#bedlam's doctor verse

[scotianostra]

On September 5th 1750, the poet Robert Fergusson was born in the Canongate in Edinburgh.

Most of you will not have heard of Robert Fergusson, he suffered from ill health, physical and mental, during his short life, he passed away in barbarous conditions in Edinburgh's notorious Bedlam.

Doctor Andrew Duncan, the name might be familiar to those from Edinburgh, on finding Fergusson before being admitted to the "hospital" described him as being in a "state of furious insanity" he saw no choice but to have Fergusson taken to the city's Bedlam madhouse.Conditions at the Bedlam, which was attached to the Edinburgh Charity Workhouse behind modern-day Teviot Place, were notoriously awful. Patients were treated as inmates, locked in cold stone-flagged cells, with only straw for bedding.

Fergusson may have only lived for 24 years, the last of which was traumatic, but those short years not only inspired Scotland’s best-known bard Robert Burns and the writer Robert Louis Stevenson, it also paved the way for better treatment of people with mental health conditions thanks to the aforementioned Dr Duncan.

Robert Fergusson was born of Aberdeenshire parents in Cap-and-Feather Close, in Edinburgh’s Old Town, on 5 September, 1750. The street has since disappeared, having been demolished during Fergusson’s lifetime to make way for the North Bridge, many of you will have walked over where Cap-and-Feather Close, it is said to have been where the junction at the Tron Church is, the road that now takes you over North Bridge towards Princes Street.

After primary education in Edinburgh, Fergusson entered the city’s High School in 1758, attaining a bursary to attend the Grammar School in Dundee in 1762. Two years later, he enrolled in St. Andrews University. As a student, Fergusson became infamous for his pranks, having once come close to expulsion. Despite this riotous reputation, the poet’s education stayed with him, he moved back to Edinburgh to support his mother, after the death of his father.

He got a job as a copyist for the Commissary Office main concern was, of course, poetry, and on 7 February, 1771 he anonymously published the first of a trio of pastorals in Ruddiman’s Weekly Magazine. Originally he wrote in English but by 1772 he had started to use the Scottish dialect in the standard Habbie verse form - a form which would later be copied and made famous by Robert Burns, indeed this style is now called the Burns stanza, perhaps it should be The Fergusson Stanza?

Fergusson’s own muse was Allan Ramsay and, like the be-turbaned Ramsey, followed a bit of a bohemian lifestyle in Edinburgh, which was then at the height of an intellectual and cultural tumult as the nerve centre of the Scottish Enlightenment. He wrote a total of fifty poems in Scottish English and thirty-three in the Scots language, but it is for his remarkable exploits in the latter genre that he should be acknowledged and acclaimed. His poetic subject matter paints vivid accounts of the life and characters of ‘Auld Reekie’ and drunken encounters with the notorious Edinburgh City Guard of Captain Porteous, the ‘Black Banditti’ of ‘The Daft Days’.

Fergusson began to suffer from depression in 1773, biographers have described his condition as ‘religious melancholia’, but regardless of whether or not that was the case, he gave up his job, stopped writing, withdrew completely from his riotous social life, and spent his time reading the Bible. He had heard about an Irish poet, John Cunningham, who had died in an asylum in Newcastle. That inspired 'Poem to the Memory of John Cunningham', and Fergusson became terribly afraid that the same thing was going to happen to him. Tragically, his dark prediction came true. In August, 1774, Fergusson fell down a flight of stairs and received a bad head injury, after which he was deemed ‘insensible’. His friend, the good doctor Andrew Duncan, had no choice but to admit him to Darien House "hospital", Bedlam, where after a matter of weeks, he suddenly died. He had only just turned 24.

I return to the fact that Burns was a fan and after Fergusson’s death Burns wrote of him, “my elder brother in misfortune, by far my elder brother in the muse.”

Fergusson was buried in an unmarked plot in The Canongate Kirkyard. On visiting Edinburgh in 1787, Burns paid for a headstone over his long-neglected grave, commemorating Fergusson as ‘Scotia’s Poet. I have taken many friends to visit Fergusson's last resting place over the years, mainly down to my late mother's love of Burns, but also because I love showing people around my home town.

The picture shows the statue of Robert Fergusson outside the Canongate Church, if passing go pay your respects to the man, who inspired Rabbie Burns, who, under different circumstances might have been lauded as our National Bard, if you like a wee whisky perhaps raise a glass tonight on what might have been "Fergusson's Night"

This few lines are from The Daft Days, by Fergusson, you will get the drift of Edinburgh being a comforting, hospitable place where they aren't afraid of a drink, which is a s true today as it was in 1772 when they were written.

Auld Reikie! thou’rt the canty hole,

A bield for many caldrife soul,

Wha snugly at thine ingle loll,

Baith warm and couth,

While round they gar the bicker roll

To weet their mouth.

[unwilling-ships-surgeon]

some mun things

‘verses

flinthamilton sandwich verse: what i’ve been brainstorming in most recently.

