How Paisley poet Robert Tannahill made his mark on history

I suspect many readers are scratching their heads just now, but not the people of Paisley. For they will already have recognised that I am referring to Robert Tannahill and Alexander Wilson.

My thanks go to Claire Casey for the suggestion I should profile these two remarkable men from Paisley where they are commemorated in different ways. While I’m at it, I really do think that after their excellent but ultimately unsuccessful bid to become UK City of Culture, the people of our largest town should now campaign for Paisley not to be City of Culture, but just plain “city” – after all, it has more than twice the population of Stirling and has a cathedral, an abbey and plenty of monuments and statues plus plenty people befitting of city status.

I will be looking at Alexander Wilson next week, but first let me tell you the ultimately tragic story of Robert Tannahill who really was the successor to Robert Burns as a bard of renown, though sadly, despite the work of the excellent Robert Tannahill Federation, he is largely forgotten by many Scots – unless they are followers of the great Tannahill Weavers, the band which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and which is proudly a member of the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame.

They are, of course, named after Robert Tannahill, the Weaver Poet, who has one of those aforementioned Paisley statues and it’s a grand one at that. It stands near Paisley Abbey, while on Edinburgh’s Scott Monument his face is carved in stone – a singular honour given that the other 15 such stone heads depict Robert Burns, Allan Ramsay and Lord Byron, among others.

Tannahill was born in 1774 in Paisley to James and Janet née Pollock, a farmer’s daughter. He was their fourth son in a family of eight, the eldest boy of whom died as an infant. There is a plaque commemorating his birth in Castle Street and Tannahill Cottage still stands in Queen Street, the family having moved there when Robert was a youngster. It was both the family home and their loom-shop where James Tannahill ran a successful weaving business to which Robert was apprenticed at the age of 12 after a typically wide-ranging Scottish education. His father was much respected in Paisley and was both a director of the local hospital and deacon of the local Weavers’ Society whose records contain the minute of Robert being indentured to his father, as were the other sons in the family.

Robert was born with a leg deformity that made him shy, except when in front of his schoolmates who he amazed with his skills at instant rhyming, making him a sort of rapping star of his time.

Tannahill later wrote down one of those rhymes:

A Rhyming Riddle. Written When At School.

My colour’s brown, my shape’s uncouth,

On ilka side I ha’e a mouth,

And, strange to tell, I will devour

My bulk of meat in half-an-hour.

He would later become an accomplished singer, and like many Scottish teenagers of the time, he lapped up the works of Robert Burns and began to write poetry in English and Scots for himself. He was so enraptured of Burns that in the early 1790s he walked all the way to Alloway to see where the poet had been born, and also composed several works in memory of Burns after the bard died in 1795.

Either because of a blighted love affair or because the former boom town of Paisley hit hard times, Tannahill went south to Bolton when he was 24 or 25. By now a time-served and apparently very skilled weaver of silk in particular, he spent two years in England and by all accounts was received very well in that Lancashire town.

In 1801, Tannahill was summoned home by letter because his father had contracted his final illness. Robert arrived home in time to wish his father farewell and he then decided to stay in Paisley, mainly to support his mother who was increasingly infirm.

Tannahill had a circle of friends who were all self-improvers interested in literature and politics. They met frequently and it was their encouragement which led Tannahill to write more and more poems and songs. He also attended theatre performances in Glasgow and made many friendships with musicians such as Robert Archibald Smith, who provided him with tunes for the songs he wrote.

WHAT was remarkable was that Tannahill really was a very shy individual who preferred to compose his works while out walking alone in the countryside. He spent money on books and on travelling to places that took his fancy, often inspired by the scenery he viewed or the people he met.

One of his best known works was a song-poem about Balquhidder, the country of Rob Roy McGregor north of Loch Lomond and the Trossachs on the banks of Loch Voil.

He called it The Braes o Balquhidder, but we know it nowadays as the Wild Mountain Thyme thanks to Francis McPeake’s reworking of the tune and lyrics.

