290 November 18 - Gryffe Advertizer

November 2018 t: 01505 613340 e: info@advertizer.co.uk
37
Supreme Sacrifice
Bridge of Weir and the Great War
100 years ago this month – November 1918
Lance Sergeant William Neil, 13th Black
Watch (Royal Highlanders)
Sapper Robert Jackson, Royal Engineers
By November 1918 there was no vestige
of doubt that the Central Powers would be
defeated. Yet while the politicians and military
elite in Germany struggled to get to the point
of discussing terms for an armistice with the
Allies, which they knew by then was in truth
a surrender, men on both sides continued to die. The German Navy
had been planning a break out from Kiel for a final glorious sea battle, but
a mutiny by the sailors, soon spreading to other naval bases, strangled that
mad idea. A general strike in Berlin on 9th November saw workers’ councils
set up cultivating the seeds of revolution. The day before that, Ludendorf’s
successor, Groener, had to tell the Kaiser that the army would no longer
stand behind him. It was over. The armistice terms would be dictated to a
German Republic, not an Empire.
But on the fi ghting front, William Neil would never know how close he got
to surviving the war. The son of a carting contractor in Cornmill House,
William had survived being gassed at Ypres, returning home for a month to
recuperate, then back to France in June 1915, onwards to Salonika, and
returning to France for the fi nal advance in July 1918. On 8th November
the 13th Black Watch was charged with taking Semousies, near the Belgian
border about 20km south of Mons. Battalion diary records “At the beginning
of the advance there was some enemy shelling which caused one or two
casualties.” A stark, soulless memorial for the loss of Sergeant Neil, the
veteran of four years’ fi ghting.
Three days later, the eleventh hour of the eleventh month silenced the
guns on the Western Front for the first time in over four years. For Henry
Williamson, the author of “Tarka the Otter”, his enduring memory was: “No
more Very lights going up with their greenish, wavering flare. No flash of
howitzers on the horizon. No droning of shells. No machine guns. Just
nothing. Silence. “
But for those who thought they had survived the horrors of war, there was
to be another hidden danger, the “Spanish Flu”. Probably starting in the
troop camp at Étaples, the virus raged through the combatants then spread
worldwide, a pandemic that was to kill 50-100 million, far more than the
war itself. Robert Jackson, a house painter from Glasgow trained as a
railway engineer by the Army, lasted just two weeks in a Rouen hospital,
succumbing on 16th November. His wife Elizabeth Andrew, mother of his
two children, and the sister of John and Henry Andrew, already lost to the
war, was living in Kirkinner Place close to her parents. After the general
rejoicing for the armistice, she’d be expecting a letter from her husband with
news of his return. But a War Office telegram was delivered to her home
with news of his death.
Read more about William and Robert’s lives and untimely deaths at http://
www.bridgeofweirmemorial.co.uk and in the book “Supreme Sacrifice: A
Small Village and the Great War” available from www.birlinn.co.uk or Abbey
Books, 2 Well Street, Paisley, and other major bookshops or online.
Gordon Masterton
The Semples of Beltrees, 3
Robert Semple, 3rd Laird of Beltrees (c1595 – 1660s)
Robert Semple, 3rd Laird of Beltrees, was born c1595 and most likely spent
his early childhood years at Beltrees in Lochwinnoch Parish or in the family
house in Paisley. He was well-educated and matriculated at the College of
Glasgow in 1613. He married Mary, daughter of Thomas Lyon of Auldbar
and had a son, Francis, and a daughter Elizabeth. In 1626, on the death
of his father, Sir James Semple, Robert inherited his title and the lands of
Beltrees. He lived through difficult times - the Reformation, three Civil wars,
and the Commonwealth. He was a staunch Presbyterian and fought as an
Officer in the Royalist army in support of Charles I and Charles II. He was
instrumental in promoting the restoration of Charles II in 1660.
His main claim to fame, however, is that he was a poet of considerable
talent. Unfortunately only three of his works are known to have survived.
His poem, The Life and Death of Habbie Simson, gives a humorous account
of Habbie Simson, the famous Kilbarchan piper. It is written in a stanza form
which was later to become known in literary circles as the ‘Habbie Stanza’.
This form was used a century later by Robert Burns.
Robert Semple was a contemporary of Habbie Simson and the poem
can be regarded as a valuable local history resource. The poem tells of
occasions and events where Habbie played his pipes, - the kirkyard on
Sundays, weddings, Kilkbarchan Horse Races, St Barchan’s Day Feast,
the gatherings of Spearmen, and Clark plays in Edinburgh. Robert
Semple’s second surviving work is Epitaph on Sanny Briggs, written in the
same Habbie stanza. Sanny Briggs is said to have been nephew to Habbie
Simson.
His third work, on a more serious theme, is A Pick-tooth for the Pope or The
Packman’s Paternoster. The poem takes the form of a dialogue between
a packman and a priest. It was originally written by his father, Sir James
Semple, and was augmented and enlarged by Robert. The poem takes the
form of a discussion between a simple packman and a priest. Throughout
more eight hundred lines of rhyming couplets the packman politely questions
the parish priest, whom he addresses as Sir John, on modes of worship
and dogma of the Church of Rome - the need for mass and prayers to
be in Latin, the Pope as successor to St. Peter, and, what he regards as,
undue exaltation of Virgin Mary. Despite the serious nature of the theme an
ironic humour pervades the work. It was printed in Edinburgh 1669.
Around 1650, Robert and his family moved from the old hall at Beltrees to
Thirdpart in Kilbarchan Parish. Robert appears to have taken an active part
in village life. In 1660 he was witness to the baptism of Marie, a daughter
of Alexander Hamilton, in Forehouse, Kilbarchan. Robert Semple died later
in the 1660s.
© 2018, Helen Calcluth, Renfrewshire Local History Forum
NEXT LECTURE: Thursday 8th November, Coats Building Paisley
Renfrewshire Local History Forum will hold our next lecture in Room 116,
in the Coats Building, University of the West of Scotland (entrance in Storie
Street, Paisley) at 7.30 pm on Thursday, 8th November, 2018.
Our speaker is archaeologist, Heather James, from Calluna Archaeology.
Her lecture topic is the recent archaeological dig at Inchinnan and is entitled
St. Conval to All Hallows: 1400 Years and Counting.
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