This month we’re thrilled to welcome a guest blog from Fergusson himself – or rather, from Matt Brady, who is one of the history tour guides who plays Fergusson at the Edinburgh attraction The Real Mary King’s Close. In this blog, Matt discusses his first encounters with Fergusson and his personal interest in the poems! 

I’m a history tour guide, who plays the eighteenth-century Edinburgh poet Robert Fergusson as a character. Through Fergusson’s works, legacy, references and inspirations, I’ve really been able to paint a picture of life in Edinburgh during the mid-1700s.

Our tours are under the old Royal Exchange building on the Royal Mile (City Chambers), some of which covers what was once Craig’s Close. At the rear of the Royal Exchange on Cockburn Street, there’s a small plaque naming this site as:

“Craig’s Close, site of the Cape Club, spiritual home to Robert Fergusson – Distinguished Edinburgh poet. Died October 16th, 1774.”

I first met Fergusson as a statue, he’s the one outside Canongate Kirk, at pavement level rather than up on a podium. One instance I saw a drunk man shout across the street, trying to pick a fight with Fergusson’s statue, before realising the figure who was not yielding to his demands or meeting his challenges was made of bronze. In a scene which had echoes of Fergusson’s “bruisers” and “macaronis, reeling drunk”, with “Fiery Phiz” in ‘Auld Reikie’. I think he would’ve found that funny, he had a lively sense of humour.

I next met Fergusson when I was assigned him as a character to play when I started as a tour guide, introduced as he always is, as the inspiration to the national bard. At the same time as studying Fergusson’s life and works, I was learning stories of old Edinburgh to entertain tourists, and Fergusson made that very easy.

He wrote about names already famous in eighteenth-century Edinburgh – Drummond, Herriot, Watson, Major Thomas Weir, “Indian” Peter, “Bloody” George Mackenzie. His known associates were the likes of James Watt, Dr Andrew Duncan, Henry Raeburn, and even apparently the infamous Deacon William Brodie. Both the ploughman poet and Robert Louis Stevenson paid for improvements to his grave, which bears the same inscription as the grave of Fergusson’s own inspiration Allan Ramsay. Each of these names have their own story intrinsic to the fabric of Edinburgh’s history, and if there’s any from the above list you haven’t heard of, I promise you won’t be disappointed by looking them up. I certainly wasn’t and it’s how I’ve come to learn the history of my city.

Fergusson also writes about notable landmarks of his time, some of which are still landmarks of Edinburgh today, from our “ancient Castle” to Arthur’s Seat to the City Walls. Events and people, Abbey Lairds of Holyrood, the Daft Days at Yule time, Hallow Fair festivities, or a day out at Leith races and ‘The Kings Birthday in Edinburgh’. Fergusson incorporates Scots history in Mons Meg, the scenic landscape across the Firth of Forth and a satirical indictment of the temperament of the drunken City Guard. Humorously comparing their fury to an exaggerated giant cannon, powerful enough to fire a ball across the Forth and kill a man:

Oh willawins! Mons Meg, for you,
‘Twas firing crack’t thy muckle mou;
What black mishanter gart ye spew
Baith gut an’ ga’!
I fear they bang’d thy belly fu’
Against the law.

Right seenil am I gi’en to bannin,
But, by my saul, ye was a cannon,
Cou’d hit a man had he been stannin
In shire o’ Fife, Sax lang Scots miles ayont
Clackmannan,
An’ tak his life.

If you look up the history behind Fergusson’s poem ‘The King’s Birthday in Edinburgh’, one of the first things you’ll find is a riot, where the people of Edinburgh triggered by the behaviour of the City Guard on the King’s Birthday in 1792 rioted for three days. This echoed Fergusson’s sentiments, written almost 20 years before these so called King’s Birthday or Dundas Riots.

Fergusson also unashamedly lambasts political figures of his day, including George Drummond, six times Lord Provost and one of the founding figures of the Enlightenment, who literally laid the foundation stones of classical Edinburgh. Fergusson however seemingly can’t get past the North Bridge disaster, holding Drummond accountable for the collapse during construction over Fergusson’s old house on Cap and Feather Close: “Shame that safety cannae claim, protection from a Provosts name”.

Fergusson records the sounds of overheard conversations, music drifting out of the taverns, whether his favourites Scots classics, “Tulloch Gorum”, or “Birks of Invermay”, or the ”vile Italian tricks” so popular in Edinburgh music at the time. He described the sounds of that “Wanwordy, crazy, dinsome thing, As e’er was framed to jow and ring”, the Tron Kirk Bell, which he describes with such disdain and no doubt roused a capernoity Fergusson from a drunken stupor on many a morning. Or the singing of the songbirds and ringing of shepherd’s pipes over the hills just outside the city walls.

Also recorded are the tastes of Caller Oysters, haddock lugs, London Porter, Gin, Brandy or Aqua Vitae, while candidly acknowledging the famously pungent odours which characterised Auld Reikie for centuries: “That antrin fock may ken how snell, Auld Reikie will at morning smell”.

Fergusson’s view of life in Edinburgh is at a pivotal, post-Jacobite transition into Edinburgh’s Age of Reason. He satirises the pompous, and the paupers alike, creating a feeling of Edinburgh at a time where giants like Adam Smith or David Hume were here, and Voltaire commented “We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilization”.

I realise that I’ve included quite a few names, some of which I hope were familiar, some maybe less so, some were unknown to me before I was introduced by Fergusson. The point I’m trying to make is that Fergusson’s references and influences are so varied and so intertwined with Edinburgh history, that digging a little further into any one of the names mentioned leads down a rabbit hole which feels remarkably like taking a walk down narrow cobbled closes of Fergusson’s city.

Fergusson’s works represent not only a beautifully written collection of poems and songs, but also a time capsule openly and honestly recording the events, thoughts, opinions, emotions, and humour of a talented and well-educated man of his time. He threw himself wholeheartedly into his short life in Edinburgh, made his own mark on the city’s history, and can still be seen in bronze outside Canongate Kirk, walking a road he would’ve known better than most who walked it before or since.

Matt Brady

More about Matt:
Long time history nerd, newer fan of Scots Poetry. Former structural engineer, working as a history tour guide in Edinburgh.
On tours I play the distinguished yet ill-fated poet Robert Fergusson, whose favorite tavern was near our closes.
Recently started up a YouTube channel where some friends and I attempt to read his poems.
I couldn’t find many audible examples out there, and anyone with a favourite send recordings, the more Fergusson readings the better!

For more information about The Real Mary King’s Close or to book on a tour, please see the link here.