Dance The Banks of Clyde 392

The River Clyde is a success story. Born near the small mining community of Leadhills, it served its apprenticeship to the industry of Lanark, Hamilton, Bothwell and Uddingston and, at last, became an economic giant at Glasgow.

Leadhills, in Lanarkshire near the border of Dumfriesshire, in the southern uplands, is one of the highest villages in Scotland. Allan Ramsay (1686–1758), wigmaker, bookseller, poet and collector of The Tea Table Miscellany, was a native of Leadhills and it was there that he established a circulating library, the first in Britain.

On its way to the sea the Clyde makes four great leaps downward, at the waterfalls of the Clyde, the linns of Bonnington, Dundaff, Corra and Stonebyres. The valley of the upper Clyde is agricultural, with orchards and market gardens vying for importance with the famous Clydesdale horses, while beneath the rich soil are the coal and iron of industry.

Officially, the Clyde runs from Daer Water to Dumbarton, a distance a bit over one hundred miles, but the people of Glasgow consider the firth, where the Clyde mixes with the Atlantic and the shores are dotted with holiday resorts, the “Costa Clyde”, as part of “their” river.

In 1812 Henry Bell, an innkeeper at Dumbarton, added a four-and-one-half horsepower engine to a forty-two foot hull with paddle wheels and called it the Comet, the first successful passenger steamship in Europe. On that January day when the Comet thrashed over the Clyde at seven miles an hour, a great tradition was begun: those glorious days of steamships on the Clyde that carried holiday-makers “doon the watter” to Dunoon, Rothesay, Wemyss Bay and as far away as Arran and Campbeltown. From Glasgow’s Broomielaw during the 19th century, the golden age of the Clyde steamers, throngs of hard-working city dwellers embarked on vessels with such names as Benmore, Ivanhoe, Balmoral and Meg Merrilies.

There is something for everyone on the bonny banks of Clyde: from the racing trout stream to the lush river banks of the Vale, to the burgeoning industry of Lanarkshire, to the bustling commerce of Glasgow and the ship-building for the seven seas at Clydebank, to the excursion boats that still sail down the now mighty river that flows between the mountains standing at the very edge of the sea.

In the early 17th century William Lithgow, also known as “Lugless Will”, a widely-travelled adventurer, wrote:

Would God I might but live
  To see my native soil,
Twice happy is my happy wish
  To end this endless toil.

Yet still I would record
  The pleasant banks of Clyde,
Where orchards, castles, towns and woods
  Are planted side by side.

And chiefly, Lanark, thou
  Thy country’s lowest lamp,
In which the bruised body now
  Did first receive the stamp.