"The Famous Tay Whale" is a poem by William Topaz McGonagall

William Topaz McGonagall

William Topaz McGonagall was a Scottish weaver, doggerel poet and actor. He won notoriety as an extremely bad poet who exhibited no recognition of or concern for his peers' opinions of his work....

 about a humpback whale

Humpback Whale

The humpback whale is a species of baleen whale. One of the larger rorqual species, adults range in length from and weigh approximately . The humpback has a distinctive body shape, with unusually long pectoral fins and a knobbly head. It is an acrobatic animal, often breaching and slapping the...

 hunted and killed in 1883 in the Firth of Tay

Firth of Tay

The Firth of Tay is a firth in Scotland between the council areas of Fife, Perth and Kinross, the City of Dundee and Angus, into which Scotland's largest river in terms of flow, the River Tay, empties....

 near Dundee

Dundee

Dundee is the fourth-largest city in Scotland and the 39th most populous settlement in the United Kingdom. It lies within the eastern central Lowlands on the north bank of the Firth of Tay, which feeds into the North Sea...

, Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, then the UK's main whaling

Whaling

Whaling is the hunting of whales mainly for meat and oil. Its earliest forms date to at least 3000 BC. Various coastal communities have long histories of sustenance whaling and harvesting beached whales...

 port. The Tay whale came to public prominence when it was subject to a public dissection

Dissection

Dissection is usually the process of disassembling and observing something to determine its internal structure and as an aid to discerning the functions and relationships of its components....

 by Sir John Struthers

John Struthers (anatomist)

Sir John Struthers, LRCSE, MD, LLD, FRCSE, FRSE was Professor of Anatomy at the University of Aberdeen....

 and taken on a tour of the UK. Its skeleton now resides in the McManus Galleries

McManus Galleries

McManus Galleries is a Gothic Revival-style building, located in the centre of Dundee, Scotland. The building houses a museum and art gallery with a collection of fine and decorative art as well as a natural history collection....

 in Dundee city centre.
McGonagall's poem was set to music by the composer Mátyás Seiber

Mátyás Seiber

Mátyás György Seiber was a Hungarian-born composer who lived and worked in England from 1935 onward.-Career:Seiber was born in Budapest, and studied there with Zoltán Kodály, with whom he toured Hungary collecting folk songs. In 1928, he became director of the jazz department at the Hoch...

 in 1958. The premiere performance of this work - scored for orchestra, foghorn, espresso coffee machine and narrator - took place at the second of Gerard Hoffnung

Gerard Hoffnung

Gerard Hoffnung was an artist and musician, best known for his humorous works.- Early years :Born in Berlin, and named Gerhard, he was the only child of a well-to-do Jewish couple, Hildegard and Ludwig Hoffnung...

's music festivals, with Edith Evans

Edith Evans

Dame Edith Mary Evans, DBE was a British actress. She was known for her work on the British stage. She also appeared in a number of films, for which she received three Academy Award nominations, plus a BAFTA and a Golden Globe award.Evans was particularly effective at portraying haughty...

in the role of the narrator.