Robert Fergusson 250 Exhibition

A glimpse into our exhibition - Celebrating Scottish poet Robert Fergusson (1750 - 1774), on display in the Mitchell Library from 1st September - 30th October, 2024.

The Edinburgh poet Robert Fergusson had a short and tragic life, but his poetry is full of joy, humour and vivacity. He is known today for the circumstances of his death and for his influence on Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns, but there is so much more to Fergusson than this. He began his literary career in his late teens, writing songs to Scottish tunes for new operas performed in Edinburgh’s theatres. He continued as ‘house poet’ of Walter Ruddiman’s periodical, The Weekly Magazine, or Edinburgh Amusement, where his works were often found in the poetry section. He published a collection, Poems, in 1773, but his long poem, Auld Reikie (also 1773) is his magnum opus. This poem, which focuses on the everyday life of the ordinary inhabitants of eighteenth-century Edinburgh, is dazzled by the city’s beauty, but refuses to shy away from its more gruesome and depraved aspects. Fergusson died at the age of twenty-four in Edinburgh’s Bedlam asylum after a brain injury caused by a fall. Despite his short career, Burns described him as ‘my elder brother in misfortune, / By far my elder brother in the muse’.

After two years of regular publication in The Weekly Magazine, Fergusson collected his works into a volume, entitled Poems, in 1773. This collection, which features poems in English and Scots, was printed by Fergusson’s great friend and supporter, Walter Ruddiman, a prestigious Edinburgh publisher who was also responsible for The Weekly Magazine. This particular copy of Poems (pictured above) is unusual in that one of its owners has ‘coloured in’ the frontispiece with watercolours to prettify the engraved scene, from Fergusson’s poem, ‘The Rivers of Scotland, An Ode’.

Fergusson began his literary career by writing songs - often to well-known Scottish tunes - for new operas staged in Edinburgh. He was involved with two operas - The Royal Shepherd and Artaxerxes - in 1769, performed when he was just 18/19 years old. In his work for The Royal Shepherd, Fergusson became acquainted with renowned Italian castrato opera singer Giusto Fernando Tenducci (c.1735-90) who, in later life, could not remember his friend Fergusson without tears.

This volume from the Mitchell Library’s Early Glasgow Printing collection show us that there was an appetite for Fergusson’s poetry in Glasgow. Robert Chapman’s premises were at “M’Nair’s Land, first close East from the Head of King Street”, which is close to the Tron steeple in Glasgow. The firm could be found alongside many publishers, booksellers and bookbinders in this area of the city.

The illustration above shows a scene from the poem, "A Saturday's Expedition". 

"The woeful fate of those whose cruel Stars
Have doomed them subject to the languid powers
Of wat'ry sickness"

In the twentieth century, Fergusson was valued principally as a poet of the Scots language, and his early edition often included a glossary in Scots (pictured above). The truth is that he wrote in both Scots and English throughout his career, but his Scots poems hit a particular chord with readers. An 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.

Following his death 250 years ago, Fergusson was laid to rest in the Canongate Kirkyard on 19th October 1774. Tributes to the poet flooded into the Weekly Magazine, who announced the poet’s death by publishing his obituary in their issue of 20th October. Ruddiman, the magazine’s proprietor, praises Fergusson in this obituary by stating that he was ‘a genius so lively’, whose ‘talent for versification in the Scots dialect has been exceeded by none’. 

Another famous poet, Robert Burns (1759 – 1796) was hugely inspired by Fergusson. In a letter to his friend John Moore in August 1787, he notes: 

‘Rhyme except some religious pieces, which are in print I had given up but meeting with Fergusson’s Scotch poems, I strung anew my wildly-sounding rustic lyre with emulating vigour’. 

Whilst suffering from a loss of inspiration, Burns felt encouraged to continue to write poetry after reading Fergusson’s Scots verses. 

When Burns visited Edinburgh for the first time in 1787, he made a pilgrimage to Fergusson’s grave to pay his respects. When he arrived, he found the grave unmarked, a sign of the Fergusson family’s poverty at the time of his death. 

Burns believed that Fergusson needed a memorial on his grave, and as a sign of respect decided to commission Fergusson’s headstone. The stone you see now in the Canongate Kirkyard is the one paid for and designed by Robert Burns. Burns also wrote the verses which feature on the stone, and his name is engraved on the back. It took him years to pay for the stone, which gives an indication of how important this was to him. 

Another literary Robert who was fascinated by Fergusson was Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 – 1894), the author of Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 

Stevenson felt a real affinity with Fergusson, he believed there were ‘bonds’ between them. He wrote in a letter to a friend in April 1891 that: ‘You will never know, nor will any man, how deep this feeling is: I believe Fergusson lives in me’.

Stevenson planned to renovate Fergusson’s tombstone but died himself before he could do so. A plaque installed at the bottom of Fergusson’s grave by the Saltire Society commemorates Stevenson’s plan. 

Find out more about the poet and his legacy by visiting The Collected Works of Robert Fergusson Reconstructing Textual and Cultural Legacies.