Great Scotsmen

Scottish culture owes an enormous debt to Robert Fergusson, and it remains largely unpaid to this day. He is, quite literally, an unsung hero of the lyrical arts who never, in either life or death, received the true public recognition his talent deserved.

Burns was inspired to become a poet by Fergusson

Contemporary writers of the 18th century idolised him, however, and no less a scribe than Robert Burns was, from his teenage years onwards, deeply influenced and inspired to become a poet by reading his work.

Who is to say whether Burns would have become the international megastar he now is, had Fergusson not shown him the way?

Fergusson was born just off Edinburgh's Royal Mile in September 1750, the son of a solicitors clerk. He attended St. Andrews University but was forced to leave without graduating in order to support his mother and sister after his father's sudden death.

Taking a job as a lowly clerk in the Commissary Office in Edinburgh, copying legal papers, he found escape from the mind-numbing boredom and drudgery of his work by writing poetry.

So began one of the briefest, but brightest, of writing careers. His first published poem appeared on 7th February 1771 and his last on 23rd December 1773. He left 83 poems in all, 50 in English and 33 in dialect Scots, of which "Auld Reekie", tracing a day in the life of the capital city, is the most well known.

Like Burns, the tragic brevity of his career may be blamed, at least in part, on his fondness for partying or, to be blunt, he was most likely an alcoholic.

After becoming ill with depression, he collapsed and fell down a flight of stairs (pissed again!). The knock he received to the head reduced him to insanity and he was taken to the Edinburgh Bedlam, as the Mental Asylum was known, in July 1774. Amidst squalid conditions, he died there, a pauper, on 17th October 1774 at the decidedly un-ripe old age of 24.

Stevenson also maintained the headstone

Such was Burns' enduring respect and admiration for Fergusson that, in 1789, he personally commissioned and paid for the headstone which now marks his grave in the Capital's Canongate Kirkyard, after making a pilgrimage to his burial place and being shocked to find it completely unmarked.

On the front of the headstone is a verse from a Burns poem, and only recently an inscription was rediscovered on the back of the stone (nobody ever thinks to look there, do they?) containing a tribute from the Bard which reads, "By special grant of the managers to Robert Burns who erected this stone this burial place is to remain for ever sacred to the memory of Robert Fergusson."

Years later, after being damaged, the gravestone was repaired by another of Scotland's literary giants, Robert Louis Stevenson. In a letter from Samoa to Charles Baxter in Edinburgh, dated May 1894, Stevenson wrote "I wonder if an inscription like this would look arrogant - This stone originally erected by Robert Burns has been repaired at the charges of Robert Louis Stevenson, and is by him re-dedicated to the memory of Robert Fergusson, as the gift of one Edinburgh lad to another."

Plans are currently afoot, with a £30,000 fundraising campaign, to erect a statue to Fergusson in his home city.

Aye, and about bloody time too.