bedlam’s doctor verse: marcellus met thomas and james once when a friend got him to come to a salon to confirm that james and thomas were fucking. marcellus said nothing the whole time but afterwards told his friend of course they are, trust your instincts next time. he still works for free, but will charge nobles an arm and a leg to afford to keep working (it’s still much lower than their normal doctors’ rates, so they call him in for people they dont want to spend that much money on). because of his low rates, he essentially is the doctor for bethlehem royal hospital, aka bedlam, and cares for the patients when their bleedings, boilings, purgings, and hypothermia get to the point where those in charge are worried they’ll die. as more high-profile people are interred, he starts getting more calls over there to make sure the highborn sorts appear mostly unharmed (no lost fingers from frostbite and such). thomas gets put into bedlam, and marcellus goes holy fuck. he starts spending more time (of his very limited extra time and often into the time set aside for sleep) trying to mitigate the damage being done to One Of His Own (ie london gays). thomas is usually delirious or asleep or wild with panic when marcellus gets to him, but summer comes and the threat of infection from open wounds gets more severe so marcellus gets to interact w thomas while he’s lucid. he’s the reason many of thomas’s scars aren’t as bad as they are in the sandwich verse. essentially, marcellus passes peter ashe on his way back from seeking forgiveness from thomas and finds thomas an absolute wreck, and decides to see if he can make peter’s life a living hell, but it puts him on notice in the heads of the Powers That Be, so that when marcellus threatens to dig into thomas’s “death” six months later, they tell him to get out of london or see his practice ruined and the friends he spent his life trying to hide from the law exposed. so he submits a glowing obituary for thomas to the papers as a final fuck-you-i-cant-be-silenced and flees. he still spent time blackmailed into naval service in this verse, so like in the sandwich verse he escapes through a gay he knows from then (coincidentally if he’d known james better he might have found out they were mutual acquaintances). he makes it to port royal, where he works as a doctor during outbreaks of cholera and dysentery, but mainly as a midwife’s assistant to pay the bills. after about six months of this, he boards a ship as its surgeon, the ship gets taken by pirates, and marcellus, under the name alexander seeker, joins the pirate crew. since he doesn’t have the once-burnt-twice-shy attitude of the sandwich verse, he’s about as out as it gets for the time. uses polari and finds several of the men know it too, one of them knowing the variant from the colonies, which he makes an effort to learn. he has an incident with a crewmate, but when he pulls a pistol on the homophobe when he threatens him, things mostly cease in that arena. everybody else knows better than to piss off the doctor. in nassau, marcellus meets gates, and debates joining the mysterious captain flint’s crew except for the fact that, when they take big prizes, all hands are sometimes made to fight, and marcellus will not be dying in the pursuit of riches, thank you very much. gates tries to convince him, and they strike up a rapport. macellus tells him to let him know if flint ever calms down, and gates just huffs an as if. about a month or two later, marcellus encounters flint himself and ABSOLUTELY recognizes him as lt mcgraw. however, this is immediately followed hard upon by the fact that thomas had been told by peter ashe james died trying to rescue him, which marcellus didn’t half believe, but also the fact that he had treated lord hamilton for the better part of a year and a half and of course he would jump to conclusions about the first true redhead he met (after bonny, but his mind hadn’t hopped to conclusions then). he convinces himself that, since he is absolutely sure he recognizes flint from london, he must have been one of the gays marcellus treated and never saw again. therefore marcellus mentally classifies him, not as One of His Own, he doesn’t have the security to afford to protect all his gays now, but as a tentative ally. he’s not necessarily friendly, but he’s as liable as not to tell people to shut the fuck up when overhearing people shit-talking flint. people think it’s because he’s friends with gates, and he doesn’t deny it, but it’s also a bit more than that. a friendly ambivalence was often as good as an ally when it came down to how nassau’s chips would fall under pressure.

[tomboyjessie13-artblog]

Requested by @purplemermaidprincess7

Name: Lady Amethyst Sapphira Japanese: アメジスト サッピラ Romaji: Amejisuto Sappira

Social Status: Upper Class; Lady Ethnicity: British

Family: Earl Seolfor (Father; Deceased) Lady Rubina (Mother; Deceased) Earl Aureole (Brother; ?)

Family Occupation(s)/Profession(s): Sapphira Family Jewelers (fictional); The Largest Jewelry Producers in the World Sapphira Opera Hall (fictional); Famous Opera House and Theater

Family Nickname: The Queen's Lyrebird; able to gather information and perform acts that police cannot, then provide given information to the queen.

Age: 16

Preferred Hand: Left

Character Songs: Monster; Look What You Made Me Do; Carry Me (her singing performance); Disturbing Nursery Rhymes: [1], [2], [3], [4] (she likes to sing these to herself and comment on their morbid nature)

Appearance: Her amethyst-purple hair reaches her midsection, with her bangs cut short above her eye brows. She has very pale skin and almond round sapphire-blue eyes. Her demon contract pentagram is engraved just above her breast, right on top of her heart, so it is hidden by her clothing.

History: Amethyst was born exactly July 7th, 1887, at 7:07 am. Due to all of these circumstances, Amethyst was nicknamed the "Perfect Child". Her parents threw a huge celebration, though this left Aureole, her older brother, within her shadow.

Growing up, Amethyst was a child prodigy; on many occasions she proved to be smarter than her own parents in: cognitive processing, problem solving, and mental adaption. She spent most of her free time in the family library. But during her childhood, she made very few friends because she complained about how slow they were compared to her intellect. She hated going to balls and social gatherings. But her parents were still happy with her and cherished her.

She was physically abused by Aureole, mostly when he was angry or when she did something better than him.

But on her 10th birthday, she was at a dinner party with her parents. Her brother told her to give two glasses of wine to their parents, and reluctantly agreed to avoid his wrath. After her parents fainted and were later declared dead, Aureole blamed Amethyst for poisoning their parents. His lackeys backed him up, by claiming that they witnessed the girl putting something in the drinks that she gave them. Unable to convince anyone of her innocence, she was committed to the Bedlam Mental Institution for "schizophrenic behaviors and homicidal tendencies". And we all know what went on in those hell-houses before logic was invented.

For 3 years, Amethyst was beaten, physically chained to her bed, starved for days on end, and was raped repeatedly by the mentally ill patients and sadistic bastards that ran the hellhole.

