John Galt's birthday!

Today marks the 247^th 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.

Phersela - possibly Farsala in Thessaly, Greece. 
Larissa is in the Thessaly region of Greece.  
River Peneus – River Peneios.

The Field of Battle

On this Remembrance Sunday thoughts turn to those who lost their lives in battle.  While the weapons may change, the carnage left behind on the battlefield remains.  

This extract from a poem The Field of Battle, published by John Galt in 1833 is a graphic description of the realities of war.

"At morn, the soldier from his comrade’s corpse

Startles the camp dog;

And the wounded oft,

To scare the foul birds hov’ring o’er them, lift

Their shatter’d limbs and roll their gashy heads.

And there the sun, remorseless on his throne,

Brings clouds of carnage-flies, that fill the air

With shadowy gloom – a living shower of sound."

John Galt's - The Battle of Largs

As well as being National Poetry Day, today, 2nd of October 2025, also marks the anniversary of a famous battle - the subject of a poem by John Galt.  On 2 October 1263 a battle was fought at Largs between Scotland and Norway - the Battle of Largs.  Scotland won the battle.  Largs in North Ayrshire sits on the coast between Irvine and Greenock and was well known to John Galt through his travels with his family from his birthplace, Irvine, to Greenock where the Galt family settled when John was ten years old.

Tales of the heroic battle obviously had an effect on the young Galt.  One of his earliest published works was The Battle of Largs – A Gothic Poem a long and almost fantastical tale of events in 1263.

Till spent by an excess of strife,

The wretched Danes, to shelter life,

Back to their boats by vengeance driven,

Like chaff before the storms of heaven

Tumultuous fled.  But now the main,

Urg’d by the winds, retreat made vain;

The white waves, vext to anger, tore

The vessels from the slaughter-shore,

And in fantastic eddies whirl’d,

To wreck the floating refuge hurl’d.

John Galt devotes a whole chapter to his thought on the work in his Literary Life and Miscellanies (volume I, chapter V) stating - 

“The Battle of Largs is a sort of Gothic epic; and I remember very well that it cost me a great deal of research although distinct from the composition.”

It was published anonymously in 1804 in his first year in London, but was not well received although Galt was reasonably proud of it.

Each year Largs has a Viking Festival and there is a visitor attraction Vikingar which tells the stories of the Vikings and their culture and history.