Author: Ferguson, David Moncrieff
Biography:
FERGUSON, David Moncrieff (1796-1875: Millar)
He was born at Annan in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, and educated at the Annan Academy, where Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) was a schoolmate. The names of his parents are not known. He became a teacher at the Academy: in 1820-21, Carlyle congratulated his younger brother John Carlyle for having Ferguson to prepare him for the university. (But he refers to him as David Fergusson, the spelling used for the name of a 16th-century church reformer.) Evan Bane, his only published volume of poetry, is dated 1830 and is dedicated to another boyhood friend, George Alfred Currie, who had joined the army and left Scotland. The title poem was immediately recognized as a close imitation of Walter Scott's (q.v.) Lady of the Lake. According to Millar, who provides the fullest account of Ferguson's life, he also published a book in prose about the Bible in 1847, but there is no record of it in WorldCat. Shortly after then he became "unhinged" and was committed to the Crichton Asylum in Dumfries, where he lived until his death on 31 Jan. 1875. He does not appear to have married. He may have returned to poetry while he was incarcerated, for Millar mentions "touching" verses included in The New Moon; or, Crichton Royal Institution Literary Register. (Frank Millar, The Poets of Dumfriesshire [1910] 264-6; Thomas Carlyle, Early Letters [1886] 2:172; Cambrian Quarterly Magazine 4 [1832] 262-4) SR
Other Names:
- D. M. Ferguson