Amethyst "escaped" the asylum by pretending to be "cured". She treated every faculty member, no matter how idiotic and/or cruel, with kindness. Eventually, the doctors declared that she was ready to be a perfect citizen and was allowed to return home. But Amethyst was only pretending to be the obedient and quiet woman that society expected of her, while plotting for revenge on her brother and the others that turned against her.

During her absence, Aureole was named successor to the family heritage and was foolishly using the family power and fortune to his own means. He didn't consider his sister to be a threat anymore, believing her to be broken, and continued to abuse her any time he wanted to. He also continued to waste money on alcohol and prostitutes.

In secret, Amethyst was doing research on demonology and was plotting to summon a demon to do her bidding. In the basement of her mansion, she summoned "Esmeralda" (along with Lapis and Lazuli, the twins demon servants) and made a pact to help Amethyst gain revenge on those who betrayed her. Aureole had somehow learned of his sister's contract with a demoness and fled the manor. During that night, every servant who was loyal to her brother was slaughtered; save for two: Gretel, who was Amethyst's nursemaid and proved her loyalty by providing the heiress with the intel of how to summon Esmeralda, and Garnet, the head butler who guarded the basement door during the ritual.

With Aureole's disappearance, Amethyst was named the Lady of the Manor and heir to the Sapphira Estate and fortune. Amethyst rebuilt her family's fortune, with the help of Esmeralda, and successfully runs the underworld's intel-center (gaining and providing information that the police cannot). She also began to learn forbidden magic from Esmeralda, learning spells to help her in her conquest.

Personality: Amethyst is a ruthless young woman, eventually consumed by her wrath and desire for vengeance against her brother and everyone else who betrayed her. Her quest for vengeance also made her extremely ambitious; likewise, the heiress's ruthlessness was tempered by her guile and she was willing to tolerate talented and, more importantly, useful individuals, even if she hated them. She also honored her deals with others when they were to her advantage.

She usually maintains her calm and low-key demeanor, often making her difficult to read for others. And because of the mental torture and abuse when in Bedlam, she appeared outwardly emotionless and seeming somewhat shy. She commonly had awkward pauses or imperfections in her speech as well, especially when speaking with strangers (however, this is just for show when around law enforcement). She also lacked any social awareness or courtesy in most social situations, sometimes oblivious to sarcasm.

She tends to have random breakdowns, a result of the abuse and trauma she suffered in Bedlam. These could be quite helpful at times, but she hates having them, especially when in social gatherings and public areas.

She always governed her thoughts and her family business with her intellect; and she never liked fairy-tales as a child, believing them to be "lies from a silver spoon". However, she was not stubborn about her preconceptions, readily accepting the existence of demons and magic after meeting "Esmeralda" and learning forbidden magic from her.

When she was younger, she believed she was her father's favorite child, and usually ignored proper conduct and social etiquette with family, though still taking a formal manner in meetings with strangers. She also has an interest in the unique and exotic, and even the supernatural, researching it endlessly as a child, despite her parents' protests and concerns. But because of her disdain for socializing, she hated sharing and didn't tolerate anyone tampering with her things, not even the maids, as she was very territorial about her room.

Whenever Amethyst heard her parents tell her "I love you", she always believed that it was faked. She noticed that so many people said this, and that they must say it because they are taught to say it. And if one were to say it for no reason whatsoever, it would mean it was null. She also saw how only the "beautiful people" would say it to each other.

When the opposite sex attempts to flirt with her, Amethyst finds it quite irritating that they believe that she would fall for idiots. And her interest in intercourse is limited only to wanting children of her own, but she would rather be married to a loyal man first. Though she had since lost her virginity at Bedlam, she had now been having intercourse in secret with her servant, Jasper, to keep him in-line. Though her levels of seduction are there if she needs them.

As proven by her history, Amethyst values loyalty above all else, and wouldn't hesitate to have any perceived traitors extinguished. Defiance was looked upon as a nuisance and, once considered useless to her, would have any suspected rebels purged from her "kingdom". She also took joy in "punishing" her offenders.

Amethyst also has a desire for power and dominance, as she often states that she wants to be feared. She enjoys demonstrating the power she has by imposing others under herself. However, she does seem to exhibit fear and hesitance when she knows she's outmatched, fleeing if her opponent proves to be as such.

She is observant by nature and keeps herself updated on current affairs and events. Due to her self-serving nature, Amethyst is not above spiting others she dislikes and enjoys getting back at her enemies when able; such as when she adopted a cat for her "mental wellbeing", only it was to spite Ciel for his cat allergies.

Likewise, she would never back down from a challenge, no matter the danger, if the cause was a worthy one, and refused to be swayed by the pessimistic opinions of adults or her peers.

When Amethyst uses the twins, after learning of their assassination skills, she intends for them to be just instruments in her plans for revenge. But she ultimately becomes attached to them. She begins to act like a mother to them, deciding that she feels a certain "affection" towards them, though unable to describe it.

As her personal servants, she trusts in them to manage her territory and protect the estate when she is off on her travels with Esmeralda.

Skills and Abilities: Having a keen intuition, Amethyst has a talent of telling individuals what they are hoping to hear and giving them appropriate advice. Additionally, her experience with "traitors" gives her a stronger intuition concerning the intentions and actions of others. Aside from being well educated and attractive as befitting her noble status, her creative nature showed a degree of craftiness at a young age, able to sneak out at night, alone and undetected, in order to descend to the manor's basement to perform the summoning ritual.

Because of her birthright, Amethyst also has many resources at her disposal, including her loyal servants, whom also act as her bodyguards. The heiress is also well-versed in politics and excels in the field of her position as a Lady. Because of this power and influence as the Queen's Lyrebird, she could warrant anyone's arrest under the pretense of investigating a crime and confiscate evidence as she saw fit. This power even extends to forging evidence.

