Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Robert Tannahill

TANNAHILL, Robert (1774–1810), one of the most popular of the successors of Burns in song-writing, was a weaver in Paisley, where he was born in 1774. He was apprenticed to his father’s trade at the age of twelve, in the year of the first publication of the poems of Burns, which quickened the poetic ambition of so many Scottish youths in humble life. The young apprentice studied and composed poetry as he drove the shuttle to and fro, with shelf and ink-bottle rigged up on his loom-post. Apart from his poetry, he had little variety in his life. He was shy and reserved, of small and delicate physique, and took little part in the vigorous social life of the town, beyond sitting and smoking at a club of local worthies, and occasionally writing humorous verses for their amusement. He had apparently but one love affair, the heroine of which was the original of "Jessie, the Flower of Dunblane." He bade her farewell in indignant rhymes after three years’ courtship. The steady routine of his trade was broken only by occasional excursions to Glasgow and the land of Burns, and a year's trial of work at Bolton. He began in 1805 to contribute verses to Glasgow and Paisley periodicals, and published an edition of his poems by subscription in 1807. Three years later the life of the quiet, gentle, diffident, and despondent poet was brought by his own act to a tragic end. Tannahill’s claims to remembrance rest upon half a dozen songs, full of an exquisite feeling for nature, and so happily wedded to music that their wide popularity in Scotland is likely to be enduring. "Loudon’s Bonnie Woods and Braes," "Jessie, the Flower of Dunblane," and "Gloomy Winter’s Moo Awa" are the best of them.

Tannahill’s centenary was celebrated with great honour at Paisley in 1874; and, in an edition by Mr David Semple, published in 1876, there is an exhaustive and minutely learned account of all that has been preserved concerning the poet, his ancestry, and the occasions of his various poems.