Poetic licence?

IN your article (25 March) on the proposal to erect a memorial to those who lost their lives in the Tay Bridge disaster of 28 December, 1879, you mentioned verses from a poem by William McGonagall etched into the pavement on the north bank of the river near the present bridge. The verses inscribed in Riverside Drive, Dundee, are not from the poem you quoted, The Tay Bridge Disaster, but from an earlier work by McGonagall, who wrote several poems on the subject of the bridge.

McGonagall was certainly writing this poem before the bridge was officially opened in 1878, as in another verse he anticipates that Queen Victoria will attend the ceremony. She did not, but crossed the bridge at a later date when returning from Balmoral.

IAN McCRAW

Pitcairn Road

Downfield, Dundee