The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, or, the original, antiquated, and natural curiosities of the South of Scotland, containing Sketches of eccentric characters and curious places, with explanations of singular words, terms, and phrases, interspersed with poems, tales, anecdotes, &c., and various other strange matters, the whole illustrative of the ways of the peasantry, and manners of Caledonia, drawn out and alphabetically arranged by John Mactaggart" was first published in 1824, when he was 34. Self-taught as a writer, poet, mathematician and engineer, Mactaggart died four years later, having returned to Scotland after becoming ill in Canada.