Allan Ramsay

Allan Ramsay (15 October 1686 - 7 January 1758) was a Scottish poet (makar), playwright, and anthologist.

Allan Ramsay (1686-1758). Portrait by William Aikman (1686-1731), 1722. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Allan Ramsay
Born	October 15 1686(1686-Template:MONTHNUMBER-15) Leadhills, Lanarkshire, Scotland
Died	January 7 1758(1758-Template:MONTHNUMBER-07) (aged 71)
Occupation	poet
Nationality	Scottish

Life

Overview

Ramsay was son of a mine-manager at Leadhills, Dumfriesshire, who claimed kin with the Ramsays of Dalhousie. In his infancy he lost his father, and his mother married a small "laird," who gave him the ordinary parish school education. In 1701 he came to Edinburgh as apprentice to a wig-maker, took to writing poetry, became a member of the "Easy Club," of which Pitcairn and Ruddiman, the grammarian, were members, and of which he was made "laureate." The club published his poems as they were thrown off, and their appearance soon began to be awaited with interest. In 1716 he published. an additional canto to Christ's Kirk on the Green, a humorous poem sometimes attributed to James I., and in 1719 he became a bookseller, his shop being a meeting-place of the literati of the city. A collected edition of his poems appeared in 1720, among the subscribers to which were Pope, Steele, Arbuthnot, and Gay. It was followed by Fables and Tales, and other poems. In 1724 he began the Tea Table Miscellany, a collection of new Scots songs set to old melodies, and the Evergreen, a collection of old Scots poems with which Ramsay as editor took great liberties. This was a kind of work for which he was not qualified, and in which he was far from successful. The Gentle Shepherd, by far his best known and most meritorious work, appeared in 1725, and had an immediate popularity which, to a certain extent, it retains. It is a pastoral drama, and abounds in character, unaffected sentiment, and vivid description. After this success Ramsay, satisfied with his reputation, produced nothing more of importance. He was the first to introduce the circulating library into Scotland, and among his other enterprises was an unsuccessful attempt to establish a theater in Edinburgh. On the whole his life was happy and successful, and he had the advantage of a cheerful, sanguine, and contented spirit. His foible was an innocent and good-natured vanity.

Family

Ramsay was descended from the Ramsays of Cockpen, Midlothian, a collateral branch of the Ramsays of Dalhousie. "Dalhousie of an auld descent" he proudly addressed as "my chief, my stoup, my ornament." His father, Robert Ramsay, the son of an Edinburgh lawyer, was manager of Lord Hopetoun's lead-mines in Crawford Moor. His mother, Alice Bowyer, was the daughter of a Derbyshire man, resident at Leadhills as instructor of the miners; her grandfather was Douglas of Muthil, Perthshire, and Ramsay was consequently able to call himself "a poet sprung from a Douglas loin."

Youth and education

Ramsay was born on 15 October 1686 at Leadhills, parish of Crawford, Lanarkshire. His father died while Allan was an infant, and his mother married a 2nd husband, a small landholder in the neighborhood, named Creighton.

Ramsay was educated at the Crawford village school till his 15th year, when his mother died. Next year, in 1701, he was apprenticed by his stepfather to an Edinburgh wig-maker. There is an unsupported legend that Ramsay desired to devote himself to art.

Career

Ramsay soon started in business as a wig-maker for himself, and speedily became a substantial citizen. Prudence in money matters, resourcefulness, and love of personal independence characteried him through life.

In 1712 Ramsay married Christian Ross, daughter of an Edinburgh writer to the signet; she died in 1743. There was a family of 3 sons and 5 daughters. Allan, the eldest son (1713–1784), and 2 of the daughters, survived him.

Very early in his career he joined the Jacobite "Easy Club," founded in 1712, and he entertained his fellow-members with his earliest poetical effusions. An address by him to the club is dated 1712, and elegies on Maggy Johnstoun and Dr. Pitcairne followed; the latter, on account of political allusions, did not appear in his collected works.

Under a rule directing that the members should adopt pseudonyms at club meetings, Ramsay figured originally as Isaac Bickerstaff, and afterwards as Gawin Douglas. On 2 February 1715 the club made him its laureate. In the course of the year its existence terminated, owing to political disturbance. Its minutes dated 10 May 1715 avers that "Dr. Pitcairn and Gawin Douglas, having behaved themselves three years as good members of this club, were adjudged to be gentlemen."

