Scots Poems
Despite his tragically early death, Fergusson was highly productive as a poet and, during what was essentially three creative years, he left a corpus of just under 120 poems and songs. Of that corpus, around 60% is in English, and the rest in the Scots language. This might be surprising, given that Fergusson is remembered mainly for his work in Scots. In fact, even in his own time, he was regarded as the poet laureate of Edinburgh.
It is undeniable that Fergusson was supremely talented in Scots, and his use of the language spoken by himself, his peers and neighbours, allowed him to represent day-to-day life in eighteenth-century Scotland with precision and realism. His most famous works – ‘Auld Reikie’, ‘The Daft Days’, ‘Leith Races’, ‘The King’s Birth-day in Edinburgh’, ‘Braid Claith’ and many more – are in a spirited, energetic and often sharply barbed, satirical Scots.
However, you will not be disappointed if you wander into Fergusson’s non-Scots works. Reading Fergusson’s entire corpus, the reader is able to see his supreme knowledge of Scottish literary history, but also his understanding of neoclassical English poetry, theatre, classical mythology, Latin, Greek and more. This wide-ranging knowledge – which reflects his degree studies at the University of St Andrews – is, however, seen throughout his Scots poems, which merge ancient Scottish traditions with neoclassical and classical forms in new and innovative ways.
Glossary from Robert Fergusson’s Poems
This is the Scots glossary which was included at the back of the first edition of Fergusson’s Poems. In it, Scots words such as baudrins (a cat), fireflaught (lightning), and oy (a grandchild) are glossed for readers.
1773
Auld Reikie
Robert Fergusson’s entry in Makar’s Court, outside the Writers Museum, Edinburgh
Auld Reikie is Fergusson’s longest poem. Its title comes from a Scots term for Edinburgh - which translates as ‘Old Smoky’, referring to the smoke from coal fires that hung over the city - and its subject is the ordinary life of the working people of Scotland’s capital city. Fergusson defends his warts-and-all representation of the Edinburgh by saying in the poem that ‘without souring, nocht is sweet’.
Scots Poems by Robert Fergusson, illustrated by M.S. Orr
This book, published in 1911 by the Foulis printing company, is one of the most sumptuous twentieth-century Fergusson editions. Featuring several full-colour plates, the illustrations by Orr depict key scenes from Fergusson’s poetry. The cover image is of an Edinburgh city guard, the city’s eighteenth-century police force, a favourite butt of Fergusson’s satires. The city guard were known for their brutality, and Fergusson describes them as a ‘black banditti’ - or outlaws - in his poem, ‘The Daft Days’.
Scots Poems by Robert Fergusson, illustrated by M.S. Orr
1911, Edinburgh
736236
Scots Poems by Robert Fergusson, illustrated by M.S. Orr
1911, Edinburgh
321195
This image, of ‘Stairhead critics’, is taken from Fergusson’s poem on the everyday life of Edinburgh, Auld Reikie. In the poem, he satirises the town gossips who gather at the top of the tenement stairs to tell their tales in these lines: ‘Now stairhead critics, senseless fools, / Censure their aim, and pride their rules, / In Luckenbooths, wi glowring eye, / Their neighbour’s sma’est faults descry’.
This illustration depicts a scene from Fergusson’s ‘The Farmer’s Ingle’, a poem which portrays the domestic life of an eighteenth-century farmer and which was a profound influence on Robert Burns’s ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’. Here, we see the grandmother (gudame) tell ghost stories to the children: ‘Frae gudame's mouth auld warld tales they hear, / O' Warlocks louping round the Wirrikow, / O' gaists that win in glen and kirk-yard drear, / Whilk touzles a' their tap, and gars them shak wi' fear.’
Scots Poems by Robert Fergusson, illustrated by M.S. Orr
1911, Edinburgh
736236
The Edinburgh publishing firm of TN Foulis, founded in 1903 by Thomas Noble Foulis (1874-1943), produced a series of exquisitely designed, charmingly illustrated, beautifully printed and yet reasonably affordable books. The subject matter often had a Scottish bias and the company worked with a number of freelance artists, such as Hannah McCroun, Jessie M. King, Katherine Cameron, and Munro S. Orr, who illustrated this volume.
Scots Poems by Robert Fergusson, edited by Bruce Dickins
Scots Poems by Robert Fergusson, edited by Bruce Dickins
Edinburgh: Porpoise Press, 1925
In the twentieth century, Fergusson was valued principally as a poet of the Scots language. The truth is that he wrote in both Scots and English throughout his career, but his Scots poems hit a particular chord with readers. This edition of Fergusson’s poems in Scots was published by the Porpoise Press, an important publishing company of the Scottish Revival which was established in Edinburgh by Roderick Watson Kerr and George Malcolm Thomson in 1922. This publication shows that, in the Scottish Renaissance era of Hugh MacDiarmid, Neil Gunn, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Edwin Muir, Willa Muir and Catherine Carswell, Fergusson’s poems were still relevant and inspirational.
Audio Recordings by James Robertson
Listen here to author James Robertson reading three of Fergusson’s wonderful Scots poems. Robertson chose these three poems to epitomise the exhilarating language Fergusson uses within his poetry.
Elegy on the Death of Mr David Gregory, late Professor of Mathematics in the University of St Andrews
First published in Poems (1773), Fergusson’s mock elegy was probably written in 1765, as David Gregory died on 13 April of that year. Born in 1712, Gregory was Professor of Mathematics at the University of St Andrews from 1739 to 1765, where he had succeeded his father as Regius Professor. Gregory had died only three months into Fergusson’s academic career at St Andrews, yet this playful satire demonstrates the dry humour featured in many of his later poems.
The King's Birth Day in Edinburgh
Appearing in The Weekly Magazine on 4 June 1772, Fergusson’s poem is a parody of the birthday ode dedicated to King George III, which was traditionally composed by the poet laureate in June each year. Rather than focusing on the King however, Fergusson’s poem focuses on the everyman – on the normal people of Edinburgh and how they celebrate this raucous public holiday.
To my Auld Breeks
Fergusson’s final Scots poem to be published in The Weekly Magazine, ‘To my Auld Breeks’ was published on 25 November 1773. In this humorous lament to the loss of a pair of faithful yet now threadbare trousers, the parting is as sorrowful as leaving a loved one. The poem has also been viewed as epitomising Fergusson’s musings on life.