The Ballad of Peckham Rye Author:Muriel Spark Dougal Douglas, M.A., was hired to bring vision into the lives of the workers in a Peckham Firm. And he did. To Peckham he introduced the wider horizon of tears, absenteism, fraud, blackmail, violence, and murder. With a light laugh, of course, for Dougal was born with the horns on his head.