The Ghaists is a powerful political poem and first appeared in print in Ruddiman’s Magazine in May 1773. That year the Westminster parliament proposed a Mortmain Bill which caused hot debate in Scotland. By this Bill, it was hoped to raise the value of government securities by allowing trustees of charities to invest all their funds in a general government fund at an interest rate of 3%. However, Scottish opinion, expressed in the journals and magazines of the day, was decidedly against the Bill. Future benefactors, they argued, would be discouraged from endowing institutions because their wills could be ignored. Scots did not want funds from their charities drawn out of Scotland to pay for a national debt run up in London, and at such a meagre interest rate which served only to benefit the English economy. As a result, the councils of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and others, called emergency meetings and petitioned against the Bill, and it did not become law.

Fergusson’s poem takes the form of a dialogue – here called an eclogue, or verse imitating Classical Greek and Latin style - between two ghosts in Edinburgh’s Greyfriars churchyard at night time. The two ghosts are those of George Heriot (1563-1624), a goldsmith and crown financier, and George Watson (1654-1723) an Edinburgh merchant banker. Heriot had left money to found Heriot’s Hospital which was first established in 1628, opened in 1659, and completed in 1693. It is now Heriot’s School on Lauriston Place, Edinburgh. Watson also left money to found Watson’s Hospital which opened in 1741 and in 1870 became George Watson’s School, on Colinton Road, Edinburgh. In earlier times the word hospital could simply mean a charitable institution. Heriot and Watson had intended that their hospitals would take in the sons of poor burgesses and give them an education.

Fergusson used figures from the past to comment on a modern political problem, and illustrate how Scottish charitable institutions were under threat. During the poem he also makes mention of Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh (c.1638-1691) who served as lord advocate (1677-1689) and was a noted prosecutor of Covenanters for which he earned the nickname ‘Bluidy MacKenzie’. Fergusson thought that ‘Danish Jones’ (Inigo Jones) the architect had built Heriot’s Hospital, but in fact William Wallace and others were the builders. The poem also refers to Major Thomas Weir, executed for witchcraft in 1670, and the Adam Tomb – burial place of William Adamson (1689-1748). The name of Geordie Girdwood, sometime sexton of Greyfriars Churchyard, is also mentioned.

For the full text of The Ghaists please download the PDF file below which also contains guidance notes.