Robert Tannahill

Robert Tannahill (June 3, 1774 - May 17, 1810) was a Scottish poet of working class origin.

Robert Tannahill (1774-1810). Portrait in Paisley Museum. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Life

Overview

Tannahill was born in Paisley, where he was a weaver. In 1807 he published a small volume of poems and songs, which met with success, and carried his hitherto local fame over his native country. Always delicate and sensitive, a disappointment in regard to the publication of an enlarged edition of his poems so wrought upon a lowness of spirits, to which he was subject, that he drowned himself in a canal. His longer pieces are now forgotten, but some of his songs have achieved a popularity only 2nd to that page 371of some of Burns's best. Among these are "The Braes of Balquhidder," "Gloomy Winter's now awa'", and "The Bonnie Wood o' Craigielea".

Youth and education

Tannahill was born at Castle Street in Paisley on 3 June 1774, the 4th son in a family of 7 children. His mother was Janet (Pollock) from Boghall Farm, Gateside, North Ayrshire, near Beith and his father was James Tannahill from Kilmarnock, a silk-weaver of Paisley.

Educated in Paisley, Robert impressed his schoolfellows more by his rhyming gift than his studious habits.

At the age of 13 he was bound apprentice weaver to his father, and managed to read much and widely both at the loom and during his leisure hours.

Career

Concluding his apprenticeship, he worked for some time at Lochwinnoch, Renfrewshire, and in the end of 1799 settled at Bolton, Lancashire.

On his father's death, about the beginning of 1802, he returned to Paisley and continued the business with his mother, who was infirm. As he reported in a letter to a friend, "My brother Hugh and I are all that remain at home, with our old mother, bending under age and frailty; and but seven years back, nine of us used to sit down at dinner together." Then Hugh married and Robert was left the sole support, making a resolution which he records in a touching poem in English, "The Filial Vow". As things fell out, however, his mother was to outlive him by 13 years.

In 1803 Tannahill became a leading member of a new club, where his associates did him good service by criticizing his poetical exercises. For this club he wrote several spirited lyrics, and he composed for the local Burns club between 1805 and 1810 3 notable odes celebrating the anniversary of Burns's birth.

Tannahill never married, but in his sweet and tender song, "Jessie the Flower o' Dunblane," and its fervent sequel, "The Fareweel," he enshrines his love and renunciation of Janet Tennant (1770–1833), a native of Dunblane, Perthshire, most of whose life was spent in Paisley (Semple, Poems and Songs of Robert Tannahill, 208).

Never robust, but with a consumptive tendency, Tannahill took little part in public affairs, but he gave strenuous help towards establishing in Paisley the trades library for working men, which was opened in 1805.

In March 1810 he received a visit from James Hogg (1770–1835), the "Ettrick Shepherd."

Meanwhile he was disappointed and harassed in his relations with publishers. In 1810, following the rejection of an augmented collection of his work by publishers in Greenock and Edinburgh, he fell into a despondency aggravated by fears for his own health. Eventually he burned all his manuscripts and drowned himself in a culverted stream under the Paisley Canal, on 17 May 1810. He was interred in the West Relief burying-ground.

Writing

Known as the 'Weaver Poet', Tannahill wrote in the wake of Robert Burns, and in the judgement of some is 2nd only to him.

Tannahill versified early, and some poetical epistles to his friends — e.g. "Epistle to James Barr," written in 1804 — are not without vigor and occasional epigrammatic points, though they are too discursive and diffuse to be generally effective. The Soldier's Return: An interlude, contains several good songs — some of which helped to win Tannahill his fame — but it has no dramatic quality.

His interest in poetry was of long standing and his reading was almost solely confined to it. Using both standard English and Scots, he experimented with many forms: tales, fables, epitaphs, verse epistles, odes, besides the body of dialect song on which his reputation mainly rests. Among the odes are three written for the Burns anniversary, of which the 1st is a bravura performance. Here the tartan-clad Genius of Scotland enters the assembly of the gods on Olympus and begs for a national bard, which is immediately granted with the birth of Burns. Poverty is a frequent theme in his work, including that brought about by the Napoleonic Wars for returning soldiers and sailors or their widows.

Certain descriptive poems, bacchanalian ditties, epitaphs, &c., attest the writer's observation, rhetorical vigour, and ingenuity. His reputation, however, rests mainly on his Scottish songs. In sentimental song Tannahill ranks almost with the greatest of Scottish song-writers, approaching Lady Nairne and Burns himself in such dainty and winning lyrics as "Bonnie Wood o' Craigielee," "Sleepin' Maggie," "Braes o' Gleniffer," "Gloomy Winter's noo awa'," "The Lass o' Arranteenie," "Cruikston Castle's lonely wa's," and "Jessie the Flower o' Dunblane."

As well as R.A. Smith's settings, some of Tannehill's songs were set to music by John Ross, the Aberdeen organist. Others had been written by Tannahill to accompany traditional Scottish airs, and some from Ireland too. Several have now entered the oral tradition. Perhaps the most enduring is "The Braes of Balquhidder" – the basis for the ballad "Wild Mountain Thyme," which has the chorus "Will Ye Go Lassie, Go?" In it he refers to a story from his nursemaid, Mary McIntyre of Balquhither parish, that she and her mother had baked bannock for the army of Charles Edward Stuart, marching to Culloden.

