 1766; he was thus Audubon's senior by nineteen years. His father, who was esteemed for his honesty and intelligence, had tasted prosperity, but irremediable poverty fell to his lot in later life. Alexander, the younger son, was motherless at ten, and the stepmother that soon appeared seems to have shown him scant sympathy, or, at all events, never won his affection. Alexander Wilson's youth unhappily coincided with an era of bad feeling in his native land; the times were hard in bonny Scotland, education was stagnant, and the public morals were debased. Wilson was a child of his times; like thousands of other youths, he was bound to suffer from the conditions of his early environment, but unlike many thousands of his day, he was possessed of talents and ambition which bitter adversity tended to sharpen and could never repress. At thirteen young Wilson was taken from school and apprenticed to a weaver, William Duncan, his brother-in-law, and for three years he was no stranger to hard work and the birchen rod. For nearly three years more, as master weaver, he knew little beyond the grind and grime of the factory and the society of factory hands. At eighteen, however, his rebellious spirit struck, and for ten years he appeared in the _rôle_ of itinerant peddler, poet and orator, and as socialist to the extent of championing the oppressed weaver class. At one time Wilson came into correspondence with Robert Burns and later made his acquaintance. His best dialect poem, "Watty and Meg, or The Taming of a Shrew," published anonymously as a penny chap-book in 1782, was his one popular success in the character of poet; according to report it was attributed to Burns, who admitted that he would have been glad to have written the verses, which sold so freely that a hundred thousand copies were disposed of in a few weeks.[181] In the disputes between capital and labor which arose at Paisley, Wilson took an active part. In connection with them he published a number of lampoons in verse, for which he was convicted of libel and was compelled to burn his satires at the town cross. In one instance, which occurred in February, 1793, a petty tyrant whom he had riddled exacted the fine,[182] and because of his inability to pay Wilson was sent to jail, where he languished for over three months.