Was Robert Fergusson a poet, prodigal son or tavern rat?

The events marking the 250th anniversary of his death that took place on October 17, 1774, are continuing and I would remind you that the University of Glasgow is in the midst of a two-year research project about Fergusson which will culminate in the publication of a new edition of his collected works.

Future events include a discussion on him in the Hawthornden Lecture Theatre of the National Galleries of Scotland, and the title is most instructive: Robert Fergusson: Poet, Prodigal Son, Or Tavern Rat?

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It takes place on Tuesday, November 5, at 12.45 and will feature Professor Rhona Brown, professor of Scottish textual cultures at the University of Glasgow, and curator Liz Louis discussing the “life, death and artistic networks of Edinburgh’s unofficial poet laureate”. The event will also be live-streamed for those who can’t attend in person.

So was he a poet, a prodigal son or a tavern rat? You could argue a case that he was all three, and the prodigal son reference is to the painting of that name by his friend Alexander Runciman who persuaded the poet to pose for it – it is part of the National Galleries’ collection.

I would suggest that Fergusson should be viewed in the context of his time in Edinburgh where he somehow rose above his surroundings to create a body of work that I think earns him a place in the pantheon of Scottish poetry. He wrote about his environment and everyday life, but his poetry transcended the petty and the mundane.

As we have seen over the past fortnight, Fergusson toiled away as a copyist clerk in the Commissary Office in Edinburgh while staying with his mother Elizabeth in an Old Town flat. He had begun to write poetry, encouraged by his fellow members of the Cape Club which met in a tavern where its members enjoyed dink and discussion.

By all accounts slim, handsome and amiable, Fergusson enjoyed the “Capers” and they appear to have rejoiced in his poetry which featured heavily in publisher Walter Ruddiman’s weekly magazine.

Still much influenced by Allan Ramsay, Fergusson began to write more and more in Scots and as his reputation grew, he produced poems that saw him acclaimed as the laureate of Edinburgh.

They included the poem which many consider his masterpiece, Auld Reikie, of which this is an extract:

On stair wi tub, or pat in hand,

The barefoot housemaids loo to stand,

That antrin fock may ken how snell

Auld Reikie will at morning smell:

Then, with an inundation big as

The burn that ‘neath the Nore Loch Brig is,

They kindly shower Edina’s roses,

To quicken and regale our noses.

My personal favourite is Leith Races of which this is the final verse:

The races o’er, they hale the dools

Wi’ drink o’ a’ kin-kind;

Great feck gae hirpling hame like fools,

The cripple lead the blind.

May ne’er the canker o’ the drink

E’er mak our spirits thrawart,

‘Case we git wharewitha’ to wink

Wi’ een as blue’s a blawart

Wi’ straiks thir days!

There were dozens more poems but sadly they are lost as Fergusson burned many of his manuscripts. We know that even as his creativity reached its zenith, Fergusson was already suffering from what was possibly bipolar disorder – manic bursts of energy and writing vying with deepening depression in a turbulent mind.

By 1773, Fergusson had produced enough poetry to allow Ruddiman to publish his one and only collection in English and Scots. The poet was paid £50 for his poems, and far from spending it on women and wine, as has been alleged, it became clear later that he had given almost all of it to his mother.

One copy dedicated to his friend James Boswell, the biographer of Samuel Johnson, is preserved in the National Libraries of Scotland.

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His friends became increasingly concerned for his health, especially when Fergusson entered a state of what can only be described as a religious frenzy which caused him to set aside his quill and read only The Bible. He lost his job and then suffered a bizarre accident in early October, 1774. His feet became entangled in a carpet and he fell headlong down a staircase suffering a serious head injury.

It affected him so much that his friends took him to Bedlam, Edinburgh’s notorious asylum for the insane.

His health deteriorated quickly and massively and a fortnight after his fall, Robert Fergusson died in the early hours of October 17, 1774. He was just 24.

As was the custom in those times, he was quickly buried at Canongate Kirk cemetery. There was no money for a headstone, but 12 years later Robert Burns visited Edinburgh and said he would pay for one – he did so as a tribute to the man he called his “elder brother in poesy”.

The epitaph on that plain headstone can be seen at Canongate. It was composed by Burns:

No sculptur’d Marble here nor pompous lay

No storied Urn nor animated Bust

This simple Stone directs Pale Scotia’s way

To pour her Sorrows o’er her Poet’s dust

That is how Fergusson is chiefly remembered these days – as the man who most influenced Burns to write in Scots as well as English. Yet Fergusson has also inspired many other Scottish poets in the 250 years since his death.

Had he not died so young and regained his mental health, I have no doubt Fergusson would have produced a vast body of work and been acclaimed alongside Burns as a Bard of Scotland.

There is another little-realised legacy of Fergusson. In his dying days, he was treated by the physician Andrew Duncan who was so appalled at finding “this Man of Genius” in such awful surroundings that he campaigned for many years to build proper facilities for the mentally ill.

Thus the Royal Edinburgh Hospital was born.