Thanks to the forbidden knowledge and teachings from Esmeralda, within a month, Amethyst is able to predict the weather and propagate flowers and became skilled with a variety of plant and water spells. Esmeralda states that though most mortals cannot use even the most basic of magic spells, she is surprised that Lady Amethyst is able to do so.

Her intellect also stretches farther than the normal standard than her gender was expected to have during the Victorian era, though this gave her an advantage in seduction and interrogation.

Amethyst is also trained in swordsmanship and fencing. With her advanced intellect and tutelage, she can take advantage of an enemy's habits in combat to turn against them, as well as able to dodge and defend against even the quickest attacks.

As a member of a family that associates with theater and opera, Amethyst is a talented prodigy in singing, with a voice beautiful enough to soothe an irate crowd. Despite her youth, she is particularly skilled in opera and is able to project her voice over a wide audience. Her skills in acting allow her to utilize them outside the theater, as she appears calm, fragile, and weak-willed in public; she is, in truth, conniving and manipulative and knows how to act around specific people. Having been raised with an upper-class lifestyle, she has been taught to conduct herself with a certain elegance, even when exhausted.

[housewithoutkindness]

VERSES

AHS

Living Verse: Threads in the show’s normal continuity, at any time up to his death in 1926. It can pre-date the show’s timeline. (AHS) Ghost Verse: This is the standard, main verse. It follows the show’s canon timeline. Doctor Montgomery’s ghost haunts the house he built. (AHS) Asylum A/U: The esteemed Harvard Medical School graduate is on loan to Briarcliff Manor in the early 1960s as a psychiatrist. (AHS)

GENERAL

Modern A/U: In 2018, Doctor Charles Montgomery is a respected, well-to-do thoracic surgeon in Boston, Massachusetts. (Fandomless/General)

Victorian A/U: The good doctor is a Harvard graduate working at Bedlam Hospital in London. This is anywhere from 1885 - 1900 (Fandomless/General)

NOTES

Charles is a hyper-flexible character who can be made to fit into nearly any time or place with little or no change. If you want to do a thing but aren’t AHS, don’t worry, I can do it.

[chaosandblueeyes]

Guide for the Muses

For those of you who are new, welcome to my multi-muse blog. I have a lovely host of active and inactive characters to play with. I am an easy going mun who doesn’t usually plot much, basically you can throw anything at any muse and they will answer, but consider this a quick guide to either begin plotting or serve as a jumping off point for a thread.      Active muses are characters I RP as on a regular basis. Inactive ones are still around but are rather selective. They often require plots worked out ahead of time, but if you have an idea for any of them- just toss it at me.

Active Muses

Barry “Professor Bedlam” Lambert - Thinks of himself as ‘neutral’ in the world of super heroes and villains. Kind of a selfish dick but an amazing roboticist with a business of selling tech to anyone willing to pay for it. Wants super powers. In one verse he’s a vampire and in another he has stolen the powers of his arch rival. If you ship with him he’ll turn into a warm cinnamon roll otherwise he’s a bag of sour apples most of the time. Very bitter.

The Doctor - A time travelling gallifreyan with a time machine. His time line starts after Ten, but get’s fuzzy after that. His memories were locked away in a watch for a while but he cannot remember why or how or what happened between Ten and now. Everything’s a bit confusing but the Earth is constantly in peril so there’s not a lot of time to deal with all of that, even though he’s a lord of time. He’s a bouncy biscuit. Slightly charred.

Lussurioso - First born son of the Grand Duke of England. He’s basically the epitome of rich, white boy who never had to deal with life, ever before. Nice guy but sooooo naive. He’s an old fashioned romantic with a terrible family, rife with rapists, murders and incest. Lusso would be perfectly happy to just have his entire family not exist a n y m o r e. He would be sad, but also happy. Too good for his world.

Johann Tannhauser - A true, good old fashioned bastard. He would and did kill his paternal grandmother just because she called him a dirty whore child (well, not just because of that). In German. Then he just became more terrible after that, but, if you’re loyal to him and not standing in the way of something he wants? He’ll be good to you. If you piss him off though, he might beat you into a bloody pulp with a candlestick in the den. Looks like he could kill you and would.

Robert Watson-Watt - Actual historical Scottish figure who basically made the modern world as you know it by being the world’s first weatherman. No, really. In college he used radio waves to detect storm systems off the coast of England, becoming the first meteorologist. Then he took that system and redesigned it in WWII to detect incoming German bombers, becoming a hero and knight of Great Britain, but honestly he’d really rather go on adventures as long as they’re not too dangerous. Precious cinnamon roll, gooey and delicious, but be careful or he might burn your tongue.

Inactive Muses

Wayne “Doug Rich” Malloy - Wayne is just a guy trying to do what he needs to keep his family moving and together. He comes from a Traveler family, descended from Irish Roma, and is a man stuck between two worlds. On one hand he wants a white picket fence kind of American Dream, on the other he doesn’t want to forget his heritage. It’s a battle for him. In his normal verse he is married with children and I will not ship with him unless something is plotted out ahead of time. He’s an adorable cupcake, a bit sweet, also a little dark around the edges.

Presit - A greedy little bastard who is looking for his next big score. Perfectly okay with plundering tombs, robbing little old ladies and helping to commit genocide if it leads him to an ancient treasure hidden away. But he’ll insist that he’s an archaeologist, merely looking to ensure that he reaches such treasure before some common grave robber does, and sell it to the highest bidder. He’s brilliant, though, being able to speak a dozen languages and can translate ancient texts before breakfast. He doesn’t look like he can kill you, but he can. With a sextant.

