SOURCE: "Scots Satires," in Allan Ramsay, Twayne Publishers, 1985, pp. 14-41.

MacLaine's 1985 study of Ramsay was the first book-length critical treatment of Ramsay's work. In the following excerpt, MacLaine analyzes the poet's satiric verses, crediting them with reviving interest in ancient Scottish verse forms and setting the precedent for modern Scots satire.

At the very beginning of his poetic career Allan Ramsay made the conscious but risky decision of writing in his native Scottish tongue and of attempting to breathe new life into the moribund Scots poetic tradition. That tradition, as we have noted in the previous chapter, had become so impoverished that by Ramsay's time the Scots language was used only for humorous treatments of low life. It was, therefore, wholly natural if not inevitable that Ramsay should launch his career as a Scots poet by turning to various types of comic verse at the outset. He began...