Alison Cockburn

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AC did not publish, and much of her writing is probably lost. She won a place in literary history with her composition of a popular mournful song or ballad, to an old Scottish tune. Most of her verse is occasional and much of it political. She was a delightful letter-writer, markedly independent in some of her opinions. She also left a short account of her own life and a fable-like biography of Robert Keith .
  • BirthName: Alison Rutherford
    Sarah Tytler and Jean L. Watson spell her birth name Rutherfurd.

  • Married: Cockburn
Photo of a black and white portrait of Alison Cockburn based on a miniature by Anne Forbes. She is facing left from the waist up against a dark background. Her hair is pulled back and covered by a bonnet tied under her chin. She is wearing a high-collared dress overlayed with dark intricate lace.

Milestones

8 October 1713

Alison Rutherford or Rutherfurd (later AC ) was born at the family's mansion house at Fairnalee in Selkirkshire, Scotland. She was much the youngest of seven children (apart from two elder half-brothers).
Craig-Brown gives the names of six siblings of AC , though ODNB says there were only six children in all.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Cockburn, Alison. “Preface, Introductory Notes”. Letters and Memoirs, edited by Thomas Craig-Brown, David Douglas, 1900.

4 January 1760

AC addressed the earliest letter in her later printed collection (which is partly in verse) to Henrietta Cumming or Cummings (later Fordyce) , who was governess to Lady Anne Barnard and her sisters, and later a biographical subject for Isabella Kelly .
Cockburn, Alison. Letters and Memoirs. Editor Craig-Brown, Thomas, David Douglas, 1900.
31

1764

The Black Bird. A Choice Collection of the Most Celebrated Songs. Few of which are to be found in any other Collection, published at Edinburgh, included, anonymously, what is probably the best-known of all AC 's works, the song or ballad beginning I've seen the smiling of Fortune beguiling.
In a footnote Fordonski wrongly gives the date as 1754.
Fordonski, Krzysztof. “Robert Burns and Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski: A Translatological Investigation into the Mystery of ’I dream’d I lay’”. Scottish Literary Review, Vol.
5
, No. 1, 1 Mar. 2013– 2025, pp. 13-29.
15-16
Cockburn, Alison. Letters and Memoirs. Editor Craig-Brown, Thomas, David Douglas, 1900.
188

3 November 1794

AC , who had been writing of herself as old for something like twenty years, composed the last of her printed letters, to the Rev. Robert Douglas .
Cockburn, Alison. Letters and Memoirs. Editor Craig-Brown, Thomas, David Douglas, 1900.
235

22 November 1794

AC died in Edinburgh.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Family

8 October 1713

Alison Rutherford or Rutherfurd (later AC ) was born at the family's mansion house at Fairnalee in Selkirkshire, Scotland. She was much the youngest of seven children (apart from two elder half-brothers).
Craig-Brown gives the names of six siblings of AC , though ODNB says there were only six children in all.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Cockburn, Alison. “Preface, Introductory Notes”. Letters and Memoirs, edited by Thomas Craig-Brown, David Douglas, 1900.

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