Author: Muir, William
Biography:
MUIR, William (1766-1817: Poems on Various Subjects)
Known as “the Campsie Poet,” he was born at Birdston, Stirlingshire, to John Muir and his wife Mary (Buchanan). He attended school at Kirkintilloch before being sent to work at a haberdashery in Trongate, Glasgow. City life did not suit him and he returned home where, in 1782, he was apprenticed to a merchant and saddler in Kirkintilloch. At the end of his apprenticeship, financial reasons obliged him to work first in Glasgow (1787-91) and then in London. Although he successfully found employment and friends in London, he became unwell and returned to Scotland. When his health recovered, he worked as a saddler in Glasgow before opening his own saddlery in Falkirk. This venture was not successful; Muir was not suited to running a business and suffered from “enervating melancholy” which was exacerbated on the death of his father in 1808. (His mother had died when Muir was a boy and he never married.) Muir died from falling down a staircase on a visit to a friend and was buried in the churchyard at Campsie where a monument was erected by admirers of his poems in 1857. The dedication to Robert Watt of Luggie Bank (Kirkintilloch) in his posthumous Poems on Various Subjects is from his brothers, John and David Muir. M’Donald says that John Struthers (q.v.) wrote the book’s prefatory biographical sketch. (ancestry.co.uk 31 Mar 2020; Hugh M’Donald, Rambles Round Glasgow [1856]; “Notices Biographical,” Poems on Various Subjects) SR