Lads' Love is an 1897 Romance Novel by Samuel Rutherford Crockett, an example of the "kailyard" style of Scottish rural romance popular at the time.
In mid Victorian Galloway, hard-up young medical student Alec McQuhirr falls for farmer's daughter Nance Chrystie, but her father has other ideas.
Tropes:
- Abhorrent Admirer: The elderly lairds to the spirited Chrystie girls.
- Amnesiacs are Innocent: After recovering from his head injury, Nathan Murdoch has lost most of his memories - which is effectively a happy ending given what he was like before. The Hoolet ends up as his carer, probably a better fate than being married to the man he used to be.
- Best Friends-in-Law: Nance's sister the Hempie is Alec's closest friend.
- Calling the Old Man Out: When Peter Chrystie tries to deny the half-drowned Hoolet entry to his home, his daughter Nance's righteous fury is immensely satisfying.
- The Casanova: Nathan Murdoch is a particularly caddish example.
- Casanova Wannabe: Alec, initially, craves the reputation of a ladies' man if not to actually be one. It comes back to bite him.
- Con Man: Nathan Murdoch the packman sells useless trinkets on account for inflated prices and uses blackmail to keep collecting payments from housewives who've bought them without their husbands' knowledge. But because he operates in England, most of his neighbours back home in Galloway have little sympathy for his victims, regarding it as payback for the treatment Scotland has endured over the centuries.
- Defiled Forever: This would have been the Hoolet's fate if Alec, Nance, and the Hempie hadn't chanced to overhear her secret marriage vows with Nathan Murdoch.
- Faux Affably Evil: For all his friendly veneer, Nathan Murdoch is pretty easy to see through.
- Feuding Families: It's a mild example, with no murder or ancient grudges, but the fathers of the lovebirds do NOT get on, and actually get in a fistfight at one point.
- First-Person Smartass: Alec's narration is drily snarky pretty much whenever he isn't indulging in Scenery Porn.
- Good Stepmother: Clemmy is a party to the intrigues of the Chrystie sisters, and helps them evade discovery by their tyrannical father.
- Infallible Narrator: It takes three chapters for Alec to enter the story but he describes the early scenes as if he'd witnessed them. After that his perspective becomes more limited.
- Interrupted Suicide: Nance saves the Hoolet from her attempt to drown herself.
- Leonine Contract: An unusually sympathetic example. When Peter threatens to cut Nance off without a penny if she marries Alec, the Hempie pitches him into a peat bog and refuses to rescue him without a written promise of a generous marriage settlement. It's unclear how much real danger he's in, but he certainly claims that he will drown if not helped out.
- Let Off by the Detective: When Rab admits the assault on Nathan Murdoch, the Fiscal judging the case is careful to give him time to get away before raising hue and cry.
- Mistaken for Cheating: Thanks to the Hoolet wearing Nance's old clothes, it's the talk of the village that Nance is seeing Nathan behind Alec's back. Alec, however, doesn't believe a word of it.
- Nostalgic Narrator: The older Alec, looking back fondly on his youth.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: The Hempie, the Hoolet, and the Deil go most of the story without their given names being mentioned. (Indeed, we never find out the Deil's.)
- Only Mostly Dead: Both the Hoolet and Nathan Murdoch, in quick succession, are brought back from apparent death.
- Over Protective Dad: If you come wooing the Chrystie girls without Peter's approval, be prepared to be shot at.
- Papa Wolf: Rab Anderson will stop at nothing to defend or avenge the Hoolet's honour.
- Pun-Based Title: The flowering herb lads' love is a motif in a novel that's also about the actual love affairs of young people.
- Rape and Revenge: Nathan Murdoch's seduction-by-deceit of the Hoolet gets him a near-fatal bash on the head from her father Rab.
- Roguish Romani: Romani herdsman Rab Anderson is a Lovable Rogue with a sideline in poaching.
- Scenery Porn: Crockett's love of the Galloway countryside is on full and lyrical display.
- Sibling Triangle: Averted: Crockett teases the possibility that the Hempie will be jealous of Alec transferring his affections to her sister Nance, but she ends up as their strongest ally and remains Alec's best friend.
- The Tease: All three Chrystie sisters are noted as being shameless flirts.
- Traveling Salesman: Nathan Murdoch is a very successful one, who doesn't really bother to hide the fact that he's a Con Man.
- Uptown Girl: Downplayed Trope. The McQuhirrs and the Chrysties are both tenant farmers, but Peter Chrystie is wealthier and has aspirations to buy out his landlord and marry his daughters to lairds, which puts Nance supposedly beyond Alec's reach.
- World of Snark: It seems almost everyone in rural Galloway has a razor sharp deadpan wit and isn't afraid to use it.
