Why Paisley?

Not many people today would think of Paisley as a town of history, architecture and sculpture. Unjustly, many people regard the town to be in post-industrial decline and burdened with social problems. Yet Paisley has a proud history.
 It is not regarded to be one of the most beautiful towns in Scotland but those willing to take a closer look at its buildings and civic art will be rewarded by the discovery of many gems. It has many beautiful and historic buildings; the 12th century Abbey, “Cradle of the Stewart Kings”, set on the site of an ancient Celtic church; Coats Memorial Church “the Baptist Cathedral of Europe”; the Russell Institute, a tour de force of innovative design and statuary straight out of the roaring twenties;

Russell Institute (Detail)

the art nouveau jewels that are W.D. McLennan’s Bull Inn and St. Matthew’s Church; the Laigh Kirk and Sma’ shot cottages; these and many others give just a few examples of what is on offer. They are clues to the town’s rich and absorbing history, a history which is rarely broadcast to the world at large.
If, however, the town’s history and buildings are worth closer scrutiny, its statues and memorials are almost unmissable, out of all proportion to the importance of the town today. They stand like frozen echoes of a time when the town was home to world leading industries and prosperity was the order of the day for business and labour alike.
Here are statues of the great and the good of the town, monumental figures of men of commerce such as members of the Clarks and Coats dynasties which dominate the public areas around the High Street.These works were clearly designed to remind the public of the importance of the long-dead industrialists they portray.
Dotted around at a respectful distance, however, stand some of the town’s finest works of art. These are, for the most part, expressions of admiration and regard raised by the townspeople themselves: many were in fact bought and paid for by public subscription. In quick succession in the decades surrounding the end of the 19th century many statues were erected.

Alexander Wilson - Paisley's First Statue

Two local heroes, the ornithologist and poet Alexander Wilson and the poet Robert Tannahill, stand in the Abbey Grounds; the moving and inspiring cenotaph, said to be based on the statue of Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn, stands a little further away; nearby, beautiful art nouveau figures adorn the Russell Institute; there are many more like these, but perhaps the finest of them all, an acclaimed statue of Scotland’s national bard, Robert Burns, stands far away from them all in a forgotten and little visited backwater, hidden away from the people for whom it was purchased, periodically vandalised and providing no benefit whatsoever to the town as a whole.
How did this, perhaps the world’s greatest tribute to the bard, come into being - and why is it set in set in such an ignominious position?

"A nest of singing birds"

Today, this sounds like a strange description of Paisley, but when William Motherwell, himself a Paisley poet, used these words in the early 1800's to describe the town, he was merely stating a fact. A few years after Burns’s death, around one hundred published poets were living and working in the town, many of them openly inspired by his life and works. Examples of local devotion to the bard are not difficult to find. While still a radical Paisley poet the aforementioned Alexander Wilson paid a visit to Burns in Ayrshire. Robert Tannahill, himself no mean performer with the pen, was first secretary of the Paisley Burns Club. The greater county of Renfrewshire contains, in Greenock and Paisley, the two oldest Burns Clubs in the world. William Motherwell himself went on to co-edit a famous edition of the bard’s works with James Hogg, the famous “Ettrick Shepherd”.

Alexander Taylor's house, visited by Burns in 1788, at 87 High Street (courtesy of Paisley Museum)

Burns himself visited the town twice in 1787 and 1788. His eventual wife Jean Armour was sent to the town to stay with her Uncle Andrew Purdie  during her first confinement: while there, a prosperous weaver from Mauchline, Robert Wilson, tried to woo her, and this may have been the inspiration for Burns’s song “The Gallant Weaver” which begins “Where Cart rins rowin’ to the sea…..”
Paisley was always a fertile market for Burns poetry, and at one time many more Burns clubs than today were active in the town. A large proportion of the 1787 Edinburgh edition was sold to local people and Burns even nicknamed local man Alexander Pattison “The Bookseller” in gratitude for his efforts in selling ninety-six copies.
The public at the time were well acquainted with the many Burns connections with the area; They were aware, for example, that the “The Bonnie Lass o’ Ballochmyle”, Wilhelmina Alexander, lived nearby at Newton House, Elderslie for the first thirty years of her life and that James, Earl of Glencairn, the poet’s great friend and patron, had a family home at Finlaystone between Paisley and Greenock. There are many, many more links like these.
The love of Burns in the area continued unabated throughout the nineteenth century and it was little wonder therefore, that as the centenary of the poet’s death (July 21st 1796) approached, a “Burns Statue Committee” was formed and plans were put in place to raise funds for an appropriate memorial. These funds were to be raised mainly by concerts given by “The Tannahill Choir”, which had been raising money since 1874 for various good works around the town.
 The remarkable story of these “Glen Concerts” deserves to be regarded as one of the proudest episodes in the history of the town and a triumph of ordinary working people.