After 1715 Ramsay regularly exercised his gift of rhyming. Occasional poems, issued in sheets or half-sheets at a penny a copy, were readily bought by the citizens, and it was soon a fashion to send out for "Ramsay's last piece." Between 1716 and 1718 he abandoned wig-making in favour of bookselling, and quickly formed a good connection at his house, under the sign of the Mercury in the High Street, where he had previously exercised his handicraft of wig-maker.

About 1716 he published from the Bannatyne MS. Chrysts-Kirke on the Greene, supplementing it with a vigorous and rollicking 2nd canto. This he reissued in 1718 with a further canto, and the work thus completed reached a 5th edition in 1723. In 1719 he issued a volume of Scots Songs, which was soon in a 2nd edition. Meanwhile his metrical eulogies and occasional satires and moral discourses attracted influential patrons. He also entered into verse correspondence with poetical friends, notably with William Hamilton (1665?–1751).

When at length he published his collected poems with an Horatian epilogue in 1721, he secured a strong list of subscribers, as well as the assistance of various friendly poets, whose commendatory verses increased his popularity. In his preface he thrusts with satirical pungency at certain detractors; their cavillings, he asserts, "are such that several of my friends allege I wrote them myself to make the world believe I have no foes but fools." His portrait by Smibert, "the Scottish Hogarth," was prefixed to the volume. The work realised 400 guineas.

It was followed in 1722 by Fables and Tales, which was reissued with additions in 1730, with a preface in which Ramsay acknowledges indebtedness to La Fontaine and La Motte, but says nothing of what he owed to the Freiris of Berwick (assigned to Dunbar) in his "Monk and Miller's Wife," the masterpiece of the collection.

A Tale of Three Bonnets of 1722 is a spirited if somewhat unpolished political allegory. In 1723 he published The Fair Assembly, a poem of considerable independence of thought and expression, and in 1724 he dedicated to the Earl of Stair a well-conceived and vigorous piece on Health, written in heroic couplets.

In 1724-1727 Ramsay published 3 volumes of miscellaneous poems under the title of The Tea-table Miscellany. A 4th volume is of doubtful origin. The Miscellany includes several English and Scottish traditional ballads, lyrics by various Caroline singers, along with a number of songs and miscellaneous pieces by Ramsay himself and his friends the Hamiltons and others. Notable among Ramsay's songs for freshness and grace are "The Yellow-haired Laddie," "The Lass o'Patie's Mill," and "Lochaber no more."

During the same years (1724-1727) he published in 2 volumes, mainly from the Bannatyne MS., The Ever-Green, which reached a 2nd edition in 1761. This anthology, which he describes as "Scots poems wrote by the ingenious before 1600," represents the author of Chrysts-Kirke, Dunbar, and other Scottish "makaris;" and contains a remarkable political satire, "The Vision," which, though disguised, is no doubt Ramsay's own, and is his best sustained lyric. He was unsatisfactory as an editor of ancient verse — he freely tampered with his texts — but his selection showed taste and appreciation, and stimulated other competent scholars.

A pastoral entitled "Patie and Roger," inscribed to his patron and friend Josiah Burchet, prominently figured among his poems of 1721 along with other efforts in a like direction — romantic and elegiac pastorals, a pastoral ode, and a pastoral masque. His friends urged him to elaborate a systematic pastoral poem. In a letter of 8 April 1724, addressed to William Ramsay of Templehall, he dwelt on his reminiscences and love of the country, and stated that he was engaged on a "Dramatick Pastoral," which, if successful, might "cope with 'Pastor Fido' and 'Aminta'" (Chambers, Biogr. Dict. of Eminent Scotsmen).

The result was the appearance in 1725 of his pastoral drama, The Gentle Shepherd, which achieved instant success. It reached a 2nd edition in 1726, and a 10th in 1750. In 1729 it was represented in Edinburgh after The Orphan, Ramsay furnishing an epilogue.

In 1726 Ramsay moved from the High Street to a shop in the Luckenbooths, where he displayed as his insignia models of the heads of Ben Jonson and Drummond of Hawthornden. Here he flourished as a bookseller, and started a circulating library, the 1st institution of the kind in Scotland.

In 1728 he published a 2nd quarto volume of his poems, including The Gentle Shepherd, and a masque with resonant lyrics on the Nuptials of the Duke of Hamilton. An octavo edition of this work appeared in 1729, and it was reprinted with a new issue of the Poems of 1721 in London in 1731 and in Dublin in 1733. A collection of Scots proverbs appeared in 1737.

