Today marks the 247th birthday of John Galt.
Born in Irvine in 1779, he was the eldest of four children
of Captain John Galt and his wife Jean Thomson. Galt seems to have happy memories of his early childhood in Irvine and not being particularly robust as a child, was for a while educated at home by his mother. He enjoyed the company of his mother and his friends, storing up memories of the tales they told each other.
Memories of Irvine re-emerge in the poem To the River Peneus which is printed in his Autobiography (Vol 1) published in 1833 he writes of his travels in the Mediterranean during the years 1809 -1811;
"From Phersela we proceeded to Larissa, a considerable town
with a number of spires or minarets. The
city stands on the banks of the river Peneus, and in one particular place,
where calicoes on bleach fields were spread around, the scene moved me with a
strange sadness, in which, if I did not weep, I shed the following verses;
Methought that youth was still my own
As when I strayed by Irvine’s stream,
And all the cares I since have known
The phantoms of a troubled dream.
Ah! never shall I know again
Those simple hopes of blithesome hue,
The playmates gay of fancy’s train,
Such as by Irvine’s stream I knew."
Rather sad lines written abroad with memories of times by the River Irvine in his native Ayrshire. Many of the place names of the places he travelled to abroad are written slightly differently now. Find out more about these places visited by Galt all those years ago by clicking on the highlighted links.
