Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 31 -- Poems for Subterranean Sailors
Tannahill didn't write about underground rivers, but as he met his demise in one, we'll include him
in our survey. As lamented 37 years after the fact in Northern Star, and National Trades' Journal,
February 6 1847,
But still more melancholy is the contemplation of the beginning and the end of Robert Tannahill,
the popular song writer of Paisley. Tannahill was no doubt stimulated by the fame of Burns.
True, he had not the genius of Burns, but genius he had, and that is conspicuous in the many
of those songs which during his lifetime were sung with enthusiasm by is countryman.
Tannahill was a poor weaver of Paisley. The cottage where he lived is still to be seen, a very
ordinary weaver's cottage in an ordinary street; and the place where he drowned himself may
be seen too at the outside of the town. This is one of the most dismal places in which a poet
ever terminated his career...
Outside of Paisley there is a place where a small stream passes under a canal. To facilitate
this passage, a deep pit is sunk, and a channel foe the water is made under the bottom of the
canal. This pit is, I believe, eighteen feet deep. It is built round with stone, which is rounded off
at its mouth, so that any one falling in cannot by any possibility get out, for there is nothing to
lay hold of. Any one once he goes there might grasp and grasp in vain for an edge to seize
upon. He would sink back and back till he was exhausted and sank for ever.
No doubt Tannahill in moments of gloomy observation had noticed this. And at midnight he
came, stripped off his cost, laid down his hat, and took the fatal plunge. No cry could reach
human ear form the horrible abyss; no effort of the strongest swimmer could avail to sustain
him. Soon worn out he must go down, and amid the black boiling torrent be borne through the
subterranean channel onward with the stream.
Thus died Robert Tannahill, and a more fearful termination was never put to a poetical career.
The place is called Tannahill's Hole.
Paisley map, c. 1865 showing both Tannahill's Bridge and Tannahill's
Hole
DRAFT 1122//66//22001122
Where our poet's body
was found.
If underground rivers merit the attention of poets, our topic has proven to be worthy one..
Uppddaatteess aatt hhttttpp::////www. .uunnm. .eedduu//~rrhheeggggeenn//UnnddeerrggrroouunnddRi ivveerrss. .hhttml l
426