Meanwhile his shop was a favorite meeting-place for men of letters. He was visited by John Gay when in Scotland with the Duke of Queensberry, and explained to him the hard Scotticisms in the Gentle Shepherd, in order to assist Pope in reading the work, of which "he was a great admirer" (Chalmers, Life of Ramsay). With Gay and Pope he thenceforth corresponded, and the Hamiltons of Bangour and Gilbertfield, and William Somerville, author of The Chase, wrote to him regularly. At the same time the foremost citizens of Edinburgh, the aristocracy of the neighborhood, and the noble owners of Hamilton Palace and Loudoun Castle treated him as a welcome guest.

Between 1719 and 1729 Ramsay furnished various prologues and epilogues to plays performed in London, and his interest in the drama determined him in 1736 to erect ‘a playhouse new, at vast expense,’ in Carrubber's Close, Edinburgh. But in the following year the provisions of the act for licensing the stage compelled him to close the house. The episode drew from Ramsay a vigorous protest in verse, addressed to the lords of session and the other judges. He was abused violently by the foes of the project, which was not accomplished for many years [see Ross, David].

Last years

After 1730 Ramsay practically ceased to write, fearing, he said, that "the coolness of fancy that attends advanced years should make me risk the reputation I had acquired." About 1755 he retired from business, and settled in an octagonal house, built to his own plans, on the north side of the Castle Rock. The wags of his acquaintance, he told Lord Elibank, called his residence a goose-pie, to which Elibank replied, "Indeed, Allan, now that I see you in it, I think the term is very properly applied."

In a copy of playful autobiographical verses, addressed in 1755 to James Clerk of Penicuik, Midlothian, Ramsay described himself as a prudent, successful man of 70, enjoying a comfortable age, and looking forward to 30 years more of life.

He suffered, however, from acute scurvy in the gums, and he died at Edinburgh on 7 January 1758, aged 72. He was buried in Old Greyfriars churchyard.

The Scots Magazine (xix. 670) describes him as "well known for his 'Gentle Shepherd,' and many other poetical pieces in the Scottish dialect, which he wrote and collected." The Gentleman's Magazine of 1758 (p. 46) calls him "the celebrated poet." Sir William Scott of Thirlestane had enshrined him in a Latin poem as early as 1725, placing him with the elect in Apollo's temple (Poemata D. Gulielmi Scoti de Thirlestane, 1727).

Writing

Ramsay's works show him as a capable Horatian lyrist, although he knew his model "but faintly in the original;" a satirist of reach and pungency, standing between Dunbar and Lyndsay on the 1 hand and Burns on the other in lyrics like "The Vision," "Lucky Spence," and the "Wretched Miser;" an epistolary poet, worthily admired and imitated by Burns himself ("Pastoral Poetry" and Epistles to Lapraik and William Simpson); a dainty, if not always melodious, song-writer; and a master of the pastoral in its simplest and most attractive form.

The Gentle Shepherd is better adapted for the study than the stage, in large measure because ideal actors for it are simply impossible. The action is slow and languid, and the interest aroused is mainly sentimental. At first it was without songs, and the lyrics afterwards interspersed are not brilliant. The poem is remarkable for its quick and subtle appreciation of rural scenery, customs, and characters; and, if the plot is slightly artificial, the development is skilful and satisfactory. In its honest, straightforward appreciation of beauty in nature and character, and its fascinating presentation of homely customs, it will bear comparison with its author's Italian models, or with similar efforts of Gay. Ramsay, as Leigh Hunt avers, "is in some respects the best pastoral writer in the world" (A Jar of Honey, chap. viii.).

The separate editions of the Gentle Shepherd have been very numerous. In 1788 it was issued with illustrations by David Allan. A reissue in 1807 included an appendix with Ramsay's collection of (over 2,000) proverbs. English versions appeared in 1777, 1785, and 1790. In 1880 there was published a royal 4to edition, with memoir, glossary, plates after Allan, and the original airs to the songs. A 2nd edition of The Evergreen was reprinted in Glasgow in 1824. The Tea-table Miscellany has also been several times reprinted in various forms, in 1768, 1775, 1788, 1793, and 1876; music for the songs in this anthology was published in 1763 and 1775. In 1800 George Chalmers edited Ramsay's poems in 2 volumes, with a life by himself and a prefatory criticism by Lord Woodhouselee. This has been frequently reissued.

Critical introduction

by William Minto

Ramsay had an influence upon the growth of the peasant poetry of Scotland which must be taken account of quite apart from the qualities of his own song, and perhaps constitutes a better title to remembrance. He did not create the movement which reached its full volume and intensity in the poetry of Burns, but it was concentrated in him for a generation, and passed on with a mighty impulse.

