Author: Tannahill, Robert
Biography:
TANNAHILL, Robert (1774-1810: ODNB)
Born at Paisley, he was the fifth of eight children born to Janet (Pollock or Polick) and James Tannahill, a silk gauze weaver. He attended the local school where he began to write verse but at the age of twelve he was apprenticed to a cotton weaver. He subsequently worked at Lochwinnoch, Renfrewshire, and, when trade in Scotland was poor, Bolton in Lancashire. In 1802 he returned to Paisley when his father was dying and he remained there with his widowed mother for the rest of his life. He was said to have composed at his loom using a makeshift desk set up on one side. He published his verse in periodicals, including in the Glasgow Courier. He became secretary of the Paisley Burns Club (William McLaren, q.v., was the president) in 1805 and his poems include three odes to commemorate Burns’ birthday. Befriended by Robert Archibald Smith who wrote the music for many of Tannahill’s songs, he was encouraged to publish his The Soldier’s Return by subscription in 1807 (the ODNB says 1805 but no evidence for an 1805 edition has been found). The book is dedicated to McLaren. In 1810 he sought to issue an enlarged and corrected edition with a more prestigious publisher, Archibald Constable, and was disappointed when the manuscript was returned unopened on the grounds that the firm already had too much work on hand. Tannahill suffered from depression and this dealt a blow from which he did not recover; he drowned himself in the burn near his mother’s house on 17 May 1810. He was buried in Castlehead churchyard, Paisley. (Philip A. Ramsay, ed. The Works of Robert Tannahill [1838]; ODNB 12 Nov. 2020; David Semple, ed. The Poems and Songs of Robert Tannahill [1874])
Other Names:
- Tannahill