Robert Fergusson (1750–1774) died #OTD, 17 Oct, aged just 24. Notable for his poetry in both Scots & English, his works include “Auld Reikie”, “The Daft Days”, & “Hallow Fair”. His legacies are broad, from the literary & cultural to the medical.
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https://robert-fergusson.glasgow.ac.uk
#Scottish #literature #poetry #18thcentury #RobertFergusson #Scots #Scotslanguage
‘The night is young,’ they said, ‘it’s only nine.
We’ve brought a carriage for you, see, it’s there.
What your blue devils need is a wheen wine…’
—Edwin Morgan, “In the Cells: i.m. Robert Fergusson, 1750–1774”
published in HEAVEN-TAUGHT FERGUSSON, ed. Robert Crawford (Tuckwell Press 2003)
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Prof Rhona Brown looks at how Fergusson’s death had “not only a profound effect on a key figure in Edinburgh’s medical establishment but also a lasting influence on the therapeutic & psychiatric treatment available in the city”
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#Scottish #literature #poetry #18thcentury #RobertFergusson #HistoryofMedicine #psychiatry #Edinburgh
The story of Robert Fergusson (1750-74) is a compelling and, in the end, alarming one. Although Tom Leonard recently (and rightly) rejected the traditional view of the poet as ‘tragic’, instead portraying Fergusson’s life as a ‘triumph’, nineteenth– and twentieth-century biographical accounts have tended to place a magnifying glass over the grim circumstances of his […]
A bleary chiel, monger o targes an dirks
redds his windae. Neist Holyrood Kirk
a shop chock fu o fudge. Taxis
judder on the setts…
—Kathleen Jamie, “At Robert Fergusson’s Grave”
published in the London Review of Books, 22 March 2001
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https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v23/n06/kathleen-jamie/at-robert-fergusson-s-grave
#Scottish #literature #poetry #RobertFergusson #Scots #Scotslanguage
Ye’re stridin doon the Canongate, brent new
and lookin like ye’ve never been awa,
were never found curled deid upon the straw
in Bedlam’s cells…
—James Robertson, “Fergusson’s Statue”
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https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/fergussons-statue/
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #RobertFergusson #Scots #Scotslanguage #Edinburgh
Assoc for Scottish Literature