William Motherwell (1797-1835)
Born in Glasgow’s High Street, Motherwell worked in Paisley before entering Glasgow University, where he studied classics. Although his literary career reveals him as more of an editor of ballads than a distinguished poet, the volume and range of his output has been unfortunately underappreciated.
His contributions to The Visitor, a Greenock miscellany in 1818 mark the beginning of his literary outputs, which was followed by Renfrewshire Characters and Scenery (1824), under the pseudonym Isaac Brown. 1832 was an important year for Motherwell. He contributed to Day, a very brief Glasgow periodical, sent material to the popular Glasgow collection of poetry Whistlebinkie; or, The Piper of the Party, and had his own collection of work, Poems, Narrative and Lyrical, published.
As an editor he was much more renowned. In 1820 he edited The Harp of Renfrewshire; in 1828 he founded and edited the Paisley Magazine before becoming editor of the Paisley Advertiser; in 1830 he became editor of the Glasgow Courier, which Tannahill often contributed to. One of his crowning achievements in editing was Minstrelsy Ancient and Modern (1827), which was influenced by Sir Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802).
When he is remembered, Motherwell’s connections with politics (he was firmly against parliamentary reform) and Orangeism come to the fore. Said to be intolerant of Irish Catholic immigrants to the West of Scotland, Motherwell represents that strand of Presbyterian fanaticism with which Glasgow is often connected in the Georgian era. Nonetheless, both John Wilson/ ‘Christopher North’ and Edgar Allan Poe were admirers of his poetry.