Born in Aberdeenshire, 1699; died at Lochlee, Forfarshire, May 20, 1784. A Scottish schoolmaster and poet. He wrote “Helenore, or the Fortunate Shepherdess” (1768: a narrative poem), and a number of songs (“Wooed an’ Married an’ a’,” etc.) and other poetical pieces, in the rural dialect of Aberdeenshire.

Personal

  His money income, from all sources, did not much exceed twenty pounds a-year, besides a free house; yet, considering the fewness of his wants, and several perquisites in kind, with six acres of grazing and arable land, and an unlimited supply of peat fuel, his circumstances present nothing to excite our commiseration. Indeed, few poets have enjoyed a more equable share of happiness, and endures less of the cankering cares incident to the battle of life. Nothing that he has written bears the slightest trace of discontent.

General

  The poem which gives its name to this volume, “Helenore, or the Fortunate Shepherdess,” seems to have been written before 1740, in direct rivalry with Allan Ramsay. It is in some respects unique particularly as being the most ambitious narrative work in Scots written, perhaps, down to the present time; it is composed in the heroic measure, and extends to more than four thousand verses. An elaborate story of homely Scottish life is told with some skill, an almost Chaucerian simplicity, and much occasional picturesqueness, disguised by the rough dialect…. Alexander Ross eked “Helenore” out with some good songs.

  The meanness which is visible in the dénouement of the story is indicative of the limitation of Ross’s poetical faculty. There is little in him of “the consecration and the poet’s dream.” His is a matter-of-fact mind: he tells the reader plainly of the nausea which afflicts both his principal female characters from eating berries in their wanderings among the hills. But this, which is his weakness, is at the same time his strength. He is always true. Even in his unfortunate conclusion he is only depicting, perhaps a little too faithfully, the ambitions of the class from which his characters are drawn—ambitions which after all do not differ in kind from those cherished in higher ranks of life. It has even been suggested that the story of “Helenore” was probably based on fact, and that the infidelity may not have been of Ross’s invention. At any rate, if he is destitute of some of the virtues which are always expected and generally found in pastoral poetry, he possesses others which are extremely rare. His narrative is vigorous, the interest well sustained, and the characters of the shepherd people not ill-drawn. In these respects Ross followed, and followed well, his master Ramsay. He added however little to what Ramsay had done. His powers were in the main similar, and they were less considerable.

  To the present day “Helenore” remains popular in the north, but in spite of its frequent touches of nature and the stamp of truth about its characters, its many incongruities destroy its effect as a work of art. The poem is written in the Buchan dialect, and possesses some interest on that account; but the reader is startled to find a Helenore and a Rosalind (in this case the hero’s name) among the peasantry of Scotland, and still more so to come upon these high-sounding titles contracted with easy familiarity into “Nory” and “Lindy.” The pastoral, however, has not been without an influence upon the work of later poets, and Burns has acknowledged that Scota, the muse to whom Ross addresses his invocation, afforded the suggestion for his own Coila.

  Burns wrote, “Our true brother Ross of Lochlee was a wild warlock,” one of the “suns of the morning;” and he said that he would not for anything that “The Fortunate Shepherdess” should be lost. Dr. Blacklock and John Pinkerton were loud in their praise, and the poem was for many years, and indeed is still, very popular in the north of Scotland. The Buchan dialect in which it is written will repel readers of the south; and the text of most editions, including that edited in 1812 by Ross’s grandson—the Rev. Alexander Thomson of Lenthrathan—is very corrupt. The poem abounds in weak lines, and the plot is not very happy. But though the whole is very inferior to its model—Allan Ramsay’s “Gentle Shepherd”—it contains pleasant descriptions of country life and scenery.