Ronnie Young

Happy Birthday to Robert Fergusson, born #OTD 275 years ago!

For more info on what we've been up to on Project Fergusson as the official end of the project approaches, see our website: robert-fergusson.glasgow.ac.uk

We've got online exhibitions, other resources, project updates and much more!

Ellisland, 1791 Dear Sir: Thou eunuch of language; thou Englishman, who never was south the Tweed; thou servile echo of fashionable barbarisms; thou quack, vending the nostrums of empirical elocution; thou marriage-maker between vowels and consonants, on the Gretna-green of caprice; thou cobler, botching the flimsy socks of bombast oratory; thou blacksmith, hammering the rivets of absurdity; thou butcher, embruing thy hands in the bowels of orthography; thou arch-heretic in pronunciation; thou pitch-pipe of affected emphasis; thou carpenter, mortising the awkward joints of jarring sentences; thou squeaking dissonance of cadence; thou pimp of gender; thou Lyon Herald to silly etymology; thou antipode of grammar; thou executioner of construction; thou brood of the speech-distracting builders of the Tower of Babel; thou lingual confusion worse confounded; thou scape-gallows from the land of syntax; thou scavenger of mood and tense; thou murderous accoucheur of infant learning; thou ignis fatuus, misleading the steps of benighted ignorance; thou pickle-herring in the puppet-show of nonsense; thou faithful recorder of barbarous idiom; thou persecutor of syllabication; thou baleful meteor, foretelling and facilitating the rapid approach of Nox and Erebus. R.B. Robert Burns | Letter to a critic, 1791 | The Works of Robert Burns, Volume 4

Dear Sir:

Thou eunuch of language; thou Englishman, who never was south the Tweed; thou servile echo of fashionable barbarisms; thou quack, vending the nostrums of empirical elocution…

—Robert Burns, Letter to a critic (1791)
#WorldLetterWritingDay #C18th
news.lettersofnote.com/p/thou-pickl...

Gentle reminder that applications for our funded PhD on Burns and the Environment closes soon. Enquiries welcome. 👇

www.gla.ac.uk/scholarships...

Highlight Talk - Carlos Llazza Corrales on Translating Burns into Spanish Free Highlight Talk in the Robertson Room at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, Alloway.

Carlos Llazza Corrales on Translating Burns into Spanish
21 May, Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, Alloway. Free, ticketed.

Carlos Llazza Corrales discusses his translations of Burns, & the role of literary translation in creating a Scoto-Hispanic literary space
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/highlight-...

A seminar room full of teachers and academics.

Genuinely inspiring day today launching our Scottish Literature in the Classroom project with secondary school teachers from across Scotland and the @sqanews.bsky.social. Thanks to colleagues Corey Gibson, Pip Osmond-Williams, Jen Farrar, Maureen Farrell and @dr-ron.bsky.social. More to come soon!

Really glad to hear it 👍

Enjoy! It's a great place

Title page: A Collection of Scots Proverbs More complete and correct than any heretofore published Vox Populi Vox Dei That maun be true that a’ Men say

Like the bairns of Falkirk, ye mind naithing but mischief.
—from Allan Ramsay’s A COLLECTION OF SCOTS PROVERBS (1737)

WARNING: “Some amang the gentle vulgar, that are mair nice than wise, may tartle at the braidness, or, (as they name it) coarse expressions.”

Robert Burns: forgery and ‘Antique Smith’ Ronnie Young takes a look at the fascinating world of forgery and Burns manuscripts.

I’ve written a piece for the NTS looking at forgeries in the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum made by the prolific Edinburgh forger ‘Antique Smith’. Smith flooded the late-19thC collectibles market with fakes of major writers, incl. Burns, Byron, Dickens and Scott. 👇

www.nts.org.uk/collections/...

Burns Chronicle :

Special Issue: Burns and North America out now! As guest eds Arun Sood and Corey Andrew’s point out, Burns inspired numerous US writers and ‘came to embody the independent democratic ideals of the young Republic’. Worth reflecting on at this particular point in time.

euppublishing.com/loi/burns

Burns Chronicle cover

Buenas Chronicle spring 2025 contents

Hot off the press, the Spring issue of the Burns Chronicle just arrived!
Well done to guest editors Arun Sood and Corey Andrews for putting together this special issue on Robert Burns and America. 👍
@edinburghup.bsky.social @glasgowburns.bsky.social

Home

We're delighted to announce that registration is now OPEN for the British Association for Romantic Studies 2025 ECR & PGR Conference, 'Romantic (Un)Consciousness'.