It must always be hazardous work guessing at the beginnings of things, but if one were asked to name the great seminal work of the Scotch poetry of the eighteenth century, one would have little hesitation in pitching upon Watson’s Choice Collection of Scots Songs: Ancient and modern. Ramsay himself tells us that his inspiration, or at least his ambition to write, came from this source. It was to the Scotch poetry of the 18th century what Tottel’s Miscellany was to the English poetry of the 16th, only much more powerful in its influence, owing to the fact that fewer influences were at work in the field.

Ramsay carried out on a larger scale and with more abundant resources the plan adopted by this pioneer, collecting, adapting, and publishing "ancient" poems, and getting "ingenious" friends to assist him in the production of "modern" poems. His shop at the sign of the Mercury in the High Street of Edinburgh, thus became the headquarters of a school, in which he was the acknowledged master, and the productions of this school, written in the dialect of a peasantry among whom it was a disgrace not to be able to read, and coming home to their "business and bosoms," were popular as no literature had ever been before.

It was not without some reason that austere moralists lamented the flight of godliness from the land before Ramsay’s "licentious muse." The Gentle Shepherd, with its pagan summons to lads and lasses to "pu the gowan in its prime," found its way into the cottages, though as forbidden fruit wherever the authority of the Kirk was respected, almost as freely as the Bible.

To get a correct conception of the general character of Ramsay’s poems, we must look at the audience for whom they were written. They were read by peasants, by shepherds, ploughboys, and milkmaids, but they had first passed under the critical eyes of a more lettered circle. It may seem a paradox to call Ramsay’s poems vers de société, yet such in effect they were, though the society for which they were written had not much of the culture which we now associate with the name.

Ramsay was a convivial soul — he has been called a "convivial buffoon" — and he and his friends had formed themselves into an "Easy Club," in imitation of the famous literary clubs of the London coffee-houses. It was for this society that he began to write verses, for a knot of young lawyers, doctors, lairds, and tradesmen, who had a liking for literature and good-fellowship, who read the Spectator, Pope, Dryden, and the poets of the Restoration, and met of an evening to sup, crack jokes, and exchange literary essays and small talk. Ramsay’s poems smack of this convivial atmosphere.

Through the medium of the "Easy Club," with such admixture as it could not fail to receive from the vigorous individuality of the members, the spirit of the Restoration passed to do battle among the Scotch peasantry with the austere spirit of the Kirk. The rugged passion and rude pathos, the intense sympathy with the joys and sorrows of a hard existence, which found voice among a people awakened to the charm of song, did not come from "renowned Allan," the "canty callan" who was the laureate of the Easy Club. Broad fun, sly touches of satire at the expense of local fashions and local characters, compliments to reigning beauties, humorous descriptions of local life, were the subjects with which Ramsay sought the applause of his boon-companions, and appealed with success to a wider public.

"The Lass o’ Patie’s Mill," and "Bessie Bell and Mary Gray," are examples of the light lyric in which the genial mirth-loving poet was at his ease. When he tried serious themes he soon got beyond his depth. "Farewell to Lochaber" is the only serious lyric of his that has kept its hold, and even that is not without traces of artificiality of sentiment, such as the departing warrior’s explanation that he weeps not because he is going to battle, but because he is leaving his sweetheart.

‘These tears that I shed they are a’ for my dear,

And no for the dangers attending on weir.’

The humorous imp that was Ramsay’s true familiar must have guided his pen when he wrote these lines. The lover’s agonies were not within reach of his art, although he could paint the lover’s delights with genuine lyric rapture; his gay science was summed up in the lines:—

‘Then I’ll draw cuts and take my fate

And be wi’ ane contented.’

It is as a painter of manners with keen, sly, humorous observation, and not as a lyrist, that Ramsay deserves to be remembered. We can well understand Hogarth’s admiration for him. His elegies on Maggie Johnstone and Lucky Wood, and his anticipation of the 'Road to Ruin’ in the "Three Bonnets" were after Hogarth’s own heart. But the life that he painted in the Scotch capital as he saw it with his twinkling eye, broad sense of fun, and "pawky" humour, was too coarse to have much interest for any but his own time. In a happy hour for his memory, he conceived the idea of describing the life which he had known in his youth in the country.

From writing pastoral dialogues after the manner of Spenser, such as that in which Pope and Steele, as Sandy and Richie, are made to lament the death of Adie in broad Scotch, he took to making real Scotch shepherds and shepherdesses discuss in verse their loves and all the concerns of their daily life. In The Gentle Shepherd, Ramsay brought back real pastoral poetry to literature.

