war, empire, slavery: radicalism in the work of robert tannahill

© 2008 The AuthorJournal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Literature Compass 5/3 (2008): 565–576, 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00542.x

War, Empire, Slavery: Radicalism in the Work of Robert Tannahill

Jim Ferguson*University of Glasgow

AbstractThis essay was runner-up in the 2007 Literature Compass Graduate EssayPrize, Romanticism Section.This essay surveys the political content of the poetry and song of Paisley weaver-poet Robert Tannahill (1774–1810). The argument is that most nineteenth-centurycommentators ignored the political content of Tannahill’s work by presentinghim primarily as a poet of nature. It looks at Tannahill’s view of the war withFrance; his expression of anti-imperialist and anti-slavery outlooks in his poem,‘Lines on The Pleasures of Hope’, dedicated to Glasgow-born Whig poet, ThomasCampbell. The broad democratic-humanism of Tannahill’s song lyric, ‘Why Uniteto Banish Care’ is also analysed to reveal a poet who felt deeply about politicaland social justice during the early Romantic period.

Robert Tannahill was born in Paisley, Scotland, in June 1774 and drownedhimself there in May 1810. All of his adult life he worked as a weaver butin his last twelve years he wrote over seventy poems, one hundred songsand a play. Tannahill is probably best known for his song ‘The Braes o’Balquither’. It has mutated over the years into ‘The Wild Mountain Thyme’having ‘passed through the hands’ of many other singers and folk songcollectors – Tannahill’s opening lines are ‘Let us go, lassie go / Tae the Braeso’ Balquhither’ and his final stanza contains the phrase ‘wild mountainthyme’. It became ‘Will ye go, Lassie go’ or ‘The Wild Mountain Thyme’at the hands of Francis McPeake of Belfast and was recorded by his familyin the 1950s. An interesting comparison can be made between the lyric ofFrancis McPeake and that of Tannahill. This is Tannahill’s second stanza:

I will twine thee a bower,By the clear siller fountain,And I’ll cover it o’erWi’ the flowers o’ the mountain;I will range through the wilds,And the deep glens sae dreary,And return wi’ their spoils,To the bower o’ my deary. (Poems, Songs and Correspondence 238)

566 War, Empire, Slavery

© 2008 The Author Literature Compass 5/3 (2008): 565–576, 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00542.xJournal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

And this is Francis McPeake’s written in 1947:

I will build my love a towerNear yon cool crystal fountain;And on it I will placeAll the flowers of the mountain.Will ye go lassie go?And we’ll all go together,To pluck wild mountain thymeAll around the bloomin’ heather.Will ye go lassie go?

It is in this incarnation that the song is currently popular and that itremains so is a reflection of the strength of Tannahill’s version. Given thatthe locality the lyric refers to is the burial place of Rob Roy McGregor(1671–1734), it is possible that the tune goes back some time before 1740.Tannahill’s lines are suggestive of McGregor’s life so it is possible Tannahillhad him in mind when he wrote:

I will range through the wilds,An’ the deep glens sae dreary,

An’ return wi’ their spoils,Tae the bow’r o’ my deary. (238)

According to the Scottish folk song collector Jack Campin an earlier lyric,very different from Tannahill’s, was published by John Hamilton in 24Scots Songs in 1796.1 Robert Burns put the lyric ‘Peggy Allison’ to thetune and later R. A. Smith modified the tune in the light of Tannahill’slyric, giving the modified tune the title, ‘The Three Carles o’ Buchanan’.

Hamish Henderson has hinted at the political nature of this type ofpastoral song lyric:

‘The Braes o’ Balquhidder’ is Tannahill’s contribution to a well-establishedgenre in European folk-song. It is the call of the town-bred boy to his girl tohave a country holiday, and enjoy sex and scenery ‘where glad innocencereigns’. The best of these songs have a wonderful and often poignant lyricfreshness – especially those composed at the time the Industrial Revolutionwas turning many of our towns into smoky hell-holes. (281)

