SOURCE: "Eighteenth-Century Vernacular Poetry," in Scottish Poetry: A Critical Survey, edited by James Kinsley, Cassell and Company Ltd., 1955, pp. 150-184.

A prominent critic, historian, and editor, Daiches has written a number of important studies of Scottish literature and culture, including The Paradox of Scottish Culture: The Eighteenth Century Experience (1964) and Robert Burns and His World (1971). In the following essay, Daiches explores the works of Ramsay, Fergusson, and Burns in relation to the problem of "[how to use the vernacular as a language in serious literature."]

The seventeenth century saw Scottish poets moving away from the older Scots literary tradition: from Sir Robert Aytoun to Montrose the trend was towards a courtly English idiom, and Scots was rapidly ceasing to be a literary language and becoming merely a spoken dialect. The most important Scots poem of the seventeenth century is the vulgar, vigorous, rollicking vernacular 'Life and Death of...