The Scotch critics of the last century delighted in comparing Ramsay’s masterpiece with the pastorals of the Italian masters, and giving him the palm over these competitors. But the kind of composition is so different that a fair basis of comparison can hardly be said to exist. The Gentle Shepherd must be judged on its merits as a picture of real rustic life. Its fidelity to nature is attested by the welcome it received from the people whose life it described, and who saw themselves reflected there as they wished that others should see them—the harshness of their struggle for existence forgotten, and all their simple joys gathered up in the poet’s imagination.

Recognition

Allan Ramsay statue, West Princes Gardens, Edinburgh. Statue by Sir John Steell, 1850. Photo by Ham, 2013. Licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0), courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

In Old Greyfriars churchyard there is a monument to his memory.

In Edinburgh there is a statue of Ramsay in Prince's Street Gardens, and his name is also perpetuated by the title, Ramsay Gardens, given to the district of the city in which he spent his closing years.

Sir John Clerk erected an obelisk at Penicuik to his memory.

Alexander Fraser-Tytler dedicated to him at Woodhouselee, Midlothian (near the scene of the Gentle Shepherd), a rustic temple inscribed with appropriate verse.

Moses Mendez included his fable "The Eagle and Robin Red-breast" in his Collection of the Most Esteemed Pieces of Poetry; that have appeared for several years.

His poem "Peggy" was printed in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

Ramsay's portrait was painted by William Aikman and by Smibert. The former, a copy of the latter by Alexander Carse, and a 3rd painting by an unknown hand are all in the National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.

Publications

Poetry

• Christ's Kirk on the Green: In three cantos (canto 1 by James I of Scotland, cantos 2 & 3 by Ramsay). Edinburgh: privately published at the Mercury, 1718.
• Poems. Edinburgh: privately printed, 1720; London: J. Clarke, A. Millar, F. Cogan, R. Willock, S. Palmer & J. Huggonson, 1731.
• Poems (2 volumes), London: A. Millar, J. Rivington, W. Johnston, and T. Becket, 1761. Volume I, Volume II
• Poems (selected by J. Logie Robertson). London: Walter Scott, 1887.

Non-fiction

• The Scriblers Lash'd. Edinburgh: privately printed, 1721.

Play

• The Gentle Shepherd: A Scotch pastoral comedy. Edinburgh: Thomas Ruddiman, 1725.

Edited

• Scot Songs. Edinburgh: privately printed, 1719.
• The Tea-Table Miscellany: A collection of choice songs, Scots and English. Edinburgh: privately printed by Thomas Ruddiman, 1723; 5th edition, privately published, 1729; Dublin: S. Powell for George Risk, 1729; London: A. Millar, 1733; 11th edition, London: A. Millar, 1750.
• The Ever Green: Being a collection of Scots poems, wrote by the ingenious before 1600. Edinburgh: privately printed by Thomas Ruddiman, 1724. Volume I, Volume II
• A Collection of Scottish Proverbs. Edinburgh: privately printed / London: Andr. Millar, 1737.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of British poets

References

•  Bayne, Thomas Wilson (1896) "Ramsay, Allan (1686-1758)" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 47 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 230-233  . Wikisource, Web, Feb. 21, 2018.
• Burns Martin, Allan Ramsay: A Study of his Life and Works
• Oliphant Smeaton, Allan Ramsay, Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier (Famous Scots), 1896.

External links

Poems

• "Peggy"
• Allan Ramsay at the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive ("The Eagle and Robin Redbreast: A fable")
• Ramsay, Allan (1686-1758) (3 poems) at Representative Poetry Online
• Allan Ramsay at PoemHunter (4 poems)
• Allan Ramsay at Poetry Nook (216 poems)
• Ramsay in The English Poets: An anthology:
  • from The Gentle Shepherd: Jenny and Peggy, Patie and Peggy
  • from The Tea-table Miscellany: "Through the Wood, Laddie," "As Thou Were My Ain Thing"
• Allan Ramsay (1686-1758) info & 8 poems at English Poetry, 1579-1830
• Allan Ramsay at Allpoetry (10 poems)

Books

• The Gentle Shepherd (Full text - 16 MB)
• More information, including full text, on Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd at the University of North Texas Music Library's Virtual Rare Book Room
• Allan Ramsay at Amazon.com

About

• Allan Ramsay in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Allan Ramsay at BBC Writing Scotland
• Ramsay, Allan (1686-1758) in The Burns Encyclopedia

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen & Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Ramsay, Allan (1686-1758)