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Which earlier Scottish poets influenced Robert Burns’s use of Scots language and ballad forms?
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Robert Burns
Robert Burns, engraving from A Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen, 1870.
Robert Burns was significantly influenced by the precedents of earlier Scottish poets, most notably Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson.12
- Allan Ramsay: Admired by Burns as a pioneer in the use of Scots in contemporary poetry, Ramsay worked to maintain national poetic traditions by writing in the vernacular and preserving the works of late medieval Scottish poets, such as Robert Henryson and William Dunbar.34
- Robert Fergusson: A key forerunner to Burns, Fergusson’s racy and humorous Scots poems had a direct stimulating effect on Burns’s own work. Specific poems by Burns, such as "The Holy Fair" and "The Cotter’s Saturday Night," were influenced by Fergusson’s "Leith Races" and "The Farmer’s Ingle".5
By drawing on these predecessors, Burns demonstrated how Scottish idioms and traditional ballad modes could revitalize poetry, allowing him to bridge the gap between older folk traditions and his own creative output.16