Scotland’s most popular poet, Robert “Robbie” Burns, grew up near Mauchline, where he encountered the Poems of Robert Fergusson. Through Fergusson’s work, Burns first realized the literary possibilities of the Scots Vernacular. His first such essay was “The Two Herds,” a satire on a dispute then raging between two “Auld Licht” (conservative) ministers.
In 1786, Burns published his Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, which had immediate success. When copies reached Dugald Stewart, James, Earl of Glencairn, and other men of influence, they arranged for a second printing in Edinburgh.
Burns was patronized by the gentry, who, unaware of the real extent of his reading and study, hailed him as a “Bard of Nature.” Some of these people, however, were offended by the poet’s occasionally blunt speech and by his ignorance of the finer points of etiquette.
