Robert Fergusson
Robert Fergusson - A Famous Scottish Poet - "Poet who inspired genius"
Robert Fergusson (1750-74) Born at Cap-and-Feather Close, Edinburgh, the son of a solicitor's clerk, Fergusson was educated at the city's High School, the Grammar School, Dundee, and St Andrews University. During his ill-paid job as a legal-office copyist he continued his dabblings with poetry and published his first Scots poem, 'The Daft Days', in Ruddiman's Weekly Magazine in 1772:
And thou, great god of Aqua Vitae!
Wha sways the empire o' this city,
When fou we're sometimes capernoity,
Be thou prepared
To hedge us frae that black banditti,
The City Guard.
Fergusson thus portrayed the scenes and people of Edinburgh in his verses and greatly influenced Robert Burns, who steeped himself in Fergusson's style. Fergusson died in a madhouse the year after an anthology of his Poems was published; in 1787 Burns commissioned a proper tombstone for Fergusson in the Canongate Churchyard, Edinburgh.
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