Please visit our conference website for further details and to register!

barsconference2025.wixsite.com/home

@bars.bsky.social

Delighted to be in Mainz to present at the launch of the ‘Teaching Scotland’ community, to see all the great work in Scottish Studies being done by our friends there, and to share some of the great teaching resources from the Association for Scottish Literature with German teachers. @asls.org.uk

Lecture by Angela Esterhammer We are delighted to announce details of the 2025 Annual Lecture, to be delivered by Prof Angela Esterhammer. Following the success of last year, the event will take place at the Wellwood Burns Cent…

Join us for the Galt Society's annual lecture in Irvine, Scotland, with Toronto's Professor Angela Esterhammer and her paper 'Discovering the Transatlantic Galt'. Tickets can be booked by contacting the Society's Secretary, Dr Craig Lamont. Full details are 👇
thejohngaltsociety.com/2025/04/03/l...

Spatialising Glasgow’s Involvement in Transatlantic Slaving Economies: A Study of the Historical and Postcolonial Roles and Impacts of the Tobacco Merchant’s House since the 1780s - Scottish Graduate ... Focusing on Glasgow’s Tobacco Merchant’s House (TMH) at 42 Miller Street, the overarching aim of the project is to offer the first focused and full-length study of Glasgow’s involvement in transatlant...

My colleague @davidwilsonhist.bsky.social and I are delighted to invite applications for a PhD studentship funded by ESRC @sgsss.bsky.social, collaborating partner Scottish Civic Trust. #history #slavery #Glasgow

Full details below.

#skystorians #PhDsky #academicsky www.sgsss.ac.uk/studentship/...

ChatGPT firm reveals AI model that is ‘good at creative writing’ As tech firms battle creative industries over copyright, OpenAI chief Sam Altman says he was ‘really struck’ by product’s output

ChatGPT makers train AI to write metafiction. But is it aware that it’s writing metafiction? And if not, is it still metafiction? 🤔

Discuss.😂

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

@rhonabrown.bsky.social will be giving a talk 'Commemorating and Editing Robert Fergusson at the 250th Anniversary of his Birth' on Tuesday 18 March 2025, from 16:00 - 17:30 at the University of Aberdeen.

The event is hybrid, for more details, see the link below:
www.abdn.ac.uk/riiss/news-e...

Obituary in Scots Magazine 1791 for bloke who blows £3000 inheritance (a small fortune today) on a monster pub sesh for all his mates, ends up in the poor house, and is supported in beer for life by a very grateful pub landlord.

New career goal. :-D

Would you like to find out more about innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to Burns studies? Get your ticket for tomorrow to find out more 👩‍💻

The timidity of Labour in government is perplexing. Closer ties to Europe urgently needed, but Lab won’t even do something positive for young people. They govern as if scared of tabloid headlines.

Everyone knows Brexit was a failure and is holding UK back. Time for UK government to call it out

Robert Burns declared this ‘one of the finest songs I ever made in my life; and, besides, is composed on a young lady, positively the most beautiful, lovely woman in the world’. Wonderful from the University of Glasgow Chapel Choir. #BurnsNight #RobertBurns #Scotland

🚨PhD Opportunity 🚨

Our award winning research centre is thrilled to share the news of this exciting funded research project which will focus on Burns and the Environment 🐭🐾🌳

Find out more here:

www.gla.ac.uk/news/headlin...

Some good news in time for Burns Night. We’ve just announced a new funded PHD as part of wider research into Robert Burns and the Environment. Watch this space. @glasgowburns.bsky.social

To give you all a little extra time, the deadline for submissions to our poetry collection 'Contemporary Responses to Robert Fergusson' has been extended to Friday 28th February 2025!

More information below ⤵️

robert-fergusson.glasgow.ac.uk/legacy/submi...

A wonderful morning at the #CRBSconference ! We heard about the great environmental work carried out by the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum 🌳🐭 Some new, exciting digital resources were also launched 💻

#robertburns
#scottishliterature

Have you got your ticket for our upcoming conference? Our speakers include Dr Craig Lamont and Dr Jessica Reid who will be launching an exciting new digital resource. ✉️✍🏼

Tickets 👇

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/centre-for...

@uofglasgow.bsky.social
@uofgnews.bsky.social
#robertburns

Join us online 28 Feb for a series of talks on Burns and the environment.

We are excited to welcome Dr Sarah Leith to our conference on Saturday where she will be discussing forged manuscripts 📜✍🏼

If you want to come along please register before ticket sales end:

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/centre-for...

@n-t-s.bsky.social @uofglasgow.bsky.social @uofgnews.bsky.social

Looking forward to our annual conference in Glasgow tomorrow. 👇