Throughout the nineteenth century Tannahill was categorised as a writerof ideologically neutral pastoral songs in which he brought scenes fromnature and the Scottish countryside to life by virtue of his delicate lyrics.Other aspects of his work have been almost totally ignored in terms ofcritical engagement.2 There are strong political threads running throughmuch of his poetry, his play (entitled The Soldier’s Return) and his songs.He often considers the issues of war, slavery and patronage; he alsoespouses a consistent philosophical view (derived in part from Burns)which attacks the over valuing of wealth and power in comparison withthe worth of human beings. Tannahill was consistently critical of merchants,the wealthy and inhuman practices he seen as connected to the expansion


War, Empire, Slavery 567

of capitalism. He saw relationships between empire and war, and thatthese were also related to the new emphasis on the cash nexus as adeterminant of human relationships. In this sense he took a view of theworld that was far more radical than the picture painted of him as aneutral pastoral lyricist.

Key to much of Tannahill’s work was his response to the wars withRevolutionary and Napoleonic France (1793–1815). Like Thomas Paine,Tannahill saw war as a ‘system’ and empire, whether Napoleonic or British,as based on the maintenance of a state of perpetual war.3 He was cynicalwith regard to the peace negotiations entered into by the short-livedWhig administration in 1806. In August that year he wrote to his friendJames King: ‘it is hard to say what we may expect from the presentnegotiations not knowing whether they wish peace at all, or if it is somepolitical shuffle’ (3 August 1806, MS 582 fol. 681). The war with Francethrew up of huge amount of poetry and song in Scotland and Britain. Muchof this writing was highly patriotic and virulently anti-French. WhileTannahill was prone to moments of anti-Napoleonic sentiment his responseto the war was complex and thoughtful. In writing about the war withFrance he chose to concentrate on the abstract problem of war rather thanopenly take sides. Nevertheless, there is enough evidence in Tannahill’sextant writing to suggest that he opposed the war with France, even ifthat opposition was expressed in a circumscribed manner by which heavoided the charge of traitor and the disapproval of ‘worthies’ both localand national: ‘To oppose the war was to subject oneself to accusations oftreason and the violence of “Church and King” mobs’ (Bennett 23).

Tannahill’s clearest statement on the Napoleonic wars is probably thatgiven in his ‘Epistle’ of 14 March 1808, addressed to the poet and weaverRobert Allan of Kilbarchan:

How fares my worthy friend, the Bard?Be peace and honour his reward,May every ill that gars us fyke,Ill webs, toom pouches and sic like,And ought that would his spirit bend,Be ten miles distant from my friend.Alas! this wicked endless War,Rul’d by some vile, malignant star,Has sunk poor Britain low indeed,Has robb’d Industry o’ her bread,And dash’d the sair-won cog o’ crowdy,Frae mony an honest eident body,While genius dying thro’ neglect,Sinks down amidst the general wreck.

Just like twa cats tied tail to tail,They worry at it tooth and nail,They girn, they bite in deadly wrath,And what is’t for? for nought in faith! (MS Robertson 1/13)



The ‘wicked endless war’ has been going on much too long for no goodcause and the best that can be done is to live as peacefully as one can ata personal level.

Tannahill’s attitude to British party politics is not made explicit in hiswork but there is no reason to suggest it differs from his well-documentedmistrust of authority, whether in the form of the mercantile class, theKing, the church or patrons. Indeed, his position with regard to patronagewas one of the few cases where he was unambiguously clear and consistentin his rejection of it:

Rich Gripus pretends he’s my patron and friend,That at all times to serve me he’s willing,

But he looks down so sour on the suppliant poor,That I’d starve ere I’d ask him one shilling. (Soldier’s Return 139)

Elsewhere he writes:

Besides I never had an itchin’To slake about a great man’s kitchen,An’ like a spaniel, lick his dishes,An’ come an’ gang just to his wishes; (106)

For Tannahill, the war has by 1808 become driven by the imperial ambitionsof France and Britain, and is only of benefit to those in positions of power.Astonishingly, as he continues his ‘Epistle to Robert Allan’ from the line,‘And what is’t for? for nought in faith!’, Tannahill argues that Britain facesevery prospect of being defeated by Napoleon and would be betterwithdrawing from war in Europe:

But Lourie’s [France is] raised to sic degree,John [Britain] would be wise to let him be;Else aiblins, as he’s wearin’ aul’,Frank yet may tear him spawl fae spawl,For wi’ the mony chirts he’s gotten,I fear his constitution’s rotten.

