One of the most popular of the song-writers of Scotland since Burns, was a native of Paisley, born in 1774. He was bred a weaver; and his favourite pursuit was to recover old and neglected airs, to which he adapted new words. “I would I were a weaver,” says Falstaff; “I could sing all manner of songs.” He continued to work, with some exceptions, in his native town, where, at the beginning of this century, he made an acquaintance with Robert Archibald Smith, a musical composer, who set some of his songs to original music, and adapted others to old airs. In 1807, Tannahill collected his songs into a volume, which was decidedly successful. The higher success, which he more prized, was to find his songs universally known and sung amongst all classes. But the poet was the victim of a morbid melancholy which embittered his existence. His means were above his wants; he had no special unhappiness. But he died, as Ophelia died,—“Where a willow grows aslant a brook”—perhaps “chanting snatches of old tunes.” This event occurred in 1810, near Paisley.

Personal

  Tannahill used to declare, that one of the most gratifying tributes he ever had paid to his genius, was while taking a solitary walk, in the cool of a summer’s evening, he had his musings interrupted by the sweet voice of a country girl, who, on his approaching nearer the spot, he discovered was singing one of his compositions—

“We’ll meet beside the dusky glen on yon burn side.”

This, he said, was one of the sweetest and delightful moments of his life; he beheld in it a promise of future fame, and hailed it as a pledge of the rising popularity of his Songs: but the highest tribute ever paid to the genius of Tannahill, was the visit which James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, paid him, not long before his death. There was something romantic in this pilgrimage of the Mountain Bard, to feel, and see,—to converse and enjoy the fellowship of one whose heart, like his own, was gifted with the “magic voice of song:” they spent the night in each other’s company. Tannahill convoyed Hogg, on the following morning, half way to Glasgow, where they parted. It was a melancholy adieu which Tannahill gave him—“Farewell,” he cried, “we shall never meet again,—farewell, I shall never see you more!”

  As with the generality of people of his rank, the poet’s education was limited to reading, writing, and accounts. At an early age he was sent to the loom,—then a profitable calling,—at which he distinguished himself by his industry…. He was possessed of a correct musical ear, and played well on the German flute. His favourite pursuit was to recover old or neglected airs, and unite them to appropriate words. The airs he hummed over while plying the shuttle, and as the words arose in his mind, he jotted them down at a rude desk which he had attached to his loom, and which he could use without rising from his seat. Thus did he contrive to relieve the monotonous dulness of his daily occupation, by combining with it the exercise of his more gentle craft,—weaving threads and verses alternately…. The melancholy to which Tannahill had been occasionally subject, now became deep and habitual. He evinced a proneness to imagine that his best friends were disposed to injure him, and a certain jealous fear of his claims to genius being impugned. These imaginary grievances were confided to his faithful adviser Smith, who found it impossible to convince him of the hallucination under which he laboured. His eyes sank, his countenance became pale, and his body emaciated. The strange and incoherent texture of some poetical pieces which he wrote about this time, betrayed the state of his mind. In short, it became apparent that a breaking up of his mental and bodily powers was at hand. He now set himself to destroy all his manuscripts; not a scrap which he could possibly collect was allowed to escape the flames. This is the more to be regretted, since the corrections and additions he had made for a second edition of his works, and some unpublished pieces of much merit, all of which fell a prey to the flames, would have added greatly to his reputation.

  The victim of disappointments which his sensitive temperament could not endure, Tannahill was naturally of an easy and cheerful disposition. As a child, his exemplary behaviour was so conspicuous that mothers were satisfied of their children’s safety if they learned that they were in company with “Bob Tannahill.” Inoffensive in his own dispositions, he entertained every respect for the feelings of others. He enjoyed the intercourse of particular friends, but avoided general society; in company he seldom talked, and only with a neighbour; he shunned the acquaintance of persons of rank, because he disliked patronage, and dreaded superciliousness. His conversation was simple; he possessed, but seldom used, considerable powers of satire; but he applied his keenest shafts of sarcasm against the votaries of cruelty. In performing acts of kindness he took delight, but he was scrupulous of accepting favours; he was strong in the love of independence, and had saved twenty pounds at the period of his death. His general appearance did not indicate intellectual superiority; his countenance was calm and meditative; his eyes were grey, and his hair a light brown. In person, he was under the middle size. Not ambitious of general learning, he confined his reading chiefly to poetry.

  Robert Tannahill, a Scotch weaver, whose songs in their artless sweetness, their simplicity of diction, their tenderness of sentiment, have long since won distinction, came up to Edinburgh very poor in purse, but rich in the future that poetic aspirations imaged forth. He put his manuscripts into Constable’s hands, offering the whole of them at a very small price. Day after day he waited for an answer, with a mind alternating between hope and fear. Constable, who always distrusted his own judgment in such matters, and who, perhaps, at the moment had no one else to consult, eventually returned the poems. Tannahill in a madness of despair put a period to his existence, adding one to those “young shadows” who hover round the shrine of genius, as if to warn all but the boldest from attempting to approach it.

