The Tar-Reek frae Inverkeithing

THE TAR-REEK FRAE INVERKEITHING
A Scots Historical Ballad of Admiral Samuel Greig
1735–1788
Daniil Lazko
With a literary commentary and a biographical note
Tuapse · 19 September 2026
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The Tar-Reek frae Inverkeithing

I
The tar-pot smoked at Inverkeithing,
the Forth ran grey an wide;
a laddie held his faither’s line
an waited on the tide.
II
He learned the splice afore the psalm,
the rope-walk afore the pen,
an wrocht his faither’s decks doun Forth
an up the coast again.
III
The hemp cam wast frae Riga road,
the tar frae Swedish snaw;
the Baltic cam to Inverkeithing
or ever he sailed awa.
IV
At Havana he saw the fever tak
mair men nor ever the shot;
he passed for lieutenant that same year
but a ship he never got.
V
He signed awa in sixty-four
an took a second name;
at Kronstadt aa the words were new,
the tar was aye the same.
VI
He rase by wark an no by word,
by tackle, chart an sail,
an syne the fleet gaed soothaway
afore an autumn gale.
VII
They drave the Turk frae Chios strait
intil a landlocked bay,
whaur naething grew but his ain masts
an the wind had dee’d away.
VIII
They gutted fower wee hulls that nicht
an packed them fou o tar;
he kent thon reek frae Inverkeithing,
the same, an noo at war.
IX
The boats gaed in wi muffled oars
an he lay close that nicht;
a tarry stay took up the lowe
an auld wa’s cam in licht.
X
By mornin the wa’s stood as afore
an ash lay on the tide;
he wrote the hour, the wind, the loss,
an nae word o his pride.
XI
He cam back north to Kronstadt mud,
to saw-pits, rope an rule;
he biggit mair ships nor he had brunt
an made the yaird a school.
XII
He wadna tak a rigger’s word
nor trust a new-rove line:
whit wadna haud a man’s ain wecht
wad never haud in brine.
XIII
He sheathed their wames wi copper plate
again the worm an weed,
an drew their lines sae plain in chalk
that ony yaird could read.
XIV
In auchty-echt his flag gaed up,
the Gulf lay flat an dun;
aff Hogland the twa lines closed
an the lang forenicht begun.
XV
They took a ship, they tint a ship,
an focht till the licht was gane;
he steekit the lave in Sveaborg,
an the fever cam his lane.
XVI
He dee’d aboard the Rostislav
at Reval, in saut haar;
an doun at Inverkeithing that nicht
the tide turned on the bar.

Daniil Lazko · Tuapse, 19 September 2026
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Literary Commentary
1. Form
Sixteen quatrains; sixty-four lines. The metre is the accentual common measure of the Scots and Border ballad — four stresses, three, four, three — with the syllable count left free to move between eight and eleven in the long lines and five and eight in the short ones. The rhyme scheme is ABCB throughout, without exception. Several of the rhymes are ballad rhymes that live in Scots pronunciation rather than in English spelling (pen / again as agen, snaw / awa, and the stane-class vowels generally), and a reader following the orthography of standard English will not always hear them as full.
The third line of every quatrain is unrhymed, and the poem uses that freedom deliberately: the strongest single image of a stanza almost always falls there — “he kent thon reek frae Inverkeithing”, “whaur naething grew but his ain masts”, “whit wadna haud a man’s ain wecht”.
2. Three waters
The architecture is a passage through three seas, and the poem never names the scheme aloud.
I–VI — Inverkeithing and the western seaboard: a tar-pot, a rope-walk, a father’s decks and the coastal trade of the Forth, then the Royal Navy’s Atlantic world and the crossing into Russian service.
VII–X — the Aegean: Chios, a landlocked bay, dead wind, four fireships, old walls, ash.
XI–XVI — the Baltic: the Kronstadt yards, copper and chalk, Hogland, Sveaborg, fever, Reval.
The three are bound together by one device: the third water is already present in the first. In stanza III the hemp comes west from the Riga roads and the tar from Swedish pine, because the Scottish east-coast ports of the eighteenth century were supplied from the Baltic. The Baltic reaches Inverkeithing before Greig ever reaches the Baltic — so that when stanza V says that at Kronstadt every word was new and the tar was always the same, the line points to a real trading network rather than to an invented association of places. The poem does not claim that this particular cargo came in his father’s ship; it claims that the Baltic was already a material presence on that quay.
