Robert Tannahill (1774 - 1810) was a Scottish poet known as the "Paisley Poet".

A Martial Culture and the Birth of the Modern State

When in 1809 Robert Tannahill wrote to his friend the Renfrewshire Militiaman James King, "I see no end of this war system"; he showed an understanding of the general inability of human beings to resolve serious conflicts embedded within the historical dynamic of our psychological propensity for war. At a more particular level he was focussing on something with a distinctive place in Scottish culture and history. Tannahill was entering the heart of a Scottish political debate although he has not previously been described as a political poet in any sense at all. A fairly lengthy portion of the introduction to William Motherwell's Harp of Renfrewshire is dedicated to discussion of Tannahill's uneventful and even-tenored existence. His heart was wedded to his own home, town, and kindred. Beyond that narrow sphere of humble enjoyment he seldom ventured.

Tannahill's foray into the political appears then a strong and peculiar contradiction but there it is; the sensitive lyric poet goes to the centre of a political controversy with the use of one simple phrase. The reason it did not appear highly political or controversial at the time is because militarism was a central essential of Scottish culture; so everyday that Tannahill's comment would have appeared to most folk as not in the least remarkable. Quite probably most of the residents of Tannahill’s hometown of Paisley thought the same thing. Namely, that Scotland had been involved in the business of war in one way or another for as far back as they could remember and likely nothing was about to happen to change that state of affairs.

At least four socio-ideological forces were interacting in Scotland at the time to produce social tension, civil strife and experience of foreign conflict: these were firstly the martial heritage and tradition of mercenary soldiering (the Scotsman as soldier/hero), secondly the Covenanters (radical Presbyterianism, both pro and anti Union), thirdly Jacobinism (the preservation/restoration of the Steuarts) and finally international, social and class conflicts connected with the new arrangements resulting from the industrial revolution.

From at least the middle of the 16th century up to the present day tensions from one or all of these forces have mingled with pro and anti-English sentiments to manifest themselves in outbursts of differing intensity: from the destruction of Catholic religious icons, to the 1745 Jacobite rising, to the Radical War, to the Battle of George Square, to the Celtic versus Rangers and Scotland versus England football matches. All being events of tense, high drama, passion and conflict centred in the public arena which helped form the cultural consciousness of those who live(d) in Scotland.

In 1698 Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun (1653-1716) wrote:

Whoever is for making the king's power too great or too little is an enemy to the monarchy. But to give him standing armies puts his power beyond controul, and consequently makes him absolute. If the people had any other real security for their liberty than that there be no standing armies in time of peace, there might be some colour to demand them. But if that only remaining security be taken away from the people we have destroyed these monarchies.
Tis pretended, we are in hazard of being invaded by a powerful enemy.

Fletcher was a man of idiosyncratic views and fiery temperament who brought to Scottish letters one of the first studies of the question of the Scottish martial culture and military organisation in a European context. His ideas were an odd mixture of the authoritarian and the anarchistic. He travelled extensively in Europe and his main interests were politics and books. His first foray into political writing was with the publication of A Discourse Concerning Militias and Standing Armies; with relation to the Past and Present Governments of Europe and of England in particular, printed in 1797 as a contribution to debates surrounding the English Standing Army Controversy of 1697-98.

It was reprinted a year later with a shorter title and a more specifically Scottish focus. This work was not only concerned with military matters but wider ideas in political philosophy such as liberty, power, virtue, social organisation and corruption. It was ground breaking in the connections it made between the philosophical and the practical but also relied to some extent on the work of the 16th century Scottish Presbyterian political theorist George Buchanan. Buchanan and John Knox were both students at St Andrews under the Paris educated Scottish philosopher John Mair (or Major).

Fletcher and his mostly Whig English counterparts were strongly opposed by Daniel Defoe's pamphleteering handiwork and after of the Union of parliaments in 1707 the militia question almost went away for nearly forty years. This does not mean that social conflict and war also went away, though in the century after the Union Scotland made remarkable progress in almost all spheres of social, economic and cultural development. What was progress for some was not necessarily progress for all. The Industrial Revolution brought with it a heavy price in human misery as did agricultural improvement.

The debacle of the Darien Scheme, with which Fletcher was closely involved, instituted by an act of the Scottish Parliament in 1695 had left Scotland in state of near bankruptcy and famine by 1704. This made the proposition of Union with England almost irresistible to the noble Scottish parliamentarians. The passing of the Act itself was lubricated by bribes and the background machinations of (once again) Daniel Defoe acting as an English government spy in the service of Lord Harley. Andrew Fletcher opposed to the Act of Union but the opponents of the Act were neither homogenous nor well organised. Under Fletcher’s leadership, the opposition was made up of Highland chiefs, Edinburgh and Glasgow burghers, Presbyterian hard-liners and “crypto-Catholic Jacobites, who believed (correctly) that a Scottish-English union would finish off any chance of a restoration of the Stuarts to their ancestral throne.

