David Gray Gravestone Auld Aisle Cemetery Kirkintilloch East Dunbartonshire Scotland

Tour Scotland travel video of the David Gray gravestone in the Auld Aisle cemetery on ancestry visit to town of Kirkintilloch, East Dunbartonshire. David Gray, born 29th January 1838, died 3rd of December 1861, was a Scottish poet. The son of a handloom weaver, Gray was born at Merkland. He began to write poetry for The Glasgow Citizen and began his idyll on the Luggie, the little stream that ran through Merkland. He was buried in the Auld Aisle, where he had often wandered, and which is also the subject of his song, and, on the 29th July, 1865, a plain obelisk was erected to his memory, subscribed for by his admirers. David wrote his own epitaph, " Below lies one whose name was traced in sand, He died, not knowing what it was to live ; Died, while the first sweet consciousness of manhood. And maiden thought electrified his soul, Faint beatings in the calyx of the rose. Bewildered reader ! pass without a sigh, In a proud sorrow ! There is life with God, In other kingdom of a sweeter air; In Eden every flower is blown. Amen. Thus lived and died one who left a few words only behind him, His Luggie, poem opens with the wish of the writer that his thought and verse may run as smoothly as his beloved river: That impulse which all beauty gives the soul, Is languaged as I sing. For fairer stream Rolled never golden sand into the sea, Made sweeter music than the Luggie, gloom'd By glens whose melody mingles with her own. The uttered name my inmost being thrills, A word beyond a charm; and if this lay Could smoothly flow along and wind to the end In natural manner, as the Luggie winds Her tortuous waters, then the world would list In sweet enthralment, swallowed up and lost. The surname Gray was first found in Northumberland, England, with Anschatel Groy of Haute Saone, Normandy, who fought with William the Conqueror in 1066 AD. After the conquest, Anschatel Groy settled in Chillingham, Northumberland. He was from the department of Haute Saone called Gray, sometimes Groy, or Croy, in Normandy. Gray is a name, who ancestors come from the noble Boernician clans of the Scottish English borders region. It is a name for a person who had gray hair. All photographs are copyright of Sandy Stevenson, Tour Scotland, and may not be used without permission.

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