The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume XI. The Period of the French Revolution.
§ 31. William Tennant
William Tennant, a native of Anstruther, who, in 1834, became professor of oriental languages in St. Andrews university, published, in 1812, while a schoolmaster at Denino, in Fife, his Anster Fair, a kind of mock heroic description, in English verse, of that now discontinued rural gathering, not lacking in cleverly humorous or even in poetic touches. His The Dingin doon O The Cathedral—descriptive of the destruction of St. Andrews cathedral by the reformation mob—and his Tangier’s Giant are good specimens of graphic vernacular; but his Thane of Fife, and his two dramas Cardinal Bethune and John Baliol, all in English, are now quite forgotten.