Walking Away

Walking Away. This tall, elegant young man appears to be striding purposefully away, clasping his book, from the tittle-tattle of the wedding guests, and their interesting assortment of legs, footwear, stockings and kilts. A grab-shot outside the Canongate Kirk on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, at the end of a very chilly mid-September afternoon.

The young man is Robert Fergusson, "Scotia's Poet" according to Robert Burns, who erected the statue in Fergusson's memory in 1787. Born in Edinburgh in 1750, he had been educated in Dundee and at St. Andrews University. He was a popular figure in Edinburgh and his poetry was well received. But by the age of 23 he started suffering from depression, with a condition described by some as "religious melancholia". A head injury in a fall down a flight of stairs affected him seriously and he was eventually committed to Edinburgh’s Bedlam madhouse, where he died in 1774.

The inscription is from Fergusson's poem Auld Reikie:
"And Blythly gar auld care gae by / Wi blinkit and wi bleering eye."

Technical: COOLPIX P5000, f=12.9 mm, ISO200, 1/99 sec @ f3.9

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