Nevertheless the militia question again came to the fore through the work of Scottish 18th century thinkers such as Adam Smith, David Hume who was a member of the Poker Club, and more emphatically in that of Adam Ferguson and his associates. Ferguson, who was chaplain to the Black Watch from 1745 until 1754, brought his thoughts and experience in regard to the militia question to public attention in Reflections Previous to the Establishment of a Militia published in London anonymously in 1756. Later in his Of Corruption, as it tends to Political Slavery Ferguson wrote:

A people who are disarmed in compliance with this fatal refinement, have rested their safety on the pleadings of reason and justice at the tribunal of ambition and of force. In such an extremity, laws are quoted, and senates are assembled, in vain.

In common with Fletcher, Ferguson was concerned to limit the power and ability of government or monarchy to oppress the general population through use of a standing army or mercenary force against which the people, without military training and arms, could not easily defend themselves or their liberty. Such was expressed by Fletcher in his first pamphlet and directed against King William who took power after the revolution of 1688. …in dethroning James VII the people had claimed the right of appointing their own kings. From this time onwards, therefore, it came to be understood that kings would be allowed to remain on the throne only if they governed according to the laws of the land.

P. H. Brown in the above statement is echoing George Buchanan’s radical Presbyterian view that all political power ultimately rests with the people: that the people themselves have the right to remove tyrannical rulers by force of arms and choose a new leader: a highly democratic outlook. Hence Fletcher and Ferguson’s preference for a militia over that of a standing army in time of peace can be seen as a somewhat conservative application of Buchanan’s ideas. Fletcher was also concerned to avoid local despotism by disqualifying princes and other lower nobles of the power to keep professional troops. In fact they both held that the making of soldiering into a career or specialism was thoroughly dangerous to political and moral freedom. Nevertheless, by the 1780s, there had developed a new radicalism which was to go further in its democratic intentions. Spurred on by the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution and the American War of Independence events took on something of a darker complexion in comparison to the steadier progress since the Act of Union. The more commerce and industry grew the more incompatible with daily social life was the militia ideal espoused by Fletcher. Coupled with his limited view of individual and collective liberty his arguments for a Scottish militia (and those of Ferguson and Alexander Carlyle) crumbled under the weight of an altogether more modern force, unfettered capitalism. Access to foreign markets and the ability of capitalists to ply their trades was what force of arms was really required to defend now. Yet in the desire to prevent oppression and fetter despots the arguments for a Scottish militia can be said to have had quite radical content. In 1783, with the end the American War of Independence, the anonymous pamphlet Reasons Against a Militia for Scotland was published. It put forward in clear terms the arguments for the kind of professional military arrangements that still entail today. Chiefly, that the soldiers would be professional and under the control of officers loyal to the state. That these troops could be relied upon, owing to their professionalism, to suppress internal discontent and protect trade at home and abroad. Of necessity they would be a small force owing to Britain’s primary reliance on the navy for defence and their likelihood of mutiny and of taking power for themselves would be diminished by virtue of professionalism and small numbers. These were arguments which, if not attributable to, followed similar lines to those of Adam Smith. In the latter half of the 18th century, in fact during much of what is termed the Scottish Enlightenment, Britain indulged in The Seven Years War (1756-63 mostly against the French), The American war of Independence (1776-83 in which the French supported the American revolutionaries) and war with revolutionary France (1793-1815). There were also wars with Holland and Spain. It appears the Union of Scotland with England produced one fighting machine of a nation in Britain. The end of the American War of Independence did not bring with it an end to the militia debate. Exactly a hundred years after Fletcher first published his pamphlet riots erupted in many parts of Scotland in opposition to the 1797 Militia Act. There were now arguments in favour of a Scottish militia which only thirteen years earlier were of necessity those in favour of professional soldiering. Practical historical necessity and not moral reason it would seem is the great mid-wife to the birth of institutions. The reason Fletcher and Ferguson did not win the argument for a Scottish militia was because they pointed to the wrong historical necessity. The battle against despotic monarchs had largely been won. It was no longer necessary for guardianship against them to be reflected in the nature of military organisations and institutions. Notwithstanding the fact that the monarch was no longer able to rule by personal whim, the Scottish Militia Act of 1797 was passed under the prime-minister-ship of the Younger Pitt. This act was passed due to fear of invasion from the radical French. And as Andrew Fletcher implies above fear of invasion is a powerful motivating force. Tannahill wrote one his most jingoistic songs The Defeat on the theme of invasion by the French. He was not alone in his ability to swing from radicalism to conformity, indeed Robert Burns was likewise prone to similar switches of identity, voice and narrative viewpoint. The twin threats of invasion and radical uprising were more real than imagined and British government fears were not just paranoia but based on an accurate assessment of the balance of political forces and currency of ideas in the 1790s. The war against revolutionary France both diminished old animosities and called for a military effort greater than ever before. In 1793, therefore, the government proposed that Ireland and Scotland should each raise a Militia force. Ireland did so forthwith, but public hostility caused the Scottish plan to be laid aside. A serious threat of invasion in 1797 finally enabled the government to carry it through.

