Yee-haw! East Scotland was wilder than West

FORGET THE Wild West, the East apparently was wilder. The East of Scotland, that is.

• Charles Eldridge Griffin, right, travelled to Scotland with the Wild West Show brought from America by Buffalo Bill, aka William F Cody, left

The long-lost memoirs of a daredevil member of the famed Buffalo Bill Wild West Show expressed shock at the debauchery prevalent in Scotland's capital at the turn of the 20th century.

Despite his experience of pioneer life in his homeland and hitting the road with a grizzled entourage of cowboys and indians, Charles Eldridge Griffin wrote of his surprise at the levels of inebriation in Edinburgh: "I had never seen so many drunken persons in my life."

Griffin, show manager for the gun-slinging hero of American folklore, was no prude, having worked as a fire-eater, sword-swallow, and contortionist.

But he was taken aback during his stay at the city's Greenfield Place while on a tour of Scotland. The visit coincided with Hogmanay , during which, Griffin said, "music sounded out all night long, the accordion being the most prevalent."

The culture clash is outlined in a book by Griffin, out of print for more than a century but being reissued thanks to Scots academics.

The University of Strathclyde has been chosen as the official European centre for a project to document the life and times of Buffalo Bill, aka Colonel William F Cody.

And the team is to release a new edition of Four Years in Europe with Buffalo Bill, originally published in 1908.

It tells of the Wild West show's sojourns throughout Europe in the early part of the 20th century, including a 45-date tour of Scotland in 1904, when the spectacle rolled up in towns as diverse as Saltcoats, Forfar, and Huntly.

Griffin evidently picked up some Scots language during his time in country. Such was the frequency with which he heard the phrase "braw day," he assumed it referred to the bitter cold weather, and repeated it in his book.

Chris Dixon, a senior research fellow at Strathclyde's Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies, said:

"Griffin was a remarkable man himself, and his is the only contemporary memoir of this length of anyone who travelled in Europe with Cody.

"It seemed almost unbelievable that it had never been reissued or republished."

Dixon added. "The wife of Nate Salsbury, one of Cody's partners, gave birth to twins in Glasgow. The personnel in the show were so concerned these kids might be saddled with the burden of being Scottish they were rushed to London and their births registered in the US embassy."

The new edition of the book, to be published by the University of Nebraska Press, coincides with the first ever international conference of Cody academics, who will gather in Glasgow in June.

Last week a deal was struck which will see the creation of two PhD scholarships at Strathclyde to work on finding out more about Cody's time in Europe.

Kurt Graham, co-director of the Cody Institute for Western American Studies at the Buffalo Bill Historical Centre, explained: "The significance of having the conference in Glasgow is to recognise that the University of Strathclyde is going to be the nerve centre of our European effort. It's the frontier fortress. We intend to have our own little army of people retracing his steps in Europe."

Graham has spent the past four years researching Cody's life, and has uncovered numerous documents relating to his tours in Scotland.

The archive, available online, includes a health certificate confirming that some "eighteen buffaloes and one bullock" used in Cody's show appeared in good health.

Graham, however, is keen to rebuff a theory suggesting Cody fathered a child while in Elgin. "Cody was a cad alright, but I don't know of any offspring he bore," he said.