Author: Aird, Thomas
Biography:
AIRD, Thomas (1802-76: ODNB)
He was born at Bowden, Roxburghshire to James Aird, a “portioner” or tenant farmer, and Isabella Paisley. Educated first at the Bowden parish school, he moved to Edinburgh in 1816 to attend university; there he met Thomas Carlyle, James Hogg, David Macbeth Moir, and John Wilson (qq.v.). Although Aird’s family intended him to enter the Church of Scotland, he chose to become a writer and augmented his income by private teaching. He contributed to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and, after James Ballantyne’s death in 1832, briefly succeeded him as editor of the Edinburgh Weekly Journal. In 1835, on Wilson’s recommendation, he moved to Dumfries to become editor of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Herald, a post he held for twenty-eight years. Other works include Religious Characteristics (1827), The Old Bachelor in the Scottish Village (1845), and, in 1848, a collected edition of his poems. After Moir’s death in 1851, Aird compiled a collection of his poetical works which he prefaced with a memoir of his friend and mentor. He died at Castlebank, Dumfries. (ODNB: 11 Jan 2018; Poetical Works of Thomas Aird, Fifth Edition with a Memoir by the Rev. Jardine Wallace)