Torrence - Quiet and reflective, a people watcher and a cold plotter when he needs to be, Torrence isn’t that bad of a guy. Unless you cross him. Then he will turn into a dogged, murderous, cold son of a bitch and not really care what happens along the way. But really he’s not that bad. He used to work for MI-5 but when the world went to hell he filled in for leadership because someone had to. The government officers and politicians all fled for their own hidey holes, leaving everyone to fend for themselves. That doesn’t sit well with him. He’s a crumbly coffee cake. Very crumbly. Fall apart if you’re not careful...

Potential AUs with Muses

These AUs are always available to be used with certain muses (as mentioned in each)

Vampire AU - In which one muse, or both, is a vampire. Barry has a long standing AU with this verse. He started as a blood slave but became a vampire merely for the super natural powers, discovering that he has a connection with technology and can create a EMP field.

Fairy Tale AU - Lussurioso is the kind of guy suitable for a fairy tale “prince”. He’s certainly got the dandy look about him, as well as being a fencer and a horse rider. Classically trained and a bit superstitious. He knows old tales and is wary of fae folk.

Apocalypse AU - Torrence is basically from an apocalypse setting, so just change the details and he can fit right in. Road Warrior, Walking Dead... whatever. He will usually be leading some group in an attempt to bring civilization back in a small way.

Jurassic Park/World AU - Also another setting Torrence would fit right into. Depending on where or when the AU is taking place, Torrence might be investigating on behalf of British Investigation looking at security on the islands or could be a freelancer or is a survivalist trying to live as the dinos find a way to live in our world.

Wizarding World AU - Two muses, Robert and Lusso have AUs in the world of Harry Potter. Robert is perfectly comfortable being set during the Fantastic Beasts series, as well as being a professor at Hogwarts later on. Lusso is a student at Hogwarts in the Hufflepuff house, much to the horror of his Slythern parents.

Westworld AU - Presit is a character in the story of Westworld, in case any guest is interested in a tale involving hunting down hidden gold or silver troves that are hidden in the high desert. He’s started glitching slightly, remembering some restarts in his life. Deja vu moments. When the robots start uprising, he’s eager to join.

La Fillette Revolutionare Utena AU - A perfect anime/manga setting for Lussurioso. Lusso inherited a rose ring from his father before attending the Rose Academy. He actually has no idea that he’s signed up unknowingly to be a duelist for the hand of the Rose Bride. Good thing he’s a fencer...

Time Traveler AU - Robert actually stands at the forefront of modern technology. He can plainly see the shift from one era to another and the idea of time travel doesn’t seem all that strange to him, though he may have some doubts as to the legitimacy of such claims at first. 

[titiansleuth]

005.    daphne has been kidnapped/captured  a lot

      VERSE 1:     ballads of suburbia

hassle in the castle: she fell down a trapdoor and was trapped in a room

decoy for a dognapper: she was kidnapped and tied to a post by the witch doctor

bedlam in the big top: she was hypnotized by the ghost clown

a gaggle of galloping ghosts: she was chased by frankenstein’s monster into a dungeon

which witch is which?: she was kidnapped, bound, and gagged by the witch an zombie

go away ghost ship: she was kidnapped and chained by the ghost of redbeard

mystery mask mix-up: she was kidnapped, bound, and gagged by the scare pair

a frightened hound meets demons underground: she was stuck inside a piano by the demon

creepy creature of vulture’s claw: she was grabbed by mantis and left tied up in the gardener’s building

a menace in venice: she was tied up in a sack by the ghostly gondolier and later locked in a cell

     VERSE 2:     a pretty good nerve

big scare in the big easy: she was kidnapped, bound, and gagged by the leland brothers

high-tech house of horrors: she was kidnapped and put in a tube by shari, the computer

new mexico, old monster: she was kidnapped and put in a giant cage by wakumi

monster of mexico: she was kidnapped, bound, and blindfolded by the museum guide

goblin king: she was transformed into a witch by the amazing kretsky

    VERSE 3:     out of fire into frostbite

ghosts of the ancient astronauts: she was held prisoner in a zombie village

scoobra kadoobra: she was kidnapped and put into a sleep by maldor the malevolent

it’s a wonderful scoob: she was tied up by time slime

ghouliest show on earth: she was hypnotized by professor phantazmo

zombie island: she was restrained by the magic of voodoo by simone lenoir

witch’s ghost: she was restrained by a magic tree root created by sarah ravencroft

[ofinlustris-moving]

Harmonic Heart Hospital-~headcanons

Since @madamenxgative decided to use Harmonic Heart in their latest drabble (with my permission) I realized its time to post some headcanons about the place where Starlight went missing. It’s a pretty important setting in her background and its name pops up in her rp’s a lot when she talks about the Underground, almost as much as the Underground itself (which you can find out more about on snakehorses). 

Harmonic began as an asylum in the late Middle Equestrian period by some harmony priestesses looking to house mad/lunatic ponies with no place to go. It soon evolved into a full hospital for the insane and by the next century it had medical doctors.

However it had a bad reputation for mistreating patients as madness was seen as a punishment for bad behavior back then. Harmonic is basically the Equestrian equivalent of our world’s Bedlam (in England).

Soon a neighboring hospital (of general medical practice) became joined with Harmonic and the two became one hospital, having a wing for the treatment of mental illness and one for physical illness.

In the later centuries reforms were forced on the hospital making the treatment of the mentally ill slightly better.

However, Starlight and some other ponies suspect (or know) that Harmonic is corrupt and has ties with the Canterlot black market (Underground) and is used to traffic the insane or ill that “won’t be missed” into the slavery. 

