Odd this day

3 min readDec 28, 2023

Ah, 28 December: 144th anniversary of the Tay Bridge disaster, which tragically took the lives of 59 people — and rather more happily gave the world ‘Sir’ William Topaz McGonagall’s most famous work.

So the train mov’d slowly along the Bridge of Tay, Until it was about midway, Then the central girders with a crash gave way, And down went the train and passengers into the Tay! The Storm Fiend did loudly bray, Because ninety lives had been taken away, On the last Sabbath day of 1879, Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

What’s perhaps most remarkable about this work, though, is that it’s not the only astonishing poem written about the disaster. There was also Die Brück’ Am Tay by Theodor Fontane, which (and this seems particularly astounding) was published the day after McGonagall’s.

That’s what this printing of McGonagall’s suggests, anyway. His seems to have come out on 9 January…

McGonagall’s Tay Bridge Disaster poem in full. See link to full poem — there’s too much for alt text

…while, according to this essay, Fontane’s was in print in Die Gegenwart the following day.

None of this suggests to me that either man asked himself the crucial question: do you want it done well, or do you want it done quickly? However, I am not an expert on translated German verse (or, indeed, verse), so maybe it’s a masterpiece.

I have to say, I have my doubts. It opens with an epigraph from Macbeth: “When shall we three meet again?” This, apparently, is because Fontane had seen a production of Shakespeare’s eight days before the bridge collapsed. Then the witches open the poem…

“WHEN shall we three meet again?” “The dam of the bridge at seven attain!” “By the pier in the middle. I’ll put out amain The flames.” “I too.” “I’ll come from the north.” “And I from the south.” “From the sea I’ll soar forth.” “Ha, that will be a merry-go-round! The bridge must sink into the ground.” “And with the train what shall we do That crosses the bridge at seven?” “That too.” “That must go too!” “A bauble, a naught, What the hand of man hath wrought!”

That’s the 1916 translation by Margarete Münsterberg, Duchess of Anhalt. It continues:

The bridgekeeper’s house that stands in the north
All windows to the south look forth
And the inmates there without peace or rest
Are gazing southward with anxious zest.

Hmmm. The bridge keeper is looking out for his son, Johnny, who is the engineer on the train, and is 11 minutes away from a late Christmas with the family. The young man is, we are told, confident that although “the train with the gale it vies”, it will win.

It won’t.

More furious grew the wind’s wild games, / / And now, as if the sky poured flames, / Comes shooting down a radiance bright / O’er the water below. — Then all is night.

Then the witches come back and it’s all over, in slightly more (if shorter) lines than McGonagall’s – ahem – masterpiece. Perhaps it lost something in translation, because, to be fair, the idea that “what the hand of man hath wrought” is “a bauble — a naught” is not bad.

…and as long as it doesn’t conclude with this, I think we can safely say that the German poem is at least better:

Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay, / I must now conclude my lay / By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay, / That your central girders would not have given way, / At least many sensible men do say, / Had they been supported on each side with buttresses, / At least many sensible men confesses, / For the stronger we our houses do build, / The less chance we have of being killed.

Odd this day

Written by Coates