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William Lithgow was born in Lanark about 1582. The actual date of his birth is uncertain, but he states (page 377) that he was thirty-three in 1615, and in ‘The present Surveigh of London’ ‘past threescore years’ in April, 1643. He was the eldest son of James Lithgow, Burgess of Lanark, and Alison Grahame, his wife. He was educated at Lanark Grammar School, and, according to Sir Walter Scott,ssss1 was ‘bred a tailor.’ Scott does not, however, give his authority for this statement. Lithgow seems to have started his travels at a very early age, having ‘a large infusion of the wandering spirit common to his country-men.’ssss1 He says himself that ‘neither ambition, too much curiosity, nor any reputation I ever sought did expose me to such long peregrinations and dangerous adventures past’—but ‘that undeserved Dalida wrong.’ What this mysterious ‘Dalida wrong’ was is unknown, but family tradition has it that the four brothers, ‘foure blood-shedding wolves,’ of a certain Miss Lockhart, finding their sister with Lithgow, set upon him and cut off his ears, and from this arose his local nickname of ‘“Cutlugged” or “Lugless” Will.’ Be this as it may, by 1609, Lithgow had made ‘two voyages to the Orcadian and Zetlandian Isles, in the stripling age of mine adolescency, and there after surveighing all Germany, Bohemia, Helvetia, and the Low-Countreys from end to end; I visited Paris, where I remained ten moneths.’