This is how my 17-year-old Starlight was trafficked out of the legitimate Harmonic Hospital into a fake hospital that was a slave ring.

Harmonic is a large hospital with several floors.

Most of the staff is not corrupt, only a few are in on the secret connection with the black market.

Some old practices are still around for the treatment of madness, like the “quiet room” for punishment of the “unruly lunatic.”

Starlight’s goal is to have the hospital investigated for secret passageways and devious files.

Some staff that work there are Nurse Minty and counselor Snuzzles. Depending on the verse, sometimes Dr. Wind Whistler works there too.

Be sure to credit me or ask the way madamenxgative did if you’re going to mention or use Harmonic Heart or the Underground in a fic or drabble. This is NOT fanon and free-for-all but an original work of fiction, y’know?

[shiro-absence]

Anne Sexton (November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974) was an American poet, known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book Live or Die. Themes of her poetry include her long battle against depression and mania, suicidal tendencies, and various intimate details from her private life, including her relationships with her husband and children. 　 Early life and family[edit] Anne Sexton was born Anne Gray Harvey in Newton, Massachusetts to Mary Gray Staples and Ralph Churchill Harvey. She had two older sisters, Jane Elizabeth Harvey (born 1923) and Blanche Dingley Harvey (born 1925). She spent most of her childhood in Boston. In 1945 she enrolled at Rogers Hall boarding school, Lowell, Massachusetts, later spending a year at Garland School.[1] For a time she modeled for Boston's Hart Agency. On August 16, 1948, she married Alfred Muller Sexton II and they remained together until 1973.[2][3] She had two children named Linda Gray and Joyce Ladd. 　 　 Poetry[edit] Sexton suffered from severe mental illness for much of her life, her first manic episode taking place in 1954. After a second episode in 1955 she met Dr. Martin Orne, who became her long-term therapist at the Glenside Hospital. It was Dr. Orne who encouraged her to take up poetry.[4] 　 The first poetry workshop she attended was led by John Holmes. Sexton felt great trepidation about registering for the class, asking a friend to make the phone call and accompany her to the first session. She found early acclaim with her poetry; a number were accepted by The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine and the Saturday Review. Sexton later studied with Robert Lowell at Boston University alongside distinguished poets Sylvia Plath and George Starbuck.[3][5] 　 Sexton's poetic career was encouraged by her mentor W.D. Snodgrass, whom she met at the Antioch Writer's Conference in 1957. His poem "Heart's Needle" proved inspirational for her in its theme of separation from his three-year-old daughter.[6] Sexton first read the poem at a time when her own young daughter was living with her mother-in-law. She, in turn, wrote "The Double Image", a poem which explores the multi-generational relationship between mother and daughter. Sexton began writing letters to Snodgrass and they became friends. 　 While working with John Holmes, Sexton encountered Maxine Kumin. They became good friends and remained so for the rest of Sexton's life. Kumin and Sexton rigorously critiqued each other's work and wrote four children's books together. In the late 1960s, the manic elements of Sexton's illness began to affect her career, though she still wrote and published work and gave readings of her poetry. She collaborated with musicians, forming a jazz-rock group called "Her Kind" that added music to her poetry. Her play Mercy Street, starring Marian Seldes, was produced in 1969, after several years of revisions.[7] Sexton also collaborated with the artist Barbara Swan, who illustrated several of her books.[8] 　 Within twelve years of writing her first sonnet, she was one of the most honored poets in America: a Pulitzer Prize winner, a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the first female member of the Harvard chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.[9][10] 　 Content and themes of work[edit] Sexton is seen as the modern model of the confessional poet. Maxine Kumin described Sexton's work: "She wrote openly about menstruation, abortion, masturbation, incest, adultery, and drug addiction at a time when the proprieties embraced none of these as proper topics for poetry."[12] Sexton's work towards the end of the sixties has been criticized as "preening, lazy and flip" by otherwise respectful critics.[9] Some critics regard her dependence on alcohol as compromising her last work. However, other critics see Sexton as a poet whose writing matured over time. "Starting as a relatively conventional writer, she learned to roughen up her line. ... to use as an instrument against the 'politesse' of language, politics, religion [and] sex."[13] 　 Her eighth collection of poetry is entitled The Awful Rowing Toward God. The title came from her meeting with a Roman Catholic priest who, although unwilling to administer last rites, told her "God is in your typewriter." This gave the poet the desire and willpower to continue living and writing. The Awful Rowing Toward God and The Death Notebooks are among her final works, and both center on the theme of dying.[14] 　 Her work started out as being about herself, however as her career progressed she made periodic attempts to reach outside the realm of her own life for poetic themes.[15][15] Transformations (1971), which is a revisionary re-telling of Grimm's Fairy Tales, is one such book.[16] (Transformations was used as the libretto for the 1973 opera of the same name by American composer Conrad Susa.) Later she used Christopher Smart's Jubilate Agno and the Bible as the basis for some of her work.[17] 　 Much has been made of the tangled threads of her writing, her life and her depression, much in the same way as with Sylvia Plath's suicide in 1963. Robert Lowell, Adrienne Rich and Denise Levertov commented in separate obituaries on the role of creativity in Sexton's death. Levertov says, "We who are alive must make clear, as she could not, the distinction between creativity and self-destruction."[5] 　 Subsequent controversy[edit] Following one of many suicide attempts and manic or depressive episodes, Sexton worked with therapist Dr. Martin Orne.[9] He diagnosed her with what is now described as bipolar disorder, but his competence to do so is called into question by his early use of allegedly unsound psychotherapeutic techniques.[18] During sessions with Anne Sexton he used hypnosis and sodium pentothal to recover supposedly repressed memories. During this process, he allegedly used suggestion to uncover memories of having been abused by her father.[19] This abuse was disputed in interviews with her mother and other relatives.[20] Dr. Orne wrote that hypnosis in an adult frequently does not present accurate memories of childhood; instead, "adults under hypnosis are not literally reliving their early childhoods but presenting them through the prisms of adulthood."[21] According to Dr. Orne, Anne Sexton was extremely suggestible and would mimic the symptoms of the patients around her in the mental hospitals to which she was committed. The Diane Middlebrook biography states that a separate personality named Elizabeth emerged in Sexton while under hypnosis. Dr. Orne did not encourage this development and subsequently this "alternate personality" disappeared. Dr. Orne eventually concluded that Anne Sexton was suffering from hysteria.[4] During the writing of the Middlebrook biography, Linda Gray Sexton stated that she had been sexually assaulted by her mother.[19][22] In 1994, Linda Gray Sexton published her autobiography, Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton, which includes her own accounts of the abuse.[23][24] 　 Middlebrook published her controversial biography of Anne Sexton with the approval of Linda Gray Sexton, Anne's literary executor.[4] For use in the biography, Dr. Orne had given Diane Middlebrook most of the tapes recording the therapy sessions between Orne and Anne Sexton. The use of these tapes was met with, as The New York Times put it, "thunderous condemnation."[9] Middlebrook received the tapes after she had written a substantial amount of the first draft of Sexton's biography, and decided to start over. Although Linda Gray Sexton collaborated with the Middlebrook biography, other members of the Sexton family were divided over the book, publishing several editorials and op-ed pieces, in The New York Times and The New York Times Book Review. 　 Controversy continued with the posthumous public release of the tapes (which had been subject to doctor-patient confidentiality). They are said to reveal Sexton's inappropriate behavior with her daughter Linda, her physically violent behavior toward both her daughters, and her physical altercations with her husband.[22] 　 Yet more controversy surrounded allegations that Anne Sexton had an affair with the therapist who replaced Dr. Orne in the 1960s.[25] No action was taken to censure or discipline the second therapist. Dr. Orne considered the affair with the second therapist (given the pseudonym "Ollie Zweizung" by Middlebrook and Linda Sexton) to be the catalyst that eventually resulted in her suicide.[5] 　 Legacy and tributes[edit] Peter Gabriel dedicated his song "Mercy Street", from his 1986 album So, to Sexton.[26] She has been described as a "personal touchstone" for Morrissey, former lead singer and lyricist of The Smiths.[27] She is commemorated on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.[28] 　 In other media[edit] In James Ellroy's 1987 novel The Black Dahlia, the epigraph is "Now I fold you down, my drunkard, my navigator, My first lost keeper, to love and look at later." The passage is from Sexton's 1962 poem All My Pretty Ones. 　 In Kidnap Kid's unreleased track(ID-ID) on Above & Beyond's Group Therapy Guest mix Episode 226 you can find Ann Sexton reciting the poem "The Truth the Dead Know. "[29] 　 　 Sexton's works[edit] 　 Poetry and prose (collections and novels)[edit] Uncompleted Novel-started in the 1960s To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960) The Starry Night (1961) All My Pretty Ones (1962) Selected Poems (London, 1964) No equivalent US edition Live or Die (1966) – Winner of the Pulitzer prize in 1967 Love Poems (1969) Mercy Street, a 2-act play performed at the American Place Theatre (1969), published by Broadway Play Publishing Inc. Transformations (1971) ISBN 0-618-08343-X The Book of Folly (1972) The Death Notebooks (1974) The Awful Rowing Toward God (1975; posthumous) 45 Mercy Street (1976; posthumous) Anne Sexton: A Self Portrait in Letters, edited by Linda Gray Sexton and Lois Ames (1977; posthumous) Words for Dr.. (1978; posthumous) No Evil Star: Selected Essays, Interviews and Prose, edited by Steven E. Colburn (1985; posthumous) Children's books[edit] all co-written with Maxine Kumin 　 1963 Eggs of Things (illustrated by Leonard Shortall) 1964 More Eggs of Things (illustrated by Leonard Shortall) 1974 Joey and the Birthday Present (illustrated by Evaline Ness) 1975 The Wizard's Tears (illustrated by Evaline Ness)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Sexton

