'Registrate to Allan Ramsay, weegmaker, and Christian Ross, his spouse, North East Parish—a son, Robert. Witnesses, John Symer, merchant, and Walter Boswell, sadler. The child was born on the 10th instant. 23rd November 1716.
'Registrate to Allan Ramsay, bookseller, and Christian Ross, his spouse—a daughter named Agnes. Witnesses, James Norie, painter, and George Young, chyrurgeon. Born the 9th instant. 10th August 1725.'
Besides these named above, Chalmers states that Christian Ross brought Allan Ramsay three other daughters, who were not recorded in the Register,—one born in 1719, one in 1720, and one in 1724,—who are mentioned in his letter to Smibert as 'fine girls, no ae wally-draigle among them all.'
In 1719 our poet published his first edition of 'Scots Songs,'—some original, others collected from all sources, and comprising many of the gems of Scottish lyrical poetry. The success attending the volume was instant and gratifying, and led, as we will see further on, to other publications of a cognate but more ambitious character. Almost contemporaneously was published, in a single sheet or broadside, what proved to be the germ of the Gentle Shepherd—to wit, a Pastoral Dialogue between Patie and Roger. The dialogue was reprinted in the quarto of 1721, and was much admired by all the lovers of poetry of the period.
A reliable gauge of the estimation wherein Ramsay was now held, as Scotland's great vernacular poet, is afforded in the metrical epistles sent to him during the closing months of 1719 by Lieutenant William Hamilton of Gilbertfield, to which Allan returned replies in similar terms. This was not a poetical tourney like the famous 'flyting' between Dunbar and Kennedy, two hundred and thirty years before. In the latter, the two tilters sought to say the hardest and the bitterest things of each other, though they professed to joust with pointless spears; in the former, Hamilton and Ramsay, on the contrary, vied each with the other in paying the pleasantest compliments. Gilbertfield contributed a luscious sop to his correspondent's vanity when he saluted him, in a stanza alluded to by Burns in his own familiar tribute, as—
'O fam'd and celebrated Allan!
Renowned Ramsay! canty callan!
There's nowther Highland-man nor Lawlan,
In poetrie,
But may as soon ding down Tantallan,
As match wi' thee.'
Then he proceeds to inform honest Allan that of 'poetry, the hail quintescence, thou hast suck'd up,' and affirms that—
'Tho' Ben and Dryden of renown
Were yet alive in London town,
Like kings contending for a crown,
'Twad be a pingle,
Whilk o' you three wad gar words sound
And best to jingle.'
After such a glowing tribute, Allan could do no less than dip deep into his cask of compliments also, and assure Gilbertfield that he felt taller already by this commendation—
'When Hamilton the bauld and gay
Lends me a heezy,
In verse that slides sae smooth away,
Well tell'd and easy.'