Cunningham persevered, however, and managed in 1807 to get some poems printed in
Monthly Literary Recreations, edited by Eugenius Roche in London; this short-lived periodical also published some of Byron's earliest works. In the meantime he was becoming successful in stonemasonry work and was building a strong reputation as a designer and carver.
When a London-based publisher, Robert Hartley Cromek, came to Scotland in 1809 to collect traditional songs and poems from the countryside, he and a partner met with Cunningham, who agreed to do the gathering for him. He did not tell Cromek that he intended to write the poems and songs himself and submit them as "traditional" pieces. It is ironic that Cunningham's literary career was born in a species of forgery, for he later acquired the affectionate nickname of "Honest Allan Cunningham," an epithet that stayed with him lifelong. Cunningham himself seems to have seen his imposture as both a means of getting himself into the literary world and a way of enhancing Scotland's literary reputation. On 8 September 1810 he wrote to his brother, "I could cheat a whole General Assembly of Antiquarians with my original manner of writing and forging ballads. Indeed, the poetry of our ancestors is become all the cry.
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