Militia regiments had been earlier revived in England during the Seven Years’ War though it was not thought politic to do so in Ireland and Scotland. There was still, in 1797, widespread resistance in Scotland to the drawing up of lists of fencible men, or the taking of a census of those who were capable of taking up arms. The census taking was to be carried out by county Lieutenants, Deputy Lieutenants and Justices of the Peace with the lists then being passed to the Privy Council who were ultimately responsible for raising 6,000 men. The authorities were not idlers and put detailed plans in place to defeat and out manoeuvre the opposition. Much of the planning was carried out by Robert Dundas the then Lord Advocate and other so-called notables such as the Duke of Buccleuch. Generally it involved the use of propaganda through newspapers and the pulpit pointing out the benefits of “volunteering” and the punishments for resistance. In addition to this campaign of propaganda the determination of the government was highlighted by the drafting in of 3,000 regular troops under the command of General Musgrave from Newcastle barracks. These regulars were to make sure that no assemblies be formed which might inhibit “volunteers” from taking up their militia postings. Riots and resistance broke out almost everywhere, including Glasgow, Edinburgh, Fife, the Lothians, Lanarkshire, Dumfriesshire, Berwickshire, Aberdeenshire, Perthshire, Ross-shire and at Dalry in Ayrshire where rioters planted a tree of Liberty. Meanwhile, in Renfrewshire (where Paisley was the most important centre of population) the Lord Lieutenant, Mr McDowall organised to avoid any outburst of rioting or unrest in his neighbourhood. He staggered recruitment meetings so that he could be personally present and intimidate any opposition. Factory owners who were reluctant to give lists of the names of fencible employees were told that all of their employees “were liable to serve, leaving the matter to be adjusted by appeals” and thus were pressured to co-operate. This combination of propaganda and compulsion appears as something of a modern tactic for the managing of political disputes but as Paisley and Renfrewshire were largely centres of weaving the use of written propaganda made sense because of the high rate of literacy among the population. In fact as had been remarked by Adam Smith literacy rates in Scotland as whole were remarkably high owing to the parish school system. And for those who couldn’t read there was always the minister to drive home the message from the pulpit. Mr McDowall had managed to keep the well of unrest from springing up and overflowing. No mean achievement given the general mood. It is tempting not to conjecture that McDowall acted as an inspiration for the editor of The Harp Renfrewshire Mr William Motherwell (1797-1835). Mr McDowall (or McDowal) was to become captain of the Renfrewshire Militia in which James King (recipient of the quote in the first sentence) served. This regiment took some of its initial recruits from the Renfrewshire Yeomanry one of the organisations Motherwell later joined in performance of his “civic duties”. William Motherwell did not know Robert Tannahill but became very well acquainted with Tannahill’s friend and musical collaborator R. A. Smith (1780-1829). Mary Ellen Brown (Kentucky 2001) suggests that Smith may have encouraged Tannahill’s “shift from weaving to music”. A suggestion which has no basis in fact whatsoever as no such “shift” ever took place. Tannahill was a weaver from the time he was apprenticed to his father on the 7th December 1786 until his death in 1810. It was Smith who sought out the company of Tannahill after hearing one of latter’s songs performed at a musical evening in Paisley. It may be useful here to give some consideration to William Motherwell who in his role as Sheriff-Clerk Depute was not averse to “handling a truncheon in defence of the public peace on the streets of Paisley.” Motherwell can be described in classic 20th century parlance as the working class Tory made good. He managed through his own efforts to establish himself in moderately powerful circles and become something of an arbiter of both literary and political opinion during the 1820s. In politics he was an Orangeman as well as a Tory. Orangeism espousing the view that hereditary rank is sacred while Roman Catholicism and revolutionary innovations which threaten the constitution (unwritten) of Britain are an abhorrence. Motherwell left Paisley for Glasgow in 1830 to become the Tory editor of the Orange-Tory paper the Glasgow Courier. So here we have the British state in its full establishment measure. While Motherwell expressed a kind of cultural nationalism in his literary work, his politics were well to right. No where near the liberation theology of George Buchanan with his abstract democratic principles but right in beside the church burners and desecraters of all and anything Roman Catholic. While at the same time