3. The system of materials
The poem characterises its subject through substances rather than adjectives. There is no line in which Greig is called brave, great or able.
Tar is the governing material. It smokes in the harbour of his childhood (I); it is packed into the hulls of the fireships at Chesma (VIII); it carries the flame up a stay in the one sentence where the battle actually happens (IX). Around it stand hemp and rope (II, XII), ship timber (III, VII), copper and chalk (XIII), ash and salt sea-fog (X, XVI). The line of transformation runs: northern wood and tar — Inverkeithing — masts — fire — ash.
The Aegean is given as stone, in deliberate opposition to the northern world of wood. In a country where nothing grows, the only timber in the bay is the enemy’s masts; the fire that destroys them briefly lights old dry walls along the shore; and by morning the walls stand exactly as they stood, while the fleet is ash on the tide. That is the whole of the poem’s antiquity. There is no Homer, no gods, no Troy, no ruin named — only a wall that outlasts a navy.
4. Character through act
Four small actions carry everything the poem claims about the man. He comes out of a night battle and writes down the hour, the wind and the losses, and nothing about himself (X). He builds more ships than he burned, and turns a dockyard into a school (XI). He refuses to take a rigger’s word for a rope, on the principle that what will not hold a man’s own weight will never hold at sea (XII). He draws the lines of a hull plainly enough in chalk for any yard to read them (XIII). The commander is visible only in what he handles.
The death is treated in the same way. Neither shot nor fire ever touches him: at Havana in 1762 he watches fever kill more men than the guns, and twenty-six years later, after Hogland, the fever comes for him on its own — an the fever cam his lane.
5. Opening and close
The last stanza mirrors the first at the level of the object. The poem opens with a boy holding a line and waiting on the tide; it closes with the admiral dead at Reval in salt sea-fog while, that same night, the tide turns on the bar at Inverkeithing. The man does not return. Only the water keeps its appointment. Nothing is said about memory, fame or immortality: the final line is a tidal fact.
6. Tradition
The ballad is not a pastiche of any single author and quotes none. Four functions were separated deliberately: the concrete eighteenth-century Scots texture of Robert Fergusson; the singable ballad movement of Robert Burns; the historical breadth of Walter Scott, by which one working life crosses a large world; and the aftertaste of James Hogg, in which a life quietly turns into a tale. None of their phrasing, famous openings or signature figures is borrowed.
7. Note on historical method
No invented speech is used anywhere in the ballad. The poem combines documented events with three poetic inferences, each identified below. The documented matter is used throughout: the birth at Inverkeithing, the seafaring father, the Royal Navy service as master’s mate, Havana in 1762 with the lieutenant’s examination passed but the rank unconfirmed, the entry into Russian service in 1764 and the Russian name, Chios and Chesma in 1770 with the four fireships, the Kronstadt dockyards and copper sheathing, Hogland in 1788, the blockade of Sveaborg, the illness, and the death aboard the Rostislav at Reval.
Three places are poetic inference rather than record, and are named here rather than concealed. Stanza III describes the Baltic trade of the Scottish east-coast ports, documented as a trade but not as a fact about his father’s particular ship. Stanza XII states a working principle attributed to him, not a recorded scene. Stanza XIII describes draughting practice within his documented reform of Russian shipbuilding, not a dated event.
On one point the poem takes the cautious reading. Nineteenth-century accounts state that Greig set the match to the fireships with his own hand and swam clear under fire; Russian historiography credits the decisive fireship to Lieutenant Dmitry Ilyin, acting under his command. The poem does not adjudicate. It keeps Greig close in, where every source places him, and says nothing further.
