| The Famous Tay Whale | |
|---|---|
| by William Topaz McGonagall | |
| Country | Scotland |
| Language | English |
| Subject(s) | Tay Whale |
| Publication date | 1884 |
"The Famous Tay Whale" is a poem [1] by William Topaz McGonagall about the Tay Whale, also known as the Monster, a humpback whale hunted and killed in 1883 in the Firth of Tay near Dundee, Scotland, then the country's main whaling port. The doggerel verse is famous for lacking poetic quality.
The Tay Whale came to public prominence when it was subject to a public dissection by the anatomist Sir John Struthers and taken on a tour of Scotland and England by a showman, John Woods. Its skeleton is now held by the McManus Galleries in Dundee city centre. [2] [1]
The 56-line poem is broken into 14 four-line stanzas with irregular rhyming schemes, however the majority of the stanzas follow the AABB or AAAA scheme. No consistent scheme or pattern is used throughout the poem. The poem narrates the story of the whale's arrival ("’Twas in the month of December, and in the year 1883, That a monster whale came to Dundee,"), hunt ("And they laughed and grinned just like wild baboons, While they fired at him their sharp harpoons"), and eventual demise, capture, and exhibition.
Paul Godfrey described McGonagall on the strength of the Tay Whale and other verse as "the worst poet in the English language". [3]
The poet and essayist Hugh MacDiarmid wrote of the Tay Whale that "what this [the verses about John Wood and the Tay Whale] amounts to, of course, is simply what quite uneducated and stupid people—the two adjectives by no means necessarily go together, for many uneducated people have great vitality and a raciness of utterance altogether lacking here—would produce if asked to recount something they had read in a newspaper." [4] MacDiarmid continued that "in their retailings of, or comments upon, such matters, hoi polloi would also reflect their personal feelings, as is done here, by the tritest of emotional exclamations." [4]
McGonagall's poem was set to music by the composer Mátyás Seiber in 1958. The premiere performance of this work – scored for orchestra, foghorn, espresso coffee machine and narrator – took place at the second of the humorous [5] composer Gerard Hoffnung's music festivals, with Edith Evans in the role of the narrator. [6] In 2013, the poem was scored for two SATB choirs by Finnish composer Jaakko Mäntyjärvi in a commission for the Yale Glee Club and Princeton Glee Club's centennial pre-football game concert. [7]
Dundee is Scotland's fourth-largest city and the 51st-most-populous built-up area in the United Kingdom. The mid-year population estimate for 2016 was 148,210, giving Dundee a population density of 2,478/km2 or 6,420/sq mi, the second-highest in Scotland. It lies within the eastern central Lowlands on the north bank of the Firth of Tay, which feeds into the North Sea. Under the name of Dundee City, it forms one of the 32 council areas used for local government in Scotland.
William Topaz McGonagall was a Scottish poet of Irish descent. He gained notoriety as an extremely bad poet who exhibited no recognition of, or concern for, his peers' opinions of his work.
The River Tay is the longest river in Scotland and the seventh-longest in Great Britain. The Tay originates in western Scotland on the slopes of Ben Lui, then flows easterly across the Highlands, through Loch Dochart, Loch Iubhair and Loch Tay, then continues east through Strathtay, in the centre of Scotland, then southeasterly through Perth, where it becomes tidal, to its mouth at the Firth of Tay, south of Dundee. It is the largest river in the British Isles by measured discharge. Its catchment is approximately 2,000 square miles, the Tweed's is 1,500 sq mi (3,900 km2) and the Spey's is 1,097 sq mi (2,840 km2).
Doggerel, or doggrel, is poetry that is irregular in rhythm and in rhyme, often deliberately for burlesque or comic effect. Alternatively, it can mean verse which has a monotonous rhythm, easy rhyme, and cheap or trivial meaning.
"The Tay Bridge Disaster" is a poem written in 1880 by the Scottish poet William McGonagall, who has been recognized as the worst poet in history. The poem recounts the events of the evening of 28 December 1879, when, during a severe gale, the Tay Rail Bridge at Dundee collapsed as a train was passing over it with the loss of all on board. The number of deaths was actually 75, not 90 as stated in the poem. The foundations of the bridge were not removed and are alongside the newer bridge.
Modernist poetry in English started in the early years of the 20th century with the appearance of the Imagists. In common with many other modernists, these poets wrote in reaction to the perceived excesses of Victorian poetry, with its emphasis on traditional formalism and ornate diction. In many respects, their criticism echoes what William Wordsworth wrote in Preface to Lyrical Ballads to instigate the Romantic movement in British poetry over a century earlier, criticising the gauche and pompous school which then pervaded, and seeking to bring poetry to the layman.
