Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 15 on 18/7/2004.

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In search of Peter Pan

As Peter Pan reaches his centenary, Nicola Lisle traces his Scottish roots

At the Duke of York’s Theatre in London, on 27th December 1904, a capacity audience crammed in to enjoy the first performance of a play by the celebrated novelist J.M. Barrie – the enchantingly whimsical Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up.

“…an artfully artless, go-as-you-please play which has all the pretty inconsequence of an imaginative child’s improvisation, all the wild extravagance of a youngster’s dream…” enthused the Illustrated London News.

Peter Pan has since become one of the most recognised characters in children’s literature, making his appearance on radio and television, in puppet theatres and pantomime, on ice and in a number of films. But few who witnessed the birth of this phenomenon in 1904 realised that its seeds had been sown many years before, deep in the heart of the Scottish countryside.

It was here, at 9 Brechin Road, Kirriemuir, that James Matthew Barrie was born on 9th May 1860, the ninth child of weaver David Barrie and his wife, Margaret Ogilvy.

His mother was his earliest influence, sparking his fertile imagination with tales of her childhood in the weaving community of Kirriemuir.

These became the inspiration for a series of articles in the London-based St James’s Gazette, later published collectively as Auld Licht Idylls. But it was Margaret Ogilvy’s loss of her mother, at the age of eight, that planted the germ of an idea in her young son’s mind:

“…her mother’s death made her mistress of the house and mother to her little brother.....

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By Nicola Lisle

Section : Scottish Roots

Page number : 36