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Have we not our Burns, who "in glory and in joy Followed his plough along the mountain side;" Clare, the peasant boy; Bloomfield, the farmer's lad; Tannahill, the weaver; Allan Ramsay, the peruke-maker; Cooper, the shoemaker; and Critchley Prince, the factory-worker; but greater than these was Shakespeare, though all were of humble origin. France too has had its uneducated poets.
Some of the greatest geniuses among working men, such as Burns, Tannahill, and Chatterton, though they achieved fame, and though they have enriched the world with many touching and beautiful works, must be considered to have missed success in life, so far as their own happiness was concerned, by their unsteadiness, want of self-control, or lack of fixed principle.
Unlike him, he had a vulgar taste in letters; scarce flying higher than the story papers; probably finding no difference, certainly seeking none, between Tannahill and Burns; his noblest thoughts, whether of poetry or music, adequately embodied in that somewhat obvious ditty, "Will ye gang, lassie, gang To the braes o' Balquidder."
Nearer and dearer to hearts like ours was the Ettrick Shepherd, then in his full tide of song and story; but nearer and dearer still than he, or any living songster, was our ill-fated fellow-craftsman Tannahill. Poor weaver chiel! what we owe to you! your "Braes of Balquidder," and "Yon Burnside," and "Gloomy Winter," and the "Minstrel's" wailing ditty, and the noble "Gleneiffer."
Tannahill, like Cunningham in humble circumstances originally, never became more than a weaver. His verse has not the gusto of Allan or of Hogg, but is sweet and tender enough. He was a Conservative journalist, an antiquary of some mark, and a useful editor of Minstrelsy.
William Black, the father of the future pioneer and evangelist, was born in 1727, in Paisley, Scotland, a large manufacturing town noted for its shawls, great preachers, and the birthplace of Tannahill, the poet. He came of an independent family, as learned from the fact that his father kept a pack of hounds, and spent his leisure in the chase.
The Countess of Loudoun in her youth chose for her husband Earl Moira, one of the plainest-looking and most gallant officers in the British army. The parting shortly after their marriage, in order that he might rejoin his regiment on active service, was the occasion of the popular Scotch song, by Tannahill, "Bonnie Loudoun's woods and braes."
Unlike him, he had a vulgar taste in letters; scarce flying higher than the story papers; probably finding no difference, certainly seeking none, between Tannahill and Burns; his noblest thoughts, whether of poetry or music, adequately embodied in that somewhat obvious ditty,
This is unfortunate, perhaps, for the world; for we question whether a man of talents in anywise to be compared with those of the Ettrick Shepherd has followed in the footsteps of Burns. Poor Tannahill, whose sad story is but too well known, perished early, at the age of thirty-six, leaving behind him a good many pretty love-songs of no great intrinsic value, if the specimens of them given in Mr.
From the weaver class have sprung Simson the mathematician, Bacon the sculptor, the two Milners, Adam Walker, John Foster, Wilson the ornithologist, Dr. Livingstone the missionary traveller, and Tannahill the poet.
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