The final couplet above is difficult to decipher; whether this is referringto Britain’s ( John Bull’s) unwritten constitution as defined in 1688 orto the French Civil Code (Napoleonic Code) is impossible to tell.‘Chirts’ could mean charts, which fails to throw clearer light on themeaning, or it could mean hugs, squeezes or being squirted upon. Ifchirts means squeezes then it could mean that France has squeezedBritain so hard that the British constitutional settlement is worthless,and this would chime somewhat with the use of the phrase ‘spawl fraespawl’ (limb from limb) as an extended metaphor regarding the physicalstate of John Bull’s body. We are then given the following short stanzawhere Tannahill makes no distinction between any of the warringparties in Europe and it must be assumed that Britain is includedamongst these ‘bullying’ parties:



But while the bullying blades o’ EuropeAre boxing ither to a syrup,Let’s mind oursel’s as weel’s we can,An live in peace, like man and man,An’ no cast out and fecht like brutes,Without a cause for our disputes. (Letter to Robert Allan, MS Robertson 1/13)

This suggests that Tannahill saw the war as a conflict with no benefits forthe majority of Europeans. The effects of war and blockade were alsodestabilising to the weaving economy, giving Tannahill an economic reasonfor his anti-war standpoint as suggested by the earlier line, ‘Ill webs, toompouches and sic like’.

***The campaign for the abolition of slavery was ongoing during Tannahill’slifetime. He took an abolitionist position and, as he did with war, linkedthe issue of slavery with empire. In 1805 Tannahill wrote an appreciationof Thomas Campbell’s Pleasures of Hope addressing these issues. ThoughThe Pleasures of Hope is extremely long, it was a poem which made bothan impression and Campbell’s reputation:

‘The rapture of April, 1799’, says a writer in the Quarterly Review, ‘on the firstappearance of The Pleasures of Hope, was very natural. Burns had lately died.Cowper was sunk in hopeless insanity, soon to be released. . . . The momentwas fortunate’. (24)

In stark contrast to Campbell’s epic, Tannahill’s poem runs to only twostanzas:

Lines,on the ‘PLEASURES OF HOPE’

How seldom ‘tis the Poet’s happy lotT’ inspire his readers with the fire he wrote:To strike those chords that wake the latent thrill,And wind the willing passions to his will.Yes, Campbell, sure that happy lot is thine,With fit expression – rich from Nature’s mine –Like old Timotheus, skilful plac’d on high,To rouse revenge, or soothe to sympathy.Blest Bard! who chose no paltry, local theme,Kind Hope through wide creation is the same.

Yes, Afric’s sons shall one day burst their chains,Will read thy lines and bless thee for thy pains;Fame yet shall waft thy name to India’s shore,Where, next to Brahma, thee they will adore;And Hist’ry’s page, exulting in thy praise,Will proudly hand thee down to future days:Detraction foil’d, reluctant quits her grip,And carping Envy silent bites her lip. (Soldier’s Return 99)



What we see in Tannahill’s ‘Lines’ is not only an admirer of Campbellbut someone open to radical ideas. He strongly approves of the generalhumanitarian principles and internationalism of outlook to which Campbellgave voice. It is interesting that Tannahill penned his ‘Lines, On ThePleasures of Hope’ in 1805, the same year that his friend William McLarenmade his passionate, anti-imperialist speech at the first meeting of thePaisley Burns Club. Campbell is a ‘Blest Bard! who chose no paltry, localtheme’, and McLaren in his address to the Burns Club describes imperialistsas ‘rich with the spoils of a ravaged country, and clotted with the bloodof an innocent people’ (M. E. Brown 41). So while the Paisley BurnsClub was a ‘local’ organisation, McLaren made clear its commitment toa Burnsian conception of mankind the world over being brothers. Although,as Tannahill argues in his poem of appreciation for Campbell, ‘Afric’s sons’have not yet ‘burst their chains’, Tannahill’s ‘Lines’ are in thorough agreementwith Campbell’s sentiments in The Pleasures of Hope in its totality. Tannahillagreed with Campbell’s view of European imperialist polices in Africa andIndia as having dire consequences for the inhabitants of these continents.Campbell singles out the Congo as the location of particularly shamefulacts, and even today that country is robbed of its resources and many of itspeople enslaved.4 Both Campbell and Tannahill are making bold politicalstatements, there is nothing ‘muted’ here.5 Campbell states:

