More Gold

So my googling continues on - and I have found more gold. This book - The Bards of Angus and the Mearns - is also reproduced online and in it we find the following about William Robertson.

WILLIAM ROBERTSON

It will readily be conceded that is a unique experience for a man of over ninety years of age to publish a volume of poems and sketches! In 1893, William Robertson established this record, when he gave us "The Echoes of the Mountain Muse, and Legends of the Past", a book of 106 pages of verse and prose, and the second work of the kind that he had written and published long after he had passed man's allotted span! In company with Mr. John Paul we visited the aged bard at Union Place, Lochee, in August of 1896, and had a most interesting conversation with him. He was confined to bed; but his eye was bright, his voice sonorous, and despite his years, he seemed the very type of an enthusiastic Scot. With wonderful vigour he told us of his meeting with "the Culloden Jacobite" of his poem, and also that he was the only living link between dark Culloden and the present. The accounts of his age, he assured us, were not exaggerated; and on the copies of his 1893 volumes that we took with us, he wrote in legible though tremulous characters, "William Robertson, aged 96". A firm believer in the marvellous and supernatural, William disclaimed all superstition, and vouched for the absolute veracity of several singular experiences narrated in his book. He was thoroughly imbued with the love of nature, legend, clan, and country, that characterizes the true Highlander - due, doubtless, to the fact that his impressionable years were spent in the Highlands - and of these he sings with remarkable vigour and and grace, and the more so, it strikes us, when his years and meagre early education are considered. Mr Robertson was a native of Longforgan, but the major part of his active life was passed in fair Strathmore, and latterly at Broughty Ferry, where he was known to every resident both as bard and a gardener. His death occurred in June of this year, the obituary notice bearing that his age was 97. Our illustrations are taken from the volume of "Echoes," to which reference is made above. "

The following three poems are then transcribed, "A Summer Morning Among the Hills", "A Culloden Jacobite" and "A Song".

I have already transcribed "A Culloden Jacobite" - I will add the other two poems shortly.