Fergusson, Robert (1750–1774)

Scottish poet. His realist and humorous poems were first published 1773 and greatly influenced Robert Burns. In ‘The Daft Days’, ‘Hallow Fair’, ‘Leith Races’, and ‘Auld Reekie’ Fergusson depicts with vividness and gusto the rough hearty life of his native city of Edinburgh. Writing both in Scots and English, he has an urbane Augustan quality.

Educated at Dundee grammar school and St Andrews University, Fergusson declined to enter the church or to study medicine but spent his short life as a copying clerk in the commissary clerk's office, Edinburgh. He contributed humorous descriptive poems to Ruddiman's Weekly Magazine, and became popular in convivial club life. An accident brought on a fatal brain fever.