MOTHERWELL, William (1797-1835), poet, antiquary, and journalist, born in 1797, rendered service in the collection of fugitive border poetry and wrote one or two very touching songs in the Scotch dialect, dying before he had fulfilled the promise of his earlier work. His short life was diversified by few incidents. The son of an ironmonger in Glasgow,he was educated partly in Edinburgh and partly in Paisley. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed in the office of the sheriff-clerk at Paisley, and appointed sheriff-clerk depute there in 1819. The impulse given by Scott to the pursuit of local ballads was still strongly in force, and the young law apprentice spent his leisure in collecting materials for a volume which he published in 1819 under the title of The Harp of Renfrewshire. In the course of the next eight years he extended his studies in the same field and published the results in 1827 in Minstrelsy Ancient and Modern, prefaced by a very thorough historical introduction. Meantime he made a reputation by casual poems in newspapers and magazines, of which Jeanie Morrison, My Heid is like to break, and Wearie’s Cauld Well have taken a fixed place in Scotch literature. These poems are his best work, but he gave most of the energy of his vigorous intellect to writing ballads and songs in English; and he interpreted the martial spirit of the Norse sea-rovers with an enthusiasm and force which one would not expect from the plaintive character of his Scotch poems. His critical power and his learning were probably too great for his executive faculty; but, whatever may be thought of his promise as a poet, it was undoubtedly quenched by his entrance into journalism and the fatiguing work of newspaper editing. He became editor of the Paisley Advertiser in 1828, of the Glasgow Courier in 1830, and died suddenly of apoplexy in 1835. A trying examination before a Parliamentary Committee was thought to have hastened his end; but Conservative journalism at the time of the Reform Bill was exciting and uphill work, and it is a fair inference from the sad tone of some of his later poems that a baffled longing to achieve enduring fame added to the poet’s worries and increased the strain on his constitution. A small volume of his poems was published in 1832, and a larger volume with a memoir in 1849.