Did peace descend, to triumph and to save,When freeborn Britons crossed the Indian wave?Ah, no! – to more than Rome’s ambition true,The Nurse of Freedom gave it not to you!She the bold route of Europe’s guilt began,And, in the march of nations, led the van! (120)

Tannahill gives Campbell his full, unequivocal, support. The lines ‘AndHist’ry’s page, exulting in thy praise / Will proudly hand thee down tofuture days’, are of great significance because they highlight the fact thatthe whole of stanza two envisages a ‘future’ free from British imperialismfor both India and Africa. To argue for such a future at a time when thehistorical trajectory of British capitalism was to seek a replacement for thelost American colonies and expand the empire is nothing other thanradical. Subsequent key strands of British identity were formed out of theearly nineteenth-century colonial experience and for Tannahill to challengethe future of the British empire was to challenge that historical pathway.Regardless of how circumspect Tannahill may be in his use of Campbellas a figure through which to express a future free of imperialism and slavery,it is a bold and radical act to imagine such a future. Tannahill’s argumenthere (echoing Campbell) moves beyond the sentimental disapproval of theAfrican slave trade very common in the poetry of the time, and makes aconnection between the circumstances of Africa and India, suggesting thatthese continents are entitled to run their own affairs. To say ‘Afric’s sons



shall one day burst their chains’ is highly significant for a poet who wasan intensely local writer. It is to recognise that human beings in onelocality are entitled to the same rights as those in another locality. Hisstatement that ‘Hope through wide creation is the same’ is confirmationof this. Regardless of whether one lived in Africa, India, Europe or theAmericas, ‘Hope’ was seen by Tannahill as a positive force with which todeal with life’s travails at close quarters and was equally distributedthroughout humanity as a quality that could lead to social change. Therewere slaves of African origin dispersed throughout the world and Indiawas largely under the economic and political control of the British. ‘KindHope’ could help folk in India and Africa, indeed those living underslavery anywhere, imagine a different and better future for themselves, justas it could for Campbell and Tannahill. Although slave-owning had beenmade illegal by Court of Session ruling in Scotland in 1778, the trade inslaves was legal when Tannahill wrote ‘Lines on The Pleasures of Hope’in 1805. And while slavery was abolished in Britain in 1807 the strugglefor its ultimate abolition continues, making it difficult to argue withCampbell or Tannahill on the need for ‘Hope’ as a precious emotionaland spiritual resource that can help us ‘burst’ the ‘chains’ of slavery.

Tannahill’s printer Stephen Young (1807 edition), printed an anti-slaverytract in 1804.6 Written by Reformed Presbyterian Pastor AlexanderM’Leod, resident in New York, it is unequivocally anti-slavery but engagesin arcane theological and some humanist philosophical arguments. I donot think this approach could have held the popular imagination inanything like the way a song or poem can, and like ‘Peter Pindar’ (DrWolcot) and Cowper, Tannahill put his ‘Lines’ forward in a forthrightmanner in the cause of human progress.

By this time a fairly large body of anti-slavery poetry had been writtenand published. Cowper’s popular and powerful ‘The Negro’s Complaint’had been in circulation for almost twenty years: ‘with his other anti-slaveryballads it was set to music and sung in the streets’ (Richardson 4:74).Pindar’s ‘Azid’ was published in the Scots Magazine of August 1795 and iswritten in a quasi-Creole style. It would be extremely surprising ifTannahill was not aware of these works. Burns, Wordsworth, JamesThompson, William Shenstone, Thomas Moore and numerous othershave contributed lines of poetry and song in the anti-slavery cause: whileanti-slavery poetry is ‘a diverse, complex and nuanced body of work . . .certain themes, images, character types, and narrative trajectories dorecur again and again’ (1:x)7 and in this sense Tannahill is far fromwholly original.