Tannahill also wrote "Thou Bonnie Wood of Craigielea", the tune of which was later modified to form the music for the famous Australian bush folk song "Waltzing Matilda".

Between 1805 and 1810 he wrote lyrics for Glasgow periodicals — the Selector, the Gleaner, the Nightingale; or, Songsters' magazine, Miller's Paisley Repository,’ and the Scots Magazine.

In 1808 he proposed to contribute to George Thomson's Collection of Original Scottish Airs songs written for certain Irish melodies of which he was enamored, but the editor declined the proposal. While some of these songs are meritorious, the best of them do not reach Tannahill's highest level.

Miscellaneous

Tannahill's poems were published in 1807. Shortly before his death he burnt his manuscripts, but, as friends had copies, his editors were able to increase the matter of the original publication. 2 editions issued in 1815 and another in 1817 have a prefatory biographical sketch by James Muir.

Tannahill is largely represented in Motherwell's Harp of Renfrewshire, 1819. A reprint in 1822 of the 1807 volume has an anonymous memoir. An edition of the songs, with biography by Alexander Laing], "the Brechin poet," appeared in 1833.

Philip A. Ramsay issued in 1838 The Works of Robert Tannahill, with Life of the Author and a Memoir of R.A. Smith. This remained the standard version of Tannahill's writings for many years. The fullest edition is that of 1873, edited by David Semple. Besides the poems and songs, it gives all available letters of the poet and his friends. It is preceded by an exhaustive though prolix biography.

Recognition

Robert Tannahill (1774-1810). Statue by David Watson Stevenson, photo by Stephen C. Dickson, 2014. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

In 1866 an obelisk monument was placed at his grave. The centenary of his birth was celebrated with elaborate ceremony on 3 June 1874. In 1876 annual Tannahill concerts were begun on Gleniffer Braes — famous through 1 of the poet's best lyrics — and from their profits a bronze statue of Tannahill, placed on a granite pedestal, was erected in Paisley Abbey burying-ground in 1883.

Tannahill is one of the 16 writers and poets depicted on the lower sections of the Scott Monument on Princes Street in Edinburgh. He appears on the right side of the southern face.

In 2006 Brechin All Records released Volume 1 of The Complete Songs of Robert Tannahill. Volume 2 was released in 2010 to coincide with the 2nd centenary of his death.

After a period of intermission, the Burns Club he helped found now meets during the winter months in the old Tannahill cottage.

In popular culture

Robert Archibald Smith and organist John Ross of Aberdeen having set several of his songs to music, they speedily became popular. "Perhaps," Tannahill once said, "the highest pleasure ever I derived from these things has been hearing, as I walked down the pavement at night, a girl within doors rattling away at some one of them" (Ramsay, Works of Tannahill, xxi).

Portraits

A portrait was engraved by Samuel Freeman from a painting by Alexander Blair in the possession of the publishers Blackie & Son. John Morton, also a Paisley artist, sketched in pencil a profile likeness of Tannahill the day after his death, and from this subsequent engravings and busts have been taken.

The first copperplate engraving of this appeared as the frontispiece of The Harp of Renfrewshire in 1819 and later accompanied editions of the poems in 1822, 1825, 1838, and 1846. Later came bust-size portraits in oil, of which one was made in 1833 by William Beith, a Paisley flower painter. Another by Thomas Carswell, a Greenock artist, was made for Mr. Marshall of Ladyburn, who had been at school with Tannahill. This was partly done from the engraved portrait in the Harp of Renfrewshire and checked against Marshall's remembrance of his old school-fellow. Still another by Alexander Blair was engraved by Samuel Freeman for the Biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen (see above).

A bust of the poet was sculpted by John Fillans in 1845, again using Morton's drawing as a basis, and this was presented to Paisley Museum in 1873. Elsewhere, a bust of the poet was included in the Wallace Monument’s Hall of Heroes in 1869. And in 1889 his portrait appeared among others in the stained glass windows at Lamlash House commissioned from Stephen Adam.

Robert Tannahill Poem, On Gleniffer Braes

See also

• List of British poets
• Scottish literature

References

Robert Tannahill - Bonnie Hielan Laddie

•  Bayne, Thomas Wilson (1898) "Tannahill, Robert" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 55 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 357-358  . Wikipedia, Web, Mar. 12, 2018.
• Robert Chambers, Robert Tannahill, Cyclopaedia of English literature 2, 490.
• Famous Scots Series: A biography of Tannahill appears in the book, James Hogg by Sir George Douglas.
• Robert Tannahill (1874), The poems and songs of Robert Tannahill, with life, and notes by David Semple, Paisley: A. Gardner, OL13516086M 
• Douglas, George Brisbane (1899). James Hogg. Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier. pp. 22 et seq.. OL13492155M. 
• The Harp of Renfrewshire (ed. William Motherwell), 1872. p.37ff

External links

Poems

• Robert Tannahill at PoemHunter (39 poems)
• 57 Poems at the Robert Tannabill Federation

Books

• Robert Tannahill at Amazon.com

About

• "The Weaver Poet at the Scots Language Centre
• Robert Tannahill Commemoration Website

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen & Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Tannahill, Robert