LITHGOW, WILLIAM (1582-? 1650), Scottish traveller and writer, was born
and educated in Lanark. He was caught in a love-adventure, mutilated of
his ears by the brothers of the lady (hence the sobriquet "Cut-lugged
Willie"), and forced to leave Scotland. For nineteen years he travelled,
mostly on foot, through Europe, the Levant, Egypt and northern Africa,
covering, according to his estimate, over 36,000 m. The story of his
adventures may be drawn from _The Totall Discourse of the Rare
Adventures and painfull Peregrinations of long nineteene Yeares_
(London, 1614; fuller edition, 1632, &c.); _A True and Experimentall
Discourse upon the last siege of Breda_ (London, 1637); and a similar
book giving an account of the siege of Newcastle and the battle of
Marston Moor (Edinburgh, 1645). He is the author of a _Present Surveigh
of London_ (London, 1643). He left six poems, written between 1618 and
1640 (reprinted by Maidment, Edinburgh, 1863). Of these "Scotland's
Welcome to King Charles, 1633" has considerable antiquarian interest.
His writing has no literary merit; but its excessively aureate style
deserves notice.
The best account of Lithgow and his works is by F. Hindes Groome in
the _Dict. Nat. Biog._ The piece entitled _Scotland's Paraenesis to
King Charles II._ (1660), ascribed to him in the catalogue of the
Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, cannot, from internal evidence, be his.
LITHGOW, a town of Cook county, New South Wales, Australia, 96 m. W.N.W.
of Sydney by rail. Pop. (1901) 5268. The town is situated at an altitude
of 3000 ft., in a valley of the Blue Mountains. It has pottery and
terra-cotta works, breweries, a tweed factory, iron-works, saw-mills,
soap-works and brickfields. Coal, kerosene shale, iron ore and building
stone are found in the district.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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