William Motherwell

He spent his leisure in collecting materials for a volume of local ballads which he published in 1819 under the title of The Harp of Renfrewshire.

[3] 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.

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".

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.

While Motherwell expressed a kind of cultural nationalism in his literary work, his politics were well to right, nowhere near the liberation theology of George Buchanan with his abstract democratic principles but violently opposed to anything Roman Catholic.

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.

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.

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."

The grave was originally unmarked but in 1851 a monument carved by the celebrated Scots sculptor James Fillans was erected by admirers.