{"id":240,"date":"2008-08-15T21:41:42","date_gmt":"2008-08-15T21:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/blog\/?p=240"},"modified":"2025-11-07T06:02:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T06:02:19","slug":"immigrants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/immigrants","title":{"rendered":"trip twenty three: immigrants"},"content":{"rendered":"

While growing up it seemed to me that Paisley was more enlightened than its bigger, brasher neighbour. That, and its proximity to Pollok made it my playground. As a kid, on Saturday mornings I\u2019d catch the red bus from Paisley Road West to the East Lane Ice Rink. Less than a decade later, as an art student I\u2019d pose at punk gigs in the town\u2019s Bungalow Bar or go to movies such as Ken Russell\u2019s The Devils, <\/em>banned by Glasgow Corporation, whose heavy-handed censorship resulted in an exodus of the city\u2019s cinemagoers. Glasgow\u2019s loss was Paisley Odeon\u2019s gain.<\/p>\n

On this rare sunny evening I make the journey along Paisley Road West, passing the bungalows of Cardonald and Crookston with their four-figure street numbers, reminiscent of LA suburbs in the paling sunlight. Arriving, I get thrown off course by the town\u2019s one-way system and, navigating my way to Abbey Close, I notice the street signs: Cotton Street, Gauze Street, Dyer\u2019s Wynd, Silk Street \u2013 names preserving Paisley\u2019s manufacturing past in textiles and thread. Here fortunes were woven.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

According to geomancer, Graham Gardner, in the GNAS<\/a> alignments mapped on Google Earth, Paisley Abbey is the approximate location of another of Harry Bell\u2019s site alignments, a sole site occupying a line of its own, linked to the Necropolis. Why Bell chose Paisley Abbey, I have no idea, apart from its reputation as an ancient place of worship. Founded in 1136, they don\u2019t come more ancient than the Abbey. Judging by the signage it\u2019s a tourist spot and as with any old pile, these days it\u2019s requisite to ply one\u2019s wares<\/a> online \u2013<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s Friday night and the Town Hall bell chimes the quarter hour. I watch groups of Scottish-Asians entering the hall for some kind of gathering, their fine clothing somehow befitting the industry on which Paisley was founded. The Abbey itself is splendid, built on a grander scale than Glasgow Cathedral, its Gauze Street facade bordered with an unkempt lawn in which several memorial stones are embedded, some dating from the eighteenth century.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As I grab some stills, a trio of men passes, speaking Russian. At a nearby bus stop, two African couples are in animated conversation. I\u2019ve no way of knowing but my guess is they\u2019re recent immigrants. As they laugh and cajole, I wonder, how did they end up here? Had he been around today surely the bard of Paisley, Robert Tannahill, would have written about them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Tannahill ought to be better known. A close contemporary of Burns, and a prolific writer of poetry and song, his humanity, his empathy and his self-deprecation are woven into the works, as in this extract from The Resolve, from Poems and Songs: Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect <\/em>(1815)<\/p>\n

Twas on a sunny Sabbath-day,
\nWhen wark-worn bodies get their play,
\nI wander’d out, with serious look,
\nTo read twa page on Nature’s book:
\nFor lang I’ve thought, as little harm in
\nHearing a lively out-field sermon,
\nEven tho’ rowted by a stirk,
\nAs that aft bawl’d in crowded kirk,
\nBy some proud, stern, polemic wight,
\nWha cries, “My way alone is right !”
\nWha lairs himself in controversy,
\nThen damns his neighbours without mercy,
\nAs if the fewer that were spar’d,
\nThese few would be the better ser\u2019d.
\nNow to my tale \u2014 digression o’er \u2014
\nI wander’d out by Stanley tow’r,
\nThe lang grass on its tap did wave,
\nLike weeds upon a warrior’s grave,
\nWhilk seem’d to mock the bloody braggers,
\nAnd grow on theirs as rank’s on beggars\u2014
\nBut hold \u2014 I’m frae the point again\u2014
\nI wander’d up Gleniffer glen,
\nThere, leaning ‘gainst a mossy rock,
\nI, musing, eyed the passing brook,
\nThat in its murmurs seem’d to say,
\n\u201cTis thus thy life glides fast away:
\nObserve the bubbles on my stream
\nLike them, Fame is an empty dream,
\nThey blink a moment to the sun,
\nThen burst, and are for ever gone:
\nSo Fame’s a bubble of the mind;
\nPossess’d, ’tis nought but empty wind,
\nNo courtly gem e’er purchas’d dearer,
\nAnd ne’er can satisfy the wearer.”<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Noting the statues dotted round the vicinity, I catch myself pre-empting their merit with a metropolitan bias, expecting to be disappointed. How wrong can you be? On closer inspection Alexander Wilson’s is finely-wrought, the maker London-based, a Southwark firm. Obviously some generous benefactor had a hand in this since it\u2019s as fine a portrait of a local hero as you could hope to find in any great city. Wilson himself of course was no provincial, having immigrated to the United States where as a noted poet, ornithologist and illustrator he furthered his already considerable reputation. His early work, Watty and Meg<\/em>, when published anonymously, was assumed to be the work of Burns. In 1792 Wilson was jailed for 14 days for writing an allegedly libellous poem, The Shark, Or Lang Mills Detected. <\/em>It would be hard to imagine a Scottish poet being banged up today, unless the charge was for crimes against writing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Next to the Town Hall I find the fine, upstanding George Aitken Clark. The Clark clan, having made their fortune in thread became major benefactors in Paisley. The story goes that when George\u2019s brother, James, was collecting subscriptions from the general public for the purpose of erecting a hall, he learned his brother had died in America, bequeathing \u00a320,000 for the cost of the building. To his credit James did the honourable thing. Returning the subscriptions in full, the Clark family met the total cost of the building, designed by Belfast architect, WH Lynn and opened in January 1882 when 12,000 townsfolk gathered in awe of the new electric lighting system.<\/p>\n

With sunset arriving two minutes earlier each day, the light is fading fast. Circling the Abbey I make my way back to Glasgow. On the road out of town I pass the site of the old Ice Rink, which closed down in 1973. Today in its place stands a branch of Morrison\u2019s supermarket. Hard to believe that in August 1965, Cassius Clay, then the world heavyweight boxing champion, held an exhibition match in East Lane in front of 5000 people. But then, as towns go, Paisley has always fought above its weight, refusing to be beaten by its big neighbour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While growing up it seemed to me that Paisley was more enlightened than its bigger, brasher neighbour. That, and its proximity to Pollok made it my playground. As a kid, on Saturday mornings I\u2019d catch the red bus from Paisley Road West to the East Lane Ice Rink. Less than a decade later, as an art student I\u2019d pose at punk gigs in the town\u2019s Bungalow Bar or go to movies such as Ken Russell\u2019s The Devils, <\/em>banned by Glasgow Corporation, whose heavy-handed censorship resulted in an exodus of the city\u2019s cinemagoers. Glasgow\u2019s loss was Paisley Odeon\u2019s gain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4252,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5,71,151,183,216],"class_list":["post-240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-alexander-wilson","tag-east-lane-ice-rink","tag-paisley-abbey","tag-robert-tannahill","tag-statues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5148,"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions\/5148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elementalfilms.eu\/devilsplantation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}