Robert Nicoll

Robert Nicoll Poems

Robert Nicoll Biography

Robert Nicoll (7 January 1814 – 7 December 1837) Scottish poet, was born at the farm of Little Tullybeltane, in the parish of Auchtergaven, Perthshire. When Robert was five years old his father was reduced to poverty. He became a day-labourer, and was able to give his son only a very slight education. At 16 the boy was apprenticed to a grocer and wine-merchant at Perth. In 1833 he began to contribute to Johnstone's Magazine (afterwards Tait's Magazine), and in the next year his apprenticeship was cancelled. He visited Edinburgh, and was kindly received there, but obtained no employment. He opened a circulating library at Dundee, and in 1836 he became editor of the Leeds Times. He held pronounced Radical opinions, and overtaxed his slender physical resources in electioneering work for Sir William Molesworth in the summer of 1837. He was obliged to resign his editorship and died at the house of his friend William Tait, at Trinity, near Edinburgh. He had published a volume of Poems in 1835; and in 1844 appeared a further volume, Poems and Lyrics, with an anonymous memoir of the author by Mrs C I Johnstone. The best of his lyrics are those written in the Scottish dialect. They are simple in feeling and expression, genuine folksongs. An eloquent appreciation of his character and his poetry was included in Charles Kingsley's article on Burns and his School in the North British Review for November 1851. See also P R Drummond, Life of Robert Nicholl, Poet (1884).)

The Best Poem Of Robert Nicoll

The Making O’ The Hay

Across the rigs we'll wander
The new-mawn hay amang,
And hear the blackbird in the wood,
And gi'e it sang for sang.
We'll gi'e it sang for sang, we will,
For ilka heart is gay,
As lads and lasses trip alang,
At making o' the hay!

It is sae sweetly scented,
It seems a maiden's breath;
Aboon, the sun has wither'd it,
But there is green beneath.
But there is caller green beneath,
Come, lasses, foot away!
The heart is dowie can be cauld,
At making o' the hay!

Step lightly o'er, gang saftly by,
Mak' rig and furrow clean,
And coil it up in fragrant heaps,--
We maun ha'e done at e'en:--
We maun ha'e done at gloaming e'en;
And when the clouds grow gray,
Ilk lad may kiss his bonnie lass
Amang the new-made hay!

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