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
River Tay the Lyon. A flow of was recorded on 17 January 1993, when the river rose above its usual level at Perth, and caused extensive flooding in the city. Were it not for the hydro-electric schemes upstream which impounded runoff, the peak would have been considerably higher. The highest flood recorded at Perth occurred in 1814, when the river rose above its usual level, partly caused by a blockage of ice under Smeaton's Bridge. Other severe flood events occurred in 1210 and 1648 when bridges over the Tay at Perth were destroyed. During the winters of 2009–10 and 2010–11, the Tay