The Famous Tay Whale Dundee city centre. Paul Godfrey described McGonagall on the strength of the "Tay Whale" and other verse as "the worst poet in the English language". Hugh MacDiarmid wrote of the "Tay Whale" that "what this [the verses about John Wood and the Tay Whale] amounts to, of course, is simply what quite uneducated and stupid people—the two adjectives by no means necessarily go together, for many uneducated people have great vitality and a raciness of utterance altogether lacking here—would produce if asked to recount something they had read in a newspaper." MacDiarmid continued that "in their retailings of, or comments
Tay Rail Bridge Tay date to 1854 but it was not until 15 July 1870 that the North British Railway (Tay Bridge) Act, received royal assent. On 22 July 1871, the foundation stone of the bridge was laid. The bridge was designed by engineer Thomas Bouch, who received a knighthood following the bridge's completion. The bridge was a lattice-grid design, combining cast and wrought iron. The design had been used by Thomas W. Kennard in the Crumlin Viaduct in South Wales in 1858, after the use of cast iron in The Crystal Palace. The Crystal Palace was not as heavily loaded as a