Best of Scotland (W)

Published on Friday 3 July 2009 21:53

WAVERLEY: Waverly (sic), Tennessee was established as a stop along the stagecoach road between Nashville and Memphis by a fan of Sir Walter Scott. Waverley, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, once a goldrush town, is now a "bedroom community".

The hugely influential and successful Waverley, 1814 – commonly designated the first "historical novel" in English – has given a name to many things, including a railway station, overture (by Berlioz), fountain pen nib and paddle steamer.

WEE WILLIE WINKIE: William Miller, a carpenter, known in his day as a poet and story-writer, is remembered solely for his nursery rhyme, Wee Willie Winkie. His monument in Glasgow Necropolis was erected by public subscription in 1872. Such generosity might have been appreciated pre-humously by the poet, who died penniless and was buried elsewhere in an unmarked grave.

WATT, JAMES: While taking his regular Sunday stroll on Glasgow Green in 1765, Watt, an instrument-maker at Glasgow University, had the revelation (of an improvement to the inefficient Newcomen steam engine) that made the industrial revolution possible. Since the Eureka moment happened on the Scottish Sabbath, he waited a day before writing down his calculations.

WALLIE: Those who lived up a wallie (tiled) close in a Glasgow tenement might have sported wallies (false teeth), donned their wallies (glad rags), were no more likely to be wallydrags (good for nothings) than anyone else, and – one and all – displayed on their mantelpiece twa wally dugs (porcelaneous canines).

WILSON, ALEXANDER: The "father of American ornithology" was a weaver, poet and peddler, whose first experience of bird life was in Paisley jail, where he was sent after publication of The Shark, an outspoken attack on a local mill owner. Wilson emigrated in 1794, became a teacher; journeyed extensively on foot, shooting, drawing and describing birds; published his American Ornithology and gave his name to Wilson's warbler.