Location: Canongate Kirk, Edinburgh, Scotland
Cause of death: Suicide
Photo taken by: julia and keld
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Scottish poet remembered not only for his tragic death but for his influence on other poets, including Robert Burns.
Scottish poet remembered not only for his tragic death but for his influence on other poets, including Robert Burns.
He was born in Edinburgh and educated in Dundee and at St Andrews University. After leaving University he started working as a clerk in a lawyer’s office and started to contribute poetry to Magazines.
Fergusson produced 33 poems in Scots and 50 in English. His most famous poem is Auld Reekie (1773) which traces a day in the life of the city of Edinburgh.
He started to suffer from depression which, aggravated by a head injury caused by a fall down some stairs, resulted in him spending the last two months of his life in a mental asylum where he committed suicide. He was buried in a pauper’s grave, but in 1787 a memorial stone was erected by Robert Burns who wrote the epitaph which appears on the headstone:
No sculptured Marble here, nor pompous lay,
No storied Urn nor animated bust:
This simple stone directs pale Scotia's way,
To pour her sorrows o'er the Poet's dust.
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