William Motherwell - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

William Motherwell Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, antiquary and journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

, was born at Glasgow

Glasgow

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

, the son of an ironmonger.

At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed in the office of the sheriff-clerk at Paisley, and appointed sheriff-clerk depute there in 1819. He spent his leisure in collecting materials for a volume of local ballad

Ballad

A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...

s which he published in 1819 under the title of The Harp of Renfrewshire. In 1827 he published a further instalment in Minstrelsy Ancient and Modern, prefaced by an excellent historical introduction. He contributed verses to newspapers and magazines, "Jeanie Morrison", "My Heid is like to rend, Willie", and "Wearies Cauld Well" being his best-known poems. He became editor of the Paisley Advertiser in 1828, and of the Glasgow Courier in 1830.

A small volume of his poems was published in 1832, and a larger volume with a memoir in 1846, reissued, with additions, in 1848.

William Motherwell did not know Robert Tannahill

Robert Tannahill

‎Robert Tannahill was a Scottish poet. Known as the 'Weaver Poet', his music and poetry is contemporaneous with that of Robert Burns.He was born at Castle Street in Paisley on 3 June 1774, the fourth son in a family of seven...

, but became very well acquainted with Tannahill's friend and musical collaborator R. A. Smith (1780–1829). It has been suggested that Smith may have encouraged Tannahill's shift from weaving to music, but this has no basis in fact as no such shift ever took place. Tannahill was a weaver from the time he was apprenticed to his father on 7 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.

In his role as Sheriff-Clerk Depute, William Motherwell was not averse to "handling a truncheon in defence of the public peace on the streets of Paisley". Motherwell has been described in classic twentieth 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. While Motherwell expressed a kind of cultural nationalism

Nationalism

Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...

in his literary work, his politics were well to right, nowhere near the liberation theology

Liberation theology

Liberation theology is a Christian movement in political theology which interprets the teachings of Jesus Christ in terms of a liberation from unjust economic, political, or social conditions...

of George Buchanan

George Buchanan (humanist)

George Buchanan was a Scottish historian and humanist scholar. He was part of the Monarchomach movement.-Early life:...

with his abstract democratic principles but violently opposed to anything Roman Catholic. Motherwell is not 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; and that he understood this is perhaps to his credit.

Orangeism was a new Irish variant of the Presbyterianism

Presbyterianism

Presbyterianism refers to a number of Christian churches adhering to the Calvinist theological tradition within Protestantism, which are organized according to a characteristic Presbyterian polity. Presbyterian theology typically emphasizes the sovereignty of God, the authority of the Scriptures,...

which had existed in Scotland since the Reformation

Scottish Reformation

The Scottish Reformation was Scotland's formal break with the Papacy in 1560, and the events surrounding this. It was part of the wider European Protestant Reformation; and in Scotland's case culminated ecclesiastically in the re-establishment of the church along Reformed lines, and politically in...

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

Thomas Paine

Thomas "Tom" Paine was an English author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States...

. (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

Scots language

Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster . It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language variety spoken in most of the western Highlands and in the Hebrides.Since there are no universally accepted...

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

Lanarkshire

Lanarkshire or the County of Lanark ) is a Lieutenancy area, registration county and former local government county in the central Lowlands of Scotland...

, Renfrewshire

Renfrewshire

Renfrewshire is one of 32 council areas used for local government in Scotland. Located in the west central Lowlands, it is one of three council areas contained within the boundaries of the historic county of Renfrewshire, the others being Inverclyde to the west and East Renfrewshire to the east...

, Ayrshire

Ayrshire

Ayrshire is a registration county, and former administrative county in south-west Scotland, United Kingdom, located on the shores of the Firth of Clyde. Its principal towns include Ayr, Kilmarnock and Irvine. The town of Troon on the coast has hosted the British Open Golf Championship twice in the...

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

Alexander Wilson

Alexander Wilson was a Scottish-American poet, ornithologist, naturalist, and illustrator.Wilson was born in Paisley, Scotland, the son of an illiterate distiller. In 1779 he was apprenticed as a weaver. His main interest at this time was in writing poetry...

in his introduction to The Harp of Renfrewshire. As a result he further enhanced the reputations of both Tannahill and Alexander Wilson.

See also