***

The last piece Tannahill is known to have written was ‘Why Unite toBanish Care’. On Thursday 15 May 1810, he left a copy at the house ofcomposer R. A. Smith:



Two days before his death he showed me several poetical pieces of a moststrange texture, and in the afternoon of the same day he called on me again,requesting me to return him a song that had been left for my perusal. I hadlaid it past in a music book and was unable to find it at the time. It was hislast production and he seemed to be much disappointed when, after a longsearch, I could not procure it for him. (xl)

Original SongAir – – ‘Sons of Momus’Why unite to banish Care?Let him come our joys to share;Doubly blest our cup shall flow,When it soothes a brother’s wo;’Twas for this the pow’rs divineCrown’d our board with generous wine.

Far be hence the sordid elfWho’d claim enjoyment for himself;Come the hardy seaman, lame,The gallant soldier, robb’d of fame;Welcome all who bear the woesOf various kind, that merit knows

Patriot heroes, doom’d to sigh,Idle ‘neath Corruption’s eye;Honest tradesmen, credit-worn,Pining under fortune’s scorn;Wanting wealth, or lacking fame,Welcome all that worth can claim

Come, the hoary-headed sage,Suff ’ring more from want than age;Come, the proud, though needy Bard,Starving ‘midst a world’s regard:Welcome, welcome, one and allThat feel, on this unfeeling ball. (MS Robertson 1/51)

This is a highly democratic and humanist lyric: a cry from the heart, inthe name of community and equality. It is one Tannahill’s finest songlyrics and has little to do with the neutral pastoralism so many critics havebeen keen to impose on his work.

It is significant that Tannahill was buried in the cemetery of Paisley’sWest Relief Church. He was not all that keen on church attendance and fromthe evidence given in a letter to James Barr written on Christmas Eve 1809,had a personal preference for the sermons of his acquaintance, minister atPaisley Abbey, Robert Boog: ‘save to hear Mr Boog preach I considerit only an unbefitting passing of time to go to any other of our – no- Ihave gone rather far, and will stop’ (MS Robertson 1/34). Given Tannahill’ssatirical treatment of Kirk Elders and Anti-Burghers in his work, his attendanceat these sermons more than likely reflects his personal knowledge and



respect for Boog as a poet and man of books and learning, rather than aspecific adherence to any particular doctrine of Presbyterianism.

However, the West Relief Church was a venue for radical discussionand they did ‘Welcome, welcome, one and all’ six years after Tannahill’sdeath, when a large meeting was held to discuss the ‘present Distresses ofthe County’. At this meeting Mr J. Wilkinson gave the first speech in adebate that was couched in highly Painite terms:

Let us, my fellow Countrymen, instruct our children in their rights; let usinspire them with the love of sacred liberty – Let us teach them that allprivilege is founded on exclusion; that government originates from, and itsnature ought to be subservient, to the welfare and happiness of the people.

In the same speech Wilkinson lambasted the British press – while paraphrasingPope’s ‘Dunciad’ – for its pro-monarchist and anti-Bonaparte bias:

[W]e hear now from the venal scribblers of the British press only about thedivine right of kings, the liberty of Europe (meaning the freedom from themore generous thraldom of Napoleon,) and their ‘right divine to governmankind wrong’ Legitimate succession, social order, &c . . . (6–7)8

From December 1792 with the publication of the anonymous, anti-Frenchand anti-radical pamphlet, The Paisley Weaver’s Letter to his Neighbours andFellow Tradesmen, there was a concerted campaign in the British press whichconflated the French Revolution with Jacobinism, atheism and treason.Indeed, that same month Isaac Cruikshank (1756–1811) produced hiscartoon, Wha Wants Me?, in which Thomas Paine is depicted as a fontof ‘atheism’, ‘treachery’, ‘misery’, ‘famine’ and other undesirable socialphenomena.9 Both Paine and Thomas Muir were often labelled ‘Jacobins’and traitors in the British press although in fact they sided with theGirondins, against the Jacobins, in their opposition to the death sentenceimposed on Louis XVI.

