Pauline Mackay

“Low, tame, and loathsome ribaldry”: Bawdry in Romantic Scotland

ABSTRACT Scottish bawdry and erotica has been preserved in cheaply available literature since the medieval period. More than merely a product of tradition, bawdry in reality was preserved in print by middle and upper class male society. This essay examines the variety of bawdry, from scatological to political, in the writing of Robert Burns, and the context of its production and dissemination, considering the contorted canonical history of Burns’s authorship, and the strong relationship to native song and form in his intrusion of erotica into the realms of sexual and radical politics.