Prepared for the 1875 Edition.
DEATH.
We have heard and read so many different accounts of the melancholy death of the Poet, that it will be a difficult matter to relate the event without contradicting one biographer or other. We shall condense all the statements as truthfully as possible. Our whole aim in connection with the present edition is to relate facts. The Poet, it will be observed from our preceding remarks, was sinking under constitutional disease, and the symptoms of aberration of mind were developing. His mental strength had been overworked, and his mind, like a musical chord brought to its fullest tension, was ready to snap. His fine feelings ere overcome by unjust criticism, and the sensibility his nature overwhelmed with captious remarks. Both diseases were rapidly increasing, and his reason hung like the beam trembling in the balance. His relations observed the progress of the physical disease, but they were loth to believe he was suffering from a disorder the most calamitous that can afflict the human race.
Either shortly before or after the arrival of the Poet from Glasgow, his two brothers, James and Matthew, called at their mother's house in Queen Street to enquire for their brother, who in the meantime had retired to rest. The eldest son of his youngest brother Andrew, a boy about nine years'of age, had been the Poet's bedfellow for some time. The brothers remained two or three hours; and Mrs. Tannahill, after listening at Robert's bed, and hearing him breathing as in a sound sleep, advised her two sons to go home to their families, and she would attend to him herself. They acted on her advice, and she lay down on her bed, as she required a little rest, and unconsciously fell into a drowsy state. Hearing a little noise, she immediately arose and went to the Poet's bed; and discovering it to be empty, she instantly sent for her two sons, James and Matthew, and also for Peter Burnet, a familiar friend and attendant on all occasions. (A full description of Black Peter is given by Mr. Semple in the previous edition.) The three met and resolved that each of them should take different courses to find the poet. Burnet went down Queen Street into George Street, where the police night-watchman informed him he had seen a small-sized man hurrying from Queen Street, crossing George Street going westward. Burnet then made for Brediland Road, and soon found the Poet's coat and silver watch on the south side of the culvert of Candren Burn, an inverted stone syphon under the Canal. The instruments of the Humane Society were procured, and the body was lifted therefrom. (This Society was instituted in 1806). The Poet left his mother's house about 3 o'clock, and his remains were lying on the bier in the same house by 5 o'clock in the morning of Thursday, 17th May, 1810. Before eight o'clock the sad intelligence had spread over the whole town, and in every street small groups were congregated talking over the melancholy occurrence. The Poet being so well known and esteemed by his fellow-townsmen, his death caused an unusually sad impression on the inhabitants. In the Glasgow Courier of Saturday the 19th, and Glasgow Herald of Monday, 21st May, 1810, the following paragraph appeared: “Thursday morning a young man was found in a linn in the Cart a little above Paisley. Some of his clothes were found near the spot, which led to the discovery of the melancholy circumstance.” This paragraph is a mistake so far as a linn in the Cart is concerned, and the mis-statement has led to many mistakes and acrimonious discussions.
The day after the Poet's decease, John Morton, an acquaintance of the Tannahills, made a sketch of the features of the deceased, which we will notice in a short biography of that individual.
THE FUNERAL.
In these days, before Science had spread among the people, they drew no distinction between bodily and mental disease, and applied one inflexible rule of judgment upon the acts of the sane and insane. Mr. James Tannahill—see the previous edition for information regarding Mr. James Tannahill—the eldest brother then living, a very sensible person, resolved, in the circumstances of the case, to have the funeral as privately as possible, and invited only near relatives to attend—no invitations being sent to any of the deceased's acquaintances. The funeral took place on Monday, 21st May, 1810—the Rev. John M‘Dermid, minister of the West Relief Church, Paisley, officiating as chaplain. The acquaintances of TANNAHILL, however, met in the house of William Stuart, No. 7 Cross Street, in the neighbourhood of No. 6 Queen Street, and when the mourning relatives moved in the funeral procession, the acquaintances fell in behind. The interment took place in the lair, No. 366 of the West Relief (now the United Presbyterian Church) burying-ground, Canal Street.
We conclude the biography with the following natal, nuptial, and obituary table of the TANNAHILL FAMILY :—