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A Short Glossary of the Scots
Scots English
ahint behind; afterwards
auchty-echt eighty-eight (1788)
aye always
biggit built
brunt burnt
dee’d died
dun dull grey-brown
fecht fight
forenicht the early part of the night; evening
fower four
frae from
gaed went
gane gone
haar the cold sea-fog of the east coast
haud hold
his lane by itself; on its own
lave the rest; the remainder
licht / nicht light / night
lowe flame; blaze
mair … nor more … than
new-rove newly rove; newly threaded through its blocks
nocht nothing
or ever before ever
rase rose
reek smoke; reek; smell
saut salt
steekit shut in; closed up
syne then; afterwards
thrang crowded; packed close
tint lost
wa’s walls
wames bellies (here the underwater hulls)
wark work
wecht weight
whaur where
wid wood; timber
wrocht worked
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Admiral Samuel Greig (1735–1788): A Biographical Note
Samuel Greig — in Russian service Samuil Karlovich Greig (Самуил Карлович Грейг) — was born on 30 November 1735 in the burgh of Inverkeithing in Fife, the son of Charles Greig, a shipowner of that town. He first went to sea in his father’s ships.
Royal Navy, 1758–1764
He entered the Royal Navy before 1758 as a master’s mate and was present at the capture of Gor;e in 1758, at the Battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759, and at the siege of Havana in 1762. He was made acting lieutenant in 1761 and passed his examination in January 1762, but the rank was not confirmed, and he was still serving as a master’s mate at Havana. When Catherine II asked the British government for experienced officers to rebuild the Russian fleet, Greig was one of those selected.
Russian service and the Archipelago, 1764–1775
He entered Russian service in 1764, enrolled by imperial ordinance as captain of the first rank in June of that year, and rose quickly. In 1769–1770 he sailed with the first Archipelago expedition under Count Alexey Orlov and Admiral Grigory Spiridov. After the indecisive action in the Chios strait, the Ottoman fleet withdrew into the shallow bay of Chesma under the cover of shore batteries; on the night of 6–7 July 1770 Greig commanded the detachment and the fireships sent in against it, and by morning the Ottoman fleet had been destroyed almost in its entirety. He was promoted rear-admiral for the action and decorated with the Order of St George, 2nd class. In the campaigns that followed he took part in operations at Lemnos, Negropont, the Dardanelles and Mytilene, and against the fortress of Chesma.
Kronstadt and the reform of the fleet, 1775–1788
In 1775 Greig was promoted vice-admiral and appointed chief commander of the port of Kronstadt; in 1782 he was promoted admiral. It is on these Kronstadt years that his lasting reputation rests. He rebuilt and extended the dockyards, revised the discipline and administration of the fleet, improved rigging, ship construction and naval practice, and introduced copper sheathing to Russian hulls. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1782. His son Aleksey Greig (1775–1845) became an admiral of the Imperial Russian Navy in his turn; his grandson Samuil Greig (1827–1887) was Russian Minister of Finance.
The Russo-Swedish War and death, 1788
On the outbreak of war with Sweden in 1788 Greig commanded the Baltic fleet. On 6/17 July he fought the Battle of Hogland in the Gulf of Finland: a hard and inconclusive action in which each side took a ship of the line from the other — the Russian Vladislav taken by the Swedes, the Swedish Prins Gustav taken by the Russians — after which the Swedish fleet withdrew to Sveaborg and Greig placed it under blockade. He fell ill with a violent fever during the blockade and was carried to Reval, where Catherine II sent her own physician, Dr John Rogerson, to attend him. He died on board his flagship Rostislav on 26 October 1788, in his fifty-third year.
He was buried with full state honours in the cathedral church of Reval — the Dome Church, St Mary’s, in Tallinn — where his tomb was designed by Giacomo Quarenghi at the Empress’s commission.
Sources
The biographical note and the historical matter of the ballad rest on the following. The first two are the principal authorities for the Russian service; the reference articles that follow were used for corroboration and for dates.
«Грейг Самуил Карлович», Большая российская энциклопедия [Great Russian Encyclopaedia] — ranks and appointments, the Kronstadt command, the reform of the fleet, Chesma and Hogland, with a bibliography; it notes the survival of Greig’s own journal of the Chesma campaign.
S. Beklemisheff, ‘Samuel Greig, Grand Admiral in the Imperial Russian Navy’, Journal of the Royal United Service Institution (1911) — for the chronology of the Russian service and the documents of appointment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Greig
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Грейг,_Самуил_Карлович
https://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Greigh
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Karlovitch_Greig
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Greigh