From the early 1790s until as late as the 1830s, British governmentpropaganda and the press denounced as a ‘Jacobin’ almost anyone whotook a mildly anti-government stance. Throughout Tannahill’s adult lifethose who supported such views as ‘the sovereignty of the people’, electoralreform, lower-taxes, or higher wages for tradesmen, were often labelledas dangerous radicals and traitors in publications such as The Anti-Jacobinand The Glasgow Courier (Wilkinson 6).10 Tannahill’s gentle mocking ofjudges, the King, the uncharitable, the wealthy and the church in hispoetry, and his persistence in writing about (and from the viewpoint of)working people, ordinary soldiers and sailors, and the poor in his songsdoes put him on the side of a progressive, humanist political outlook. Hisabsolute insistence that wealth does not confer on any individual greatervalue as a human being than anybody else and that poverty does notdiminish the value of a human being is, for the particular time he waswriting, a radical insistence upon the principle of equality of humanworth. Whether or not his perseverance with this principle stems from



the influence of writers such as Ramsay, Burns, Pope and Thomas Moore;from Presbyterian radicalism, Painite republicanism, Scottish Enlightenmentphilosophy, or some combination of these, does not really matter. It is anargument for the dignity, human rights and respect for the humanity ofall on this ‘unfeeling ball’. For Tannahill to argue consistently in favourof the principle of equality in his poetry and song at a time when thatprinciple was under enormous attack from the British state highlights hisintegrity as human being and artist. It is fitting that he was buried in May1810, in the churchyard where six years later, Mr J. Wilkinson made hislong forgotten radical speech in support of the welfare of the poor and‘sovereignty of the people’.

Short Biography

Jim Ferguson is a poet and prose writer based in Glasgow, currentlycompleting his Ph.D. thesis on Paisley poet Robert Tannahill at the Universityof Glasgow. His novel Matthew Deen will be published in summer 2008by Word-Power Books. His collection The Art of Catching a Bus and OtherPoems was published by AK Press, (Edinburgh) in 1994.

Notes

* Correspondence address: University of Glasgow, University Avenue, Glasgow G12 8QQ,UK. Email: [email protected].

1 Jack Campin, 17 September 2005 <http://www.csufresno.edu/folklore/Olson/SONGTXT2.HTM#BRAESBAL>. Lyric as published in 1796 given on Campin’s Web site:

The Braes o’ Bowhether.

Now the day’s growin’ lang lass,an’ sweet shines the weather,an’ we’ll owre a’ the hills,to the Braes o’ Bowhether.Amang the Glens an’ Rashy dens,I’ll prize thee without measure,Within my arms, wi’ a’ thy charms,I’ll clasp my lovely treasure,In sweetest Love, our time will move,wi’ mair than earthly pleasure;By the little limpid streams,On the Braes o’ Bowhether.

An’ I’ll ay loe thee dearly,Ilk day wes’ forgather,Syne we’ll row on the fog,By the Braes o’ Bowhether;To Pipe or Flute, when time will suit,We’ll dance like ony feather,An’, skip the knowes where Claver grows,or stray amang the Heather;Ay free frae strife in sic a life,There, weary shall we never,By the limpid little streams,On the Braes o’ Bowhether.

http://www.csufresno.edu/folklore/Olson/SONGTXT2.HTM#BRAESBAL



2 Even as late as 1911 the Tannahill biographer Alexander Reekie argued: ‘The Revolutionsettlement was the last word in British politics, and any amendment of its supposed imperfectionsimplied chaos and the wild inferno of French revolutionary reforms. From all this Tannahillstood aloof; it was not his temperament to meddle with such matters’ (Songs and Poems of RobertTannahill xxxviii).3 Tannahill wrote to his friend James King: ‘I sympathise with you but can administer littleconsolation – I see no end of this war system – however, this much to ballance your presentsituation – The people in Paisley have been so hard-[forc’d] for some years past, that youwould not, even here, find all the happiness that you perhaps imagine’ (4 June 1809, MSRobertson 1/24).4 The mining of Coltan, a mineral which is essential for the electronics industry, has causedmassive environmental damage and human misery in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.The wealth accumulated from Coltan mining has been used to fund armies of whatever kind,and brought slavery to the fore as an everyday practice. See United Nations and Amnestyreports from mid-1990s to the present. ‘Democratic Republic of the Congo’, Amnesty Website, 23 January 2006 <http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engafr620102003>.5 Mary Ellen Brown argues that in most of Tannahill’s poetry ‘Other references to the timesare more muted’ (32). However, there are occasions when the mute comes off, ‘Lines, on ThePleasures of Hope’ being one example. 6 The only edition of Tannahill’s work printed in his lifetime was Soldier’s Return with OtherPoems and Song.7 See also Lee 196–221.8 This pamphlet was published by John Neilson.9 Cruikshank’s cartoon is reproduced on the front cover of Thomas Paine Reader, eds. Foot andKramnick.10 The Glasgow Courier was founded in 1791, later edited by William Motherwell, it wasextremely pro-monarchy and anti-reform. The Anti-Jacobin appeared weekly from 20 November1797 to 7 July 1798 under the editorship of William Gifford; its founder was George Canninga colleague of Pitt’s.

