| Administrative History | James Hay Beattie [1768-1790]. Eldest son of Beattie. Named, with permission, after Beattie's patron James Hay, Earl of Erroll. His childhood is lovingly recorded in many letters, which show that Beattie was always a deeply involved parent, and in the memoir Beattie wrote shortly after James Hay's death. His childhood and adolescence were marred by his mother's mental illness, and her total disasppearance from his life when he was aged about eleven. He attended Aberdeen Grammar School, and then Marischal College from 1781 to 1786. He considered entering the church, but Beattie secured his appointment on 28 Spetember 1787 as his own assistant and successor. James Hay sometimes taught the Arts class, but was already ill with tubercolosis, of which he died on 19 November 1790. His father assembled a substantial volume of his prose and verse, printed in an edition of 200 copies for circulation among his friends in 1794, and subsequently published with Beattie's own poems in 1799 |
| Description | Letter from James Hay Beattie, Peterhead, to Major Mercer, written in verse, discussing Major Mercer's letter and Mercer himself:
"My Dear Sir
I received your letter;
Sure Horace never wrote a better;
Nor Ovid formed in antient song,
whose nose, they say, was wonderous long.
If I were skill'd in making verse, Sir,
I'd try my hand on Major Mercer,
and raise towards heaven that valiant chief
High as the peak of Teneriff.
Mercer, of this our age the wonder,
Brother of Mars, and Son of thunder,
who march'd on foot from Aberdeen
To beat the French on Minden - green;
Who bore of deadl wounds some dozen
In the famed field of Fillinghausen;
and wore out sundry pairs of brogues
In scampering through the Irish bogs,
Compell'd, while rushes gall'd his wet toes,
To dine, alas! on dry potatoes.
O for a Muse of fire, and glibber,
Than Homer was, or Colley Cibber,
O for a hundred thousand tongues,
A throat of brass, and iron lungs;
That I might sing in deathless lay,
How Mercer journey'd to Lonmay,
and how in gallipot he bore,
With pasteboard cover'd o'er and o'er,
Ripe strawberries reduced to jelly,
yet sweeter far than I can tell ye.
To sing the Gift, and eke the Carrier,
Would the muse help, I vow I'd marry her.
But how should my entreaties move her,
She values not so young a Lover.
This, with kind love to Peg and Katie
The needful is, from
James Hay Beattie". |