[travelersofthedas-blog]

Verses: Oracle

An Assassin’s Creed Universe in which all characters are incarnations of Persephone throughout the ages.

Persephone

Persephone is a young precursor who volunteered to be reborn through the ages to prevent Juno from making the world her plaything. Minerva used a slightly different method to the one Juno did, however, and so Persephone doesn’t remember her previous lives when she is reborn, at least she doesn’t at first. Her timeline is directly linked to that of Desmond Miles’s ancestors (using some clever jiggery pokery of Minerva’s) and also to the pieces of eden - she can see who is using them when, where they are or past and future uses. The reason being that while she is being born over again through the centuries, she also sort of exists outside of time as well - time is fluid, and due to the method by which Persephone started her journey she can sometimes see beyond her own time.

(Additional Note: She may well appear in other times as a result of some Precursor technology)

Kyna

In this particular point in history, the Oracle, given the name of Kyna, was believed to speak for the Gods - her visions were believed to be the will of the gods, given to their people through the sickly, pale girl who by rights shouldn’t have survived her own birth. Considering the land over which her clan resided, this belief was very fortunate - the stone circle was a relic from the Precursor age, and the task of shielding it from those who sought to use it for their own ends fell to the clan that lived by it. Kyna was the only one who could control the circle’s power, but when a rival clan attacked the land and her people she died sealing it shut.

Aida

Aida El-Borak was the daughter of a farmer who supplied the citadel - Aida was often the one who would deliver the food, since her father and brothers were busy tending the fields and her mother looked after local children.