Here’s Tannahill’s original:

Chorus:

Let us go, lassie, go

Tae the braes o’ Balquhidder

Whar the blueberries grow

‘Mang the bonnie Hielan’ heather

Whar the deer and the rae

Lichtly bounding thegither

Sport the lang summer day

On the braes o’ Balquhidder

I will twin thee a bow’r

By the clear silver fountain

And I’ll cover it o’er

Wi’ the flooers o’ the mountain

I will range through the wilds

And the deep glens sae dreary

And return wi’ their spoils

Tae the bow’r o’ my dearie

When the rude wintry win’

Idly raves roun’ oor dwellin’

And the roar o’ the linn

On the nicht breeze is swellin’

So merrily we’ll sing

As the storm rattles o’er us

Till the dear shielin’ ring

Wi’ the licht liltin’ chorus

Noo the summers in prime

Wi’ the flooers richly bloomin’

Wi’ the wild mountain thyme

A’ the moorlan’s perfumin’

Tae oor dear native scenes

Let us journey thegither

Whar glad innocence reigns

‘Mang the braes o’ Balquhidder

Like his hero Burns, Tannahill was not averse to writing a poem for a girl who took his fancy, and one of the best was this one …

Jessie the Flower o’ Dunblane

The sun has gane down o’er the lofty Ben Lomond,

And left the red clouds to preside o’er the scene;

While lanely I stray in the calm simmer gloamin’,

To muse on sweet Jessie, the flow’r o’ Dunblane.

How sweet is the brier wi’ its saft fauldin’ blossom,

And sweet is the birk wi’ its mantle o’ green;

Yet sweeter and fairer, and dear to this bosom,

Is lovely young Jessie, the flow’r o’ Dunblane.

She’s modest as onie and blythe as she’s bonnie,

For guileless simplicity marks her its ain;

And far be the villain divested o’ feeling,

Wha’d blight in its bloom the sweet flow’r o’ Dunblane.

Sing on, thou sweet mavis, thy hymn to the evening,

Thour’t dear to the echoes o’ Calderwood glen;

Sae dear to this bosom, sae artless and winning,

Is the charming young Jessie, the flow’r o’ Dunblane.

By now Tannahill was ready to overcome his natural modesty and published his first poems and songs in publications such as The Scots Magazine, still going strong today. Newspapers took his work and in a relatively short space of time, the Weaver Poet’s reputation began to blossom.

In 1805, Tannahill was the co-founder of the Paisley Burns Club, the oldest formally constituted Burns club in the world. We know he was the founding secretary and we also know what was said at this historic first meeting because Tannahill wrote an account of it which has been preserved.

“Among the many toasts proposed in the course of the evening were the following—‘May the genius of Scotland be as conspicuous as her mountains’; ‘May Burns be admired while a thistle grows in Caledonia’; ‘May Scotia never want the sword of a Wallace, nor the pen of a Burns’. The night went off with uninterrupted harmony; and the company, resolving to meet annually on the same occasion, appointed the following gentlemen to conduct the business of the ensuing year …”

There then follows the list of the pioneers of Burns clubs around the world, Robert Tannahill and Robert Archibald Smith among them.

Depression may also have entered his life at this point as he was reluctant to have his works published for fear of attention.

HIS biographer William McLaren recounted: “Such was the extreme modesty of his nature, that though the qualities of his mind had ripened into superior excellence, it was with difficulty that his friends could persuade him to offer any of his early pieces for publication. With doubtful hesitation a copy of his verses was, however, prepared for a periodical work then published in Edinburgh; (but which cannot be found) but whether from that modesty for which he was conspicuous, or from a dread that his name might swell the list of disgraced correspondents, they appeared under a fictitious character. The fears of the bard were vain. His verses appeared in the first number, accompanied by a flattering compliment to the author, and soliciting a continuance of his correspondence.”

Eventually Tannahill was persuaded to publish a collection of his songs and poems. In 1807 he brought out that first book “The Soldier’s Return: a Scottish interlude in two acts, with other poems and songs”, and in homage to Burns subititled it “chiefly in the Scottish dialect”.

It was an instant success, but Tannahill was frankly terrified by the public acclaim that followed. He was also a sick man – a lifelong smoker whose teeth were black from tobacco, his health deteriorated so much that when the famous Ettrick Shepherd James Hogg came to see Tannahill, they had an emotional farewell which Hogg recorded– “I will ne’er see you again,” said Tannahill.

On Thursday, May 17, 1810, Robert Tannahill killed himself by jumping into a local river. He was 35.