Scottish Authors > Robert Fergusson Poet 1750-1774

Robert Fergusson was born in Edinburgh on 5th September 1750, of Aberdeenshire parents. He attended the High School in Edinburgh before obtaining a bursary to Dundee Grammar School in 1762. The bursary also took him on to the University of St Andrews in 1765, but his father's death in May 1767 led him to leave the university the following year without taking his degree: he had to return to Edinburgh to support his mother and younger sister, and obtained the humble position of clerk or copyist to the Commissary Office at the rate of a penny per page transcribed.

At St Andrews Fergusson led a lively social life. He sang, he engaged in student pranks, and in April 1765 he wrote his first known poem, Elegy on the death of Mr David Gregory, late Professor of Mathematics in the University of St Andrews. This poem - lively, humorous, half a mock-elegy and half serious - is in an old Scottish tradition of mock-elegy in Scots and shows Fergusson's interest in the Scots language and in Scots poetic forms at a time when most educated Scotsmen used English models in their writing. The skill, vigour, wit and sheer confidence shown in this poem indicated a talent already well developed and the use of Scots is assured and adroit.

For the rest of his short life, passed in Edinburgh, Fergusson regularly contributed poems to The Weekly magazine or Edinburgh amusement published by Thomas Ruddiman. He led a lively social life, frequently attending the theatre and making friends with actors. He was a member of the Cape Club, a society whose membership included painters, musicians and actors and covered a wide range of social classes. The Club met in various Edinburgh taverns to celebrate poetry and song.

Fergusson's first contributions to The Weekly magazine were based on English models, but he soon showed his true genius for poetry in Scots with The Daft days, a splendidly vivid celebratory poem in an old Scottish tradition. In the Scots poems that followed he showed his developing skills in descriptive, celebratory, patriotic and satirical poetry with a flexible use of the Scots language and a remarkable combination of vernacular vigour and classical assurance. These poems included Elegy on the death of Scots music, The King's birth-day in Edinburgh, Caller oysters, Hallow Fair, The Rising of the Session, The Sitting of the Session, Caller Water, The Ghaists: a kirk-yard eclogue, Leith Races, The Farmer's ingle (on which Burns modelled his Cotter's Saturday night), and the remarkable long poem on Edinburgh, Auld Reekie.

Fergusson's language shows a range and assurance not seen in Scots since the Makars. In his tragically short poetic career (he died in 1774) he reestablished Scots poetry and made Burns possible.

Poems of Robert Fergusson, edited by M.P. McDiarmid. Scottish Text Society, 2 vols. Edinburgh and London, 1947-56.

S.G. Smith (ed.) Robert Fergusson, Essays by various hands,Edinburgh, 1942.

D.Daiches, Robert Fergusson, Edinburgh, 1982.

David Daiches

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