The Famous Tay Whale
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The Famous Tay Whale" is a poem by William Topaz McGonagall about a humpback whale hunted and killed in 1883 in the Firth of Tay near Dundee, Scotland, then the UK's main whaling port. The Tay whale came to public prominence when it was subject to a public dissection by Sir John Struthers and taken on a tour of the UK. Its skeleton now resides in the McManus Galleries in Dundee city centre.[1][2]
The dissection of the Tay whale by John Struthers, wearing a top hat, in the left of the photograph
McGonagall's poem was set to music by the composer Mátyás Seiber in 1958. The premiere performance of this work - scored for orchestra, foghorn, espresso coffee machine and narrator - took place at the second of Gerard Hoffnung's music festivals, with Edith Evans in the role of the narrator.[3]
[edit] References
 |
Wikisource has original text related to this article: |
- ^ M. J. Williams (June 1996). "Professor Struthers and the Tay whale". Scottish Medical Journal 41 (3): 92–94. PMID 8807706. Archived from the original on March 3, 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/20060303094809/http://www.abdn.ac.uk/talpa/struthers/tay_whale.hti. Retrieved June 19, 2008.
- ^ "McGonagall Online: The Famous Tay Whale". http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/poems/pgwhale.htm. Retrieved June 19, 2008.
- ^ "William McGonagall (1830?-1902) The Famous Tay Whale", Representative Poetry Online, version 3.0 (University of Toronto), https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/html/1807/4350/poem2765.html, retrieved 14 January 2012
 |
This Scotland-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
 |
This Cetacean-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
 |
This article related to a poem is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