  The good people of Paisley have cherished the memory of Tannahill. The house in which he was born has inserted in its front wall a granite memorial-stone recording the circumstance. His brother, when old age compelled him to cease from labour, was provided with a competency by his fellow-citizens, who long ago formed a Tannahill Club, which always celebrated the anniversary of the poet’s birth. The centenary of the “prince of Paisley poets,” as he has been called, was celebrated with the utmost enthusiasm by the inhabitants of Paisley. A general holiday was held, and the town was decorated with flags and flowers. More than 15,000 persons assembled on the Braes o’ Gleniffer to listen to addresses spoken in the poet’s honour, and to the singing of his own sweet songs—songs that are a priceless heritage to his native land.

  Poor Tannahill! Paisley truly has good reason to be proud of her handloom weaver, who knew to mingle the whir of his busy loom, not with the jarring notes of political fret or atheistic pseudo-philosophy, but with the sweet music of Nature in the most melodious season of the year. Sad to think that the author of this song, one of the most lovable, kindly, and human-hearted of mortals, and who, in spite of the deficiencies of his early culture, had achieved a reputation second only to Burns among the song-writers of his tuneful fatherland, should have bade farewell to the sweet light of the sun and the fair greenery of his native glens at the early age of thirty-six—drowning himself, poor fellow! in a pool not far from the place of his birth.

General

  Tannahill could achieve only a song; but as the songs which he did achieve were very genuine ones, with the true faculty in them, Scotland seems to be in no danger of forgetting them.

  The poems of this ill-starred son of genius are greatly inferior to his songs. They have all a common-place artificial character. His lyrics, on the other hand, are rich and original, both in description and in sentiment. His diction is copious and luxuriant, particularly in describing natural objects and the peculiar features of the Scottish landscape. His simplicity is natural and unaffected, and though he appears to have possessed a deeper sympathy with nature than with the workings of human feeling, or even the passion of love, he is often tender and pathetic.

  If, as was said by Fletcher of Saltoun, song-writers are to be classed among lawgivers, then may we hail Tannahill as one of the foremost Scottish legislators—ruling by the sceptre of song.

  For delicacy and refinement of feeling and expression, comes nearest to Burns of all our song-writers. His range was narrow, even compared with Hogg and Lady Nairne; for he had not the imagination of the one, nor the humour of the other; yet he possessed that sensitive tenderness of the poetic instinct, capable of touching the finest cords in nature to which the human soul has ever responded, in a degree which Burns alone excelled. Like all their contemporaries he was greatly Burns’s inferior in passion, both as to range and intensity…. We have already remarked that his poetic range is a narrow one; out of it he produced nothing of self-sustaining merit, and his poems which are not songs are very commonplace. As a specialist his fame is secure, and as living at the present day as when he first delighted his admiring countrymen. His songs, though true to universal nature, have certain local features which make their perfect enjoyment dependent on that sensitiveness to the influences of locality which characterises the Scotch mind, and in consequence he is not so highly appreciated anywhere as in Scotland, nor, in Scotland, anywhere as in Paisley, of which he is the poetic divinity.

  Setting aside Burns, there is no song-writer more popular in Scotland than Tannahill. His memory is cherished with the deepest affection of his own West country. A gathering, at which the finest of his songs are sung, is annually held on the Braes of Gleniffer, and is attended by crowds from Glasgow, Paisley, and other towns in the neighbourhood. And he thoroughly merits the place he has won in his countrymen’s hearts. A poet of the people, he has not received due recognition at the hands of literary critics. He has lines than which there are none sweeter in the Scottish tongue; a lyric could not be “more lightly, musically made” than “Gloomy Winter’s now awa’.” He has a curiously fine sense of words, his lyrics are as finished in their diction as they are true and touching in their sentiment and spontaneous in their flow. In one respect he may, perhaps, be said to have excelled Burns; namely, in his delicate aptness of descriptive phrase when dealing with nature…. An exquisite artist was lost by the death of the Paisley weaver. He had not a wide range, he had almost no sense of humour, no satiric or narrative faculty. His gift was purely lyrical, and the gift was, in its way, perfect. His love-songs, so pure and tender, so graceful in form, so musical, so admirably adapted to be sung, with the fragrance of the woodland braes he loved so well still clinging to the lines, are almost as little likely as the songs of Burns to lose their hold on Scotchmen’s hearts.

  With a more original gift of song than Cunningham, Robert Tannahill owed nothing to Scott, who was but slightly his senior, and not very much to Burns…. His language is not, any more than Burns’s, free from occasional intrusions of discordant Anglicism; but in his own dialect he has an exquisite delicacy, and at times subtlety, of phrase. His love-songs are fine examples of the Scottish gift of painting passion by the human and sympathetic traits of landscape.

  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 he has no dramatic quality…. 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.”