The Boy in the Train

[12][18][19] Mary Campbell Smith was born in Tongland, Kirkcudbrightshire, and was the daughter of the Reverend Andrew Edgar, minister of Mauchline, Ayrshire.

[21] Written in Scots,[22] the poem quotes an inquisitive young boy who was in their carriage, asking questions on the way to his grandmother's house in Kirkcaldy, Fife.

The poem captures the growing pre-war industrialisation of Kirkcaldy, including the distinct smell of the linoleum factories,[23][24][25] for which the town was famous.

[29] By 1915 The Boy in the Train was known to Sir Michael Nairn (1838–1915), industrialist and owner of seven of Kirkcaldy's linoleum factories,[31] who had the poem printed up as a calling card.

[32] The poem appeared in full in the Fife Free Press in 1916, attributed to a "young man belonging to Pathhead, who is now in the United States" with the initials "C.N".

[36] In 1925 it was published in a book of Twentieth Century Scots Verse,[37] selected by Mr William Robb, Chief Inspector of Schools in Lanarkshire.

[43] Robb was the first to name Mary Campbell Smith as author of the poem, citing his source as the Total Eclipse 1913 magazine.

[65][66] Although she lived to see the growing popularity of her poem, it is believed that Mary Campbell Smith never set foot in the station that she made famous.

The poem is a range of questions asked and excited, humorous observations made by the boy, leaving no space for any reply, but showing his developing reasoning as he goes through a landscape he starts to recognise.

The boy anthropomorphises the train, before questioning how it works, thinks about his dinner, then asks "Has Gran'ma gotten electric licht?".

The child's gaze spots other children in the pre-industrial landscape: the cow and the calf, and the "lassie pu'in' a hurly!"

The smell of linoleum is distinctive, given the production process where linseed oil is oxidised and pressed together with resins, ground cork and pigments.

[100][101] In 2018, the writer Val McDermid, who is from Kirkcaldy, quoted it in a BBC documentary on "The Town That Floored the World".