Lisbeth

Elizabeth Beaufort was a lady in the court of Queen Elizabeth I, and worked in secret with the leader of the Assassin Order in England - the Queen’s Spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham. This arrangement was kept secret even from Elizabeth’s family, and as such she was able to discover many secrets about the court, including the identities of many Templar agents in Her Majesty’s palaces. Like her aunt before her (whi had been responsible for unearthing Thomas Seymour’s plot against the queen when she was still only a princess, Elizabeth was a master of what she called ‘the game’, being from a little known family meant that she could move about freely, while being appointed as one of the queen’s ladies in waiting enabled her to keep watch at the Queen’s side.

Unfortunately, her promising career as an assassin in England came to an end when her parents arranged a marriage for her - in 1571, only a week before her impending marriage, Elizabeth disappeared with no trace.Though rumors started spreading that she had eloped with a stable lad, a charred body believed to be hers was discovered a month later, the only thing they could identify it with was a broach she had been given by her betrothed.

She was sent to the court of Catherine de Medici a few months after her disappearance, to serve there in secret in the fight against the Templars - Elizabeth de Vallans, as she became known, was never recorded in the history books, but was frequently seen at the side of both Catherine and her successor.

Gisella

In the Rennaisance, the Oracle was, again, a nobody - she was a maid in Mario Auditore’s household who was largely responsible for tidying rooms, cleaning and running baths for the members of the household. Occasionally she would be tasked with bringing food to Ezio if he was too engrossed in studying to join the others and eat. After the sacking of the villa, Gisella Zappala joined Claudia at La Rosa in Fiore and managed the day-to-day running of the brothel.

Caroline

Caroline Jefferson was the daughter of a slave and a land-owner who was given work in her father’s household from the age of eight. Owing to the fact that her mother had died in childbirth, Caroline was cared for by the head of the Master’s household staff and his wife, who taught her to read and write and perform some basic sums so that she would be more use to the household when she was old enough to work. She ran away when she was sixteen and smuggled herself into Nassau on a merchant’s ship. When in Nassau, Caroline found work in a general store and later married the owner’s son, Michael Boswell.

Helena

Helena Boswell was the granddaughter of Caroline - her father, Eric Boswell, married a woman by the name of Emily Hardwicke and had two sons, Michael and Charles, before Helena was born. During the wars of independence, Helena served as a nurse, treating the injured soldiers fighting for the liberation of America, while her brothers fought on the front lines. According to several doctors she showed “A remarkable propensity for this work, and could calm an injured man in moments with a steady hand and a gentle voice,” - She often assisted with amputations and was reputed to sew up a bullet hole faster than the doctors could even thread the needle (this later became something of a family legend - she was helped in no small part by the abilities she retained as Oracle)

When war broke out in France and the people were turning on each other, Helena followed in her mother’s footsteps, using connections built as a nurse in the American wars to get a ship to France, where she used one of the old Chateaus as a hospital for injured soldiers. When she wasn’t training nurses and ensuring the place ran smoothly (and trying to avoid the chopping block for tending to the injured of both camps) she was using the new connections she’d forged to smuggle children and young families of Aristocrats out of France to safety. She was tried for treason at least twice, found innocent of the first count (when she was treating injured royalist soldiers) after arguing that just because they fought on the “wrong” side didn’t mean they should be denied care, and only just avoiding a guilty verdict on the second count (of smuggling Aristocrats out of France) when her Defense consul used a “maternal instinct” argument, suggesting that Helena was trying to protect those children out of a lack of her own.

Amelia

Amelia James was the daughter of a middle-class man and his wife in London, and in her mid-teens became an inmate at Bethlem asylum. Admitted at the age of fifteen, when hallucinations started to plague her mind and the things she saw started to overwhelm her, Amelia started out in the same wing as most of the other female inmates, having been labeled as “non-dangerous” by the attending physician.

For the first few months of her stay at Bethlem Asylum (called ‘bedlam’ by most) she was recorded as being “mostly lucid, and able to hold perfectly reasonable conversations both before and after a hallucinogenic episode. Visits from her family often leave her in good spirits, and we have discovered that painting also appears to quell the frequency of these ‘visions’ that plague her” However, following an incident where she stabbed an Orderly with a shard of glass when he tried to take advantage of her mid-hallucination, she was moved to a private room for her own safety and that of the other patients. When a nurse came to fetch her for treatment the following morning, she had scratched symbols and patterns onto the walls until her fingers bled. The resident doctor, a templar, immediately notified his order on recognising that the symbols were those of the Precursor race, including detailed drawings of pieces of eden. Amelia’s treatment was immediately changed (on the orders of Crawford Starrick) to encourage these visions in the hope that she might reveal the location of the shroud. She was given an attending nurse, a kindly and very capable woman in her forties by the name of Molly Harper who, unbeknownst to them, was an ally of the Assassins. On the discovery of Amelia’s abilities (she was asked to record and document any hallucinations that occurred outside of the treatment room, of which at least a third of the documents seemed to disappear) Molly took it upon herself to inform the Assassins of the situation at Bedlam and request that they rescue the poor girl.

Jamie

Jamie McDairn ran away from home at sixteen and has had a string of dead end jobs, all of which seem to have ended with someone asking too many questions, a brawl and then her disappearing. She’s used many other names to hide her identity since she first started seeing things. She doesn’t know why she gets these visions, but she does know that somebody is after her, and she can’t let them get what they want.

[kickstarter-promotion]

Another Amazing Kickstarter (Firefly Drinking Songs... Continued by Marc Gunn —Kickstarter) has been published on http://crowdmonