Rhymes and Recollections of a Hand-loons Weaver. By William Thom.
Edited, with a biographical sketch, by W. Skinner. (A. Gardner, Paisley.)—This is a reprint of a little work that made some small noise in its day. Poor Thom was one of that numerous class of Scotchmen who are blest, or otherwise, with an irrepressible rhyming faculty. We may even say that he had something more, since some of his little pieces, such as tho " Mitherlose Bairn," "The Blind Boy's Pranks," "Old Father Frost and his Family," "Whisper Low," and "The Wedded Waters," have a certain flavour of true poetry in them. But it was a pure misfortune for Thom that the grand world caught hold of him, and for a time treated him as if he had been a heaven-born genius. He was brought up to London and Mod by the literary men of the day, until his head was turned, and till drinking habits got the mastery over him. So, after a brief season of this kind of "glory," he returned to Dundee, where ho died on February 290, 1818, in, Mr. Skinner says, his forty-ninth or fiftieth year. A blithe, spirited, careless, witty creature, Thom charmed all who personally came in contact with him, and his name still lives in the North as "The Inverurie poet," he having been for years a hand- loom weaver in that small Aberdeenshire town. To northern people, therefore, this reprint of his Rhymes and Recollections—the latter, a sort of autobiography—will be valuable. Outside that range, few, wo fear, will care to make his acquaintance. Beside his brother-weaver, Tannehill, his light burns feebly ; and though his life bad much in it that was pathetic and interesting, it had also much which is best consigned to oblivion.
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