Robert Fergusson
Robert Fergusson | |
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Born | Edinburgh (Capital City), Scotland | 5 September 1750
Died | 16 October 1774 Darien House, Edinburgh, Scotland | (aged 24)
Occupation |
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Nationality | Scottish |
Alma mater | University of St Andrews |
Literary movement | Scots vernacular revival |
Notable works |
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Robert Fergusson (5 September 1750 – 16 October 1774) was a Scottish poet. After formal education at the University of St Andrews, Fergusson led a bohemian life in Edinburgh, the city of his birth, then at the height of intellectual and cultural ferment as part of the Scottish Enlightenment. Many of his extant poems were printed from 1771 onwards in Walter Ruddiman's Weekly Magazine, and a collected works was first published early in 1773. Despite a short life, his career was highly influential, especially through its impact on Robert Burns. He wrote both Scottish English and the Scots language, and it is his vivid and masterly writing in the latter leid[1] for which he is principally acclaimed.
Life
Robert Fergusson was born in a tenement between Cap and Feather Close and Halkerstons Wynd,[2] both small vennels north of Edinburgh's Royal Mile, demolished in 1763 to make way for what is today the hidden southern arches of the North Bridge. His parents, William and Elizabeth (née Forbes), were originally from Aberdeenshire, but had moved to the city two years previously and was working as a clerk in the British Linen Bank.[3] Robert was the third of three surviving children by them.
Fergusson received formal schooling at the city's
In late summer of 1768 Fergusson returned to Edinburgh. His father had died the previous year, his sister Barbara had married, and his older brother Harry had recently left Scotland, enlisting with the
Literary career
There is good evidence that Fergusson had already been developing literary ambitions as a student at St Andrews where he claimed to have begun drafting a play on the life of William Wallace. His earliest extant poem, also written at this time, is a satirical elegy in Scots on the death of David Gregory, one of the university's professors of maths.
Fergusson involved himself in Edinburgh's social and artistic circles mixing with musicians, actors, artists and booksellers who were also publishers. His friend, the theatre-manager William Woods, regularly procured him free admission to theatre productions[6] and in mid-1769 Fergusson struck up a friendship with the Italian castrato singer Giusto Fernando Tenducci, who was touring with a production of Artaxerxes. Fergusson's literary debut came when Tenducci asked him to contribute Scots airs for the Edinburgh run of the opera. Fergusson supplied three, which were performed and published with the libretto.
After February 1771 he began to contribute poems to Walter Ruddiman's
Popular reception for his Scots work, as evidenced in a number of verse epistles in its praise,[7] helped persuade Ruddiman to publish a first general edition of his poems which appeared in early 1773 and sold around 500 copies, allowing Fergusson to clear a profit.[8]
In mid-1773 Fergusson attempted his own publication of Auld Reekie, now regarded as his masterpiece, a vivid verse portrait of his home city intended as the first part of a planned long poem. It demonstrated his ambition to further extend the range of his Scots writing. This also included an aspiration to make Scots translations of Virgil's Georgics, thus following in the footsteps of Gavin Douglas. However, if any drafts for such a project were made, none survive. The poet was a hard self-critic and is known latterly to have destroyed manuscripts of his writing.[9]
Clubs
Fergusson was a member of the
Death
Fergusson's literary energy and active social life were latterly overshadowed by what may have been
His fears were founded. Around the
The poet Robert Burns privately commissioned and paid for a memorial headstone of his own design in 1787, which was erected in 1789. The stone was restored in April 1850 by the poet Robert Gilfillan.[11] In the later nineteenth century, Robert Louis Stevenson intended to renovate the stone, but died before he could do so. The epitaph that Stevenson planned to add to the stone is recorded on a plaque added to the grave by the Saltire Society on the Society's 50th anniversary in 1995.
Memorials
Fergusson is one of the sixteen Scottish poets and writers depicted on the lower section of the Scott Monument on Princes Street. He appears on the right side of the west face, opposite Robert Burns.
A plaque was erected in his memory in St Giles Cathedral in the 1930s.
An independent statue outside
Overview and influence
Fergusson's literary output was both
Many works by Burns either echo or are directly modelled on works by Fergusson. For example, "Leith Races" unquestionably supplied the model for Burns' "Holy Fair". "On seeing a Butterfly in the Street" has reflections in it which strikingly correspond with "To a Mouse". Comparisons, such as between Fergusson's "The Farmer's Ingle" and Burns' "The Cotter's Saturday Night", often demonstrate the creative complexity of the influence.
Fergusson's life also had one important non-literary influence. The brutal circumstances of the poet's death prompted one of his visitors in Darien House, the young doctor
Editions
Ruddiman's 1773 edition of Fergusson's work was reprinted in 1779 with a supplement containing additional poems. A second edition appeared in 1785. There are later editions, by
Modern editions of Fergusson include the definitive two-volume collection of his works in both Scots and Scottish English, edited by the scholar Matthew McDiarmid, The Poems of Robert Fergusson, published in the 1950s, and Robert Fergusson, Selected Poems, a popular edition of the poetry in Scots, edited by the author James Robertson and first published around the turn of the present century.
Further reading
- Smith, Sydney Goodsir (ed.) (1952), Robert Fergusson 1750 - 1774: Essays by Various Hands, Nelson, Edinburgh
- Scott, Alexander, "The Makar Fergusson", in Annand, J.K. (ed.) Lallans, Number 2: Whitsunday 1974, The Lallans Society, pp. 7 - 9
- Campbell, Donald (1975), review of Alexander Manson (ed.), Poems by ISSN 0307-2029
- Freeman, F.W. (1984), Robert Fergusson and the Scots Humanist Compromise, ISBN 0852244746
See also
- Habbie stanza
- Scottish literature
- Scots language
- Thomas Chatterton
External links
- Robert Fergusson Society
- Portrait of Fergusson[National Gallery of Scotland
- Robert Fergusson is commemorated in Makars' Court outside The Writers' Museum, Lawnmarket, Edinburgh. Selections for Makars' Court are made by The Writers' Museum, The Scottish Poetry Library.
- Video footage of Robert Fergusson's grave
References
- ^ SND: Leed
- ^ Grants Old and New Edinburgh vol.2 p.238
- ^ Grants Old and New Edinburgh vol.2 p.238
- ^ Betteridge, Robert & McLan, Ralph (2019), Northern Lights: The Scottish Enlightenment, National Library of Scotland, p. 16,
- ^ Robert Fergusson by Robert Fergusson
- ^ Matthew McDiarmid, The Poems of Robert Fergusson (2 vols), Volume 1. Blackwood, 1954, pp. 22-28.
- Birlinn, 2000). Examples are by "J.S.", published 3 September 1772 (pp. 68-70), and Andrew Gray, published 11 June 1773 (pp. 139-40). Fergusson himself wrote Scots verse epistles in reply to both.
- ^ Carol McGuirk: "The 'Rhyming Trade': Fergusson, Burns, and the Marketplace". In Heaven-taught Fergusson, ed. Robert Crawford, East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2003. p. 117.
- ISBN 978-1-84697-035-1, pp. 22-6, discusses instances and possible reasons for this.
- ^ Selected Poems, ed. Robertson (2000), p. 21.
- ^ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Robert Gilfillan
- ^ Statue of Robert Fergusson outside Canongate Kirk.
- ^ David Annand website.
- ^ "History of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital". Archived from the original on 8 July 2009. Retrieved 29 April 2009.