Jacobitism and Allan Ramsay
By the early 1700s English had undoubtedly overtaken Scots as the written language of the elite and the powerful. Yet, not everyone was satisfied to let Scots die out as a literary language. Poet, bookseller and wig-maker Allan Ramsay (1684-1758) was part of close-knit Edinburgh group reviving the study of Scots poets and authors from generations past. Inseparable from an interest in Gavin Douglas and his peers seems to have been a Jacobite and anti-Union sentiment. In his 1721 two volume Poems, Ramsay celebrates the Scots element of his poetry:
The Scotticisms, which perhaps may offend some over-nice Ear, give new Life and Grace to the Poetry, and become their Place as well as the Doric Dialect of Theocritus, so much admired by the best Judges.
