David Mallet (Malloch): Born near Crieff around 1705, David Mallet, a farmer’s son rose from being janitor of Edinburgh High School to an acclaimed poet and songwriter; though a less than successful playwright. He attended St. Andrews University whence he became a tutor (1720) and gained employment as such to the […]
Hugh Haliburton (the Pseudonym of the minor poet James Logie Robertson): Born in Milnathort by Kinross in 1846 and educated at Orwell ParishSchool. Hugh Haliburton began as a student-teacher at Haddington before studying at Edinburgh University and teaching at Heriot’s Hospital. He became the first English master at Edinburgh Ladies’ College […]
Michael Bruce of Kinross-shire (Poet of Loch Leven; Poet of Lomond Braes; The Shepherd Poet): Edmund Burke once described Michael Bruce’s Ode to the Cuckoo as “the most beautiful lyric in our language.” Michael Bruce was born in March 1746 at Kinnesswood in the cottage used by his father for weaving. He learnt to read […]
“In 1819 Robert Southey, poet laureate, together with Thomas Telford the engineer, undertook a tour of Scotland. The Journal of the Tour is coloured to some extent by his extreme Toryism but for all that is a lively, direct and on the whole sympathetic account of his travels.” As the pair […]
Naomi Margaret Haldane Mitchison a highly talented and creative writer of poetry and prose was born in Edinburgh in 1897. Her family had owned land near Gleneagles since the 13th century and Naomi was brought up only a few miles from Auchterarder. Her mother Louisa Kathleen Trotter was a suffragist […]
Born in the ‘auld hoose’ of Gask, Perthshire on 16 August 1766, Caroline (also Carolina) Oliphant (her first name is the female form of Charles; she was named for Prince Charles Edward Stuart) became a poet and song writer of note. She met Niel Gow and wrote several songs to […]
Poets are difficult to compare. Time, culture, context and ideology defy objective comparison. The views of the reader in relation to the role of poetry and its form equally make it impossible to decide which of several poets is the greater. Despite this truth it can be said without fear […]
In April 1847 the newly married poets Elizabeth and Robert Browning came to join the substantial group of English people living in Florence, Italy. It was whilst in Italy that they both wrote some of the greatest poetry of the Victorian age. They would stay in Florence for 14 years […]
In November 1948 a 25th anniversary commemoration for John Maclean was held in Glasgow, One of the organisers of this event, James Scott (Hamish) Henderson had written a song especially for the proceedings – ‘The John Maclean March’. The song was sang that night by a William Noble and one […]