Bonnie Dundee is the title of a poem and a song written by Walter Scott in 1825 in honour of John Graham, 7th Laird of Claverhouse, who was created 1st Viscount Dundee in November 1688, then in 1689 led a Jacobite rising in which he died, becoming a Jacobite hero.
A virelai is a form of medieval French verse used often in poetry and music. It is one of the three formes fixes and was one of the most common verse forms set to music in Europe from the late thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries.
Sir Alexander Gray was a Scottish civil servant, economist, academic, translator, writer and poet.
Professor Duncan Munro Glen was a Scottish poet, literary editor and Emeritus Professor of Visual Communication at Nottingham Trent University. He became known with his first full-length book, Hugh MacDiarmid and the Scottish Renaissance. His many verse collections included from Kythings and other poems (1969), In Appearances (1971), Realities Poems (1980), Selected Poems 1965–1990 (1991), Selected New Poems 1987–1996 (1998) and Collected Poems 1965–2005 (2006). His Autobiography of a Poet appeared with Ramsay Head Press in 1986. He edited Akros magazine for 51 numbers from August 1965 to October 1983. His work to promote Scottish poets and artists included Hugh MacDiarmid and Ian Hamilton Finlay, among others. Some of his poetry was translated into Italian.
Clan MacThomas is a Highland Scottish clan and is a member of the Clan Chattan.
Dundee is the fourth-largest city in Scotland with a population of around 150,000 people. It is situated on the north bank of the Firth of Tay on the east coast of the Central Lowlands of Scotland. The Dundee area has been settled since the Mesolithic with evidence of Pictish habitation beginning in the Iron Age. During the Medieval Era the city became a prominent trading port and was the site of many battles. Throughout the Industrial Revolution, the local jute industry caused the city to grow rapidly. In this period, Dundee also gained prominence due to its marmalade industry and its journalism, giving Dundee its epithet as the city of "jute, jam and journalism".
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
The Tay Whale, known locally as the Monster, was a humpback whale that swam into the Firth of Tay of eastern Scotland in 1883. It was harpooned in a hunt, but escaped, and was found floating dead off Stonehaven a week later. It was towed into Dundee by a showman, John Woods, and exhibited on a train tour of Scotland and England.
Events from the year 1934 in Scotland.
Events from the year 1878 in Scotland.
Scots-language literature is literature, including poetry, prose and drama, written in the Scots language in its many forms and derivatives. Middle Scots became the dominant language of Scotland in the late Middle Ages. The first surviving major text in Scots literature is John Barbour's Brus (1375). Some ballads may date back to the thirteenth century, but were not recorded until the eighteenth century. In the early fifteenth century Scots historical works included Andrew of Wyntoun's verse Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland and Blind Harry's The Wallace. Much Middle Scots literature was produced by makars, poets with links to the royal court, which included James I, who wrote the extended poem The Kingis Quair. Writers such as William Dunbar, Robert Henryson, Walter Kennedy and Gavin Douglas have been seen as creating a golden age in Scottish poetry. In the late fifteenth century, Scots prose also began to develop as a genre. The first complete surviving work is John Ireland's The Meroure of Wyssdome (1490). There were also prose translations of French books of chivalry that survive from the 1450s. The landmark work in the reign of James IV was Gavin Douglas's version of Virgil's Aeneid.
The first evidence for whaling in Scotland is from Bronze Age settlements where whalebones were used for constructing and decorating dwelling places. Commercial whaling started in the Middle Ages, and by the 1750s most Scottish ports were whaling, with the Edinburgh Whale-Fishing Company being founded in 1749. The last company still engaged in whaling was Christian Salvesen, which exited the industry in 1963.
The Oscar was a whaling ship that was wrecked near Aberdeen, Scotland, on 1 April 1813. It was so close to the shore that families helplessly watched the ship's men struggle and drown, a few yards from safety. This disaster led to community funding for the bereaved families and is known in poem and art. It resulted in changes to bring safety in a new lighthouse for the headland, and a street in Torry was named Oscar Road.
The Boy in the Train is a poem written in Scots, by Mary Campbell (Edgar) Smith (1869-1960), first published in 1913. It is featured in many anthologies of Scottish verse, texts related to railway history, and is routinely quoted when discussing linoleum, and the history of the Scottish town Kirkcaldy. It is a popular poem in Scottish culture, often being a children’s party piece, and "recited by generations of primary school children". The crime-writer Val McDermid, who was born in Kirkcaldy, has said "As school kids we all had to learn The Boy in the Train".
The full text of The Famous Tay Whale at Wikisource