Author: Thomson, James
Biography:
THOMSON, James (c. 1763-1832: Edwards)
Known as “the Kinleith Bard.” His name is relatively common in Scotland but he may be the James Thomson who was baptised in Colinton, Edinburgh, on 8 Mar. 1762, son of George Thomson and his wife Julianna King. Because of his parents' poverty he was sent in early infancy to live with his maternal grandfather, a weaver in Kinleith near Edinburgh. He attended the local school but was withdrawn and educated at home when he contracted smallpox. He worked as a herder before beginning an apprenticeship as a weaver at the age of thirteen. Thomson read poetry and began composing verse in his head while he worked. He married (wife’s name unknown) and had eight or nine children (the only son, James, died at fifteen); the family briefly lived in Colinton but soon returned to Kinleith where he was valued locally as a musician, poet, barber, and for his skills at bloodletting. His cottage was known as Mount Parnassus. Thomson died at home on 6 May 1832. He was a popular writer whose books have lengthy subscription lists; the account of his life which prefaces his Poems, in the Scottish Dialect was written by George Maclaurin (q.v.) (Colin Maclaurin, q.v., was a subscriber). Thomson’s Poem, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, on Raising and Selling the Dead is based on an incident of bodysnatching that he witnessed and is dedicated to William Currie, Officer of Excise. Archibald Constable reissued his poems in 1894. (D. H. Edwards, Modern Scottish Poets vol. 15; Goodridge; ancestry.co.uk 19 Nov. 2020, 27 Dec. 2024; Border Magazine 2.8 [June 1832], 48) SR