Works Cited

manuscript sources

Tannahill, Robert, Letter to James Barr, 24 December 1809, Glasgow University Library,Special Collections, MS Robertson 1/34.

Tannahill, Robert, Letter to James King, 3 August 1806, National Library of Scotland, MS 582fol. 681.

Tannahill, Robert, Letter to James King, 4 June 1809, Glasgow University Library, SpecialCollections, MS Robertson 1/24.

Tannahill, Robert, Letter to Robert Allan, in verse, 14 March 1808, Glasgow UniversityLibrary, Special Collections, MS Robertson 1/13.

Tannahill, Robert, ‘Original Song’ [‘Why Unite to Banish Care’], Glasgow University Library,Special Collections, MS Robertson 1/51.

other sources

Amnesty, ‘Democratic Republic of the Congo’. 23 January 2006 <http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engafr620102003>.

Anonymous, The Paisley Weaver’s Letter to his Neighbours and Fellow Tradesmen. Paisley(?), 20December 1792.

Bennett, Betty, ed. British War Poetry in the Age of Romanticism: 1793–1815. New York, NY:Garland, 1976.

Brown, Mary Ellen. ‘Robert Tannahill as a Local Poet’, The Paisley Poets: A Critical Reappraisal

http://web.amnesty.org

http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engafr620102003



of Their Work and Reputation. Eds. Stuart James and Gordon McCrae. Paisley: University ofPaisley Library, 1993. 25–36.

Brown, Robert. Paisley Burns Clubs. Paisley, 1893.Campbell, Thomas. The Complete Poetic Works of Thomas Campbell. Ed. Epes Sargent. Boston,

MA, 1859.Campin, Jack, More Scarce Songs. 17 September 2005 <http://www.csufresno.edu/folklore/Olson/

SONGTXT2.HTM#BRAESBAL>.Henderson, Hamish. Alias MacAlias. Edinburgh: Polygon, 1992.Lee, Debbie. Slavery and the Romantic Imagination. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania,

2002.M’Leod, Alexander. Negro Slavery-Unjustifiable. Glasgow, 1804.Paine, Thomas. The Thomas Paine Reader. Eds. M. Foot and I. Kramnick. London: Penguin

Classics, 1987.Richardson, Alan, ed. Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation. Vol. 4. London: Pickering and Chatto,

1999.Smith, R. A. Cited in ‘Essay on the Poets of Renfrewshire’. The Harp of Renfrewshire. Ed.

W. Motherwell. Glasgow, 1820. xxxvi–xxxvii.Tannahill, Robert. Poems, Songs and Correspondence of Robert Tannahill: With Life and Notes. Ed.

David Semple. Paisley, 1876.Tannahill, Robert. The Soldier’s Return: A Scottish Interlude in Two Acts; with Other Poems and

Songs, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. Paisley, 1807.Tannahill, Robert. The Songs and Poems of Robert Tannahill. Ed. Alexander Reekie. Paisley, 1911.Wilkinson, J. Report of the Meeting, Held in the Relief Church, Paisley, On Saturday 5th October,

1816, To Consider the Present Distresses of the County, their Causes, and Probable Remedies.Paisley, 1816.

http://www.csufresno.edu/folklore/Olson/SONGTXT2.HTM#BRAESBAL

war, empire, slavery: radicalism in the work of robert tannahill

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