fawning to the British royal family. Motherwell is not totally atypical of the Glasgow middle classes of his time. By reason of common sense he could not deny that he lived in Scotland and if one was honest about history that history was for the most part Scottish. Complex as that history might be there was a need to come up with a coherent story. A need for propaganda and opinion forming. The modern state had well and truly arrived. And if the social conflict and deprivation in Glasgow were anything to go by it was a state closer to hell than to heaven. What Motherwell had was a romantic hankering for the chivalrous which took form in his participation in the rituals and ideology of Orangeism; in the activities of collecting antique songs and poems as well as more conventional antique objects. Motherwell understood the need, all too human, to make a coherent story in the history of literature or of politics that answered peoples’ personal and psychological yearnings. The natural inclination to make the world make sense and give life meaning; an that he understood this is perhaps to his credit. Orangeism was a new Irish variant of the Presbyterianism which had existed in Scotland since the reformation of 1560. The mythologising of 1690 and William III in Scotland had everything to do with the Tory politics of the early 19th Century and their (the Tories) determination to win the class war. To oppose calls for universal suffrage. To deny the injustice done to Thomas Muir and the Friends of the People, to discredit the writings of Thomas Paine. (In Motherwell’s time and from his viewpoint this version of the story, of history, made perfect sense). The Orange Lodge in Scotland were a form of Protestant ideological storm-troopers. The hard-line. The fiery preachers who made Tories of working women and men. The values of Orangeism are on the face of it quite deeply at odds with Motherwell’s cultural activities. He was for the preservation and use of the Scots language in literature something that militates against the inherent Britishness of Orange ideology. M’Conechy in his memoir of Motherwell states that the introduction of Orangeism in Scotland “could be attended with no benefits whatsoever… As an antagonist to Popery and Jacobitism it was certainly not wanted in Presbyterian Scotland”. That the Orange Lodge still thrives throughout much of Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, Ayrshire and elsewhere today implies that M’Conechy is being somewhat disingenuous in his assessment of the real role of Orangeism. While M’Conechy may have come from a part of the Tory party which did not approve of the Orangemen there were plenty of other Tories who did. Motherwell’s dalliance with Orangeism (and M’Conechy’s denial), in apparent contradiction to his cultural politics, can be seen as an example of the kind of personal identity crisis that arose frequently in Scots men and woman following the Act of Union. Yet through this William Motherwell carried out useful literary and cultural work, simply by the act of writing down and recording. The Harp of Renfrewshire is an important book. Although it was already in progress when it landed with Motherwell his introductory essay is not without merit. It seeks to understand a locale and its history through the study of the poetry and song of the place itself. It includes folk pretty much on the basis of literary merit and not along sectarian or class divides. He shows an understanding of literature as both historical process and individual creative process; demonstrates that language is not static but evolves and that political forces have influence on such evolution. So there is a fairly sophisticated level of literary/cultural politics and argument going on there. In spite of his Paisley Sheriff’s Depute job bringing him “into the thick of military suppression of the Radical risings and civil disturbances around 1820; in 1818 he was knocked unconscious by an angry crowd and narrowly escaped being thrown in the River Cart.” he was extremely sympathetic towards both Tannahill and the radical poet Alexander Wilson (1766-1813) in his introduction to The Harp of Renfrewshire. As a result he further enhanced the reputations of both Tannahill and Alexander Wilson. The brilliant erathe golden age of Renfrewshire song, now opens upon us in the persons of Wilson and Tannahill. Both have contributed not a little to our stock of native lyric poetry; and while our language lasts, and music hath any charm, their names will be remembered with enthusiasm, and transmitted to ages more remote with the accumulated applauses of time.

Alexander Wilson was seven years younger the Robert Burns and eight years older than Robert Tannahill. He was born near the Hammils, a broad if not steep waterfall in Paisley where the river Cart skirts Seedhill, on the 6th of July 1766. It does indeed appear to be the case as Motherwell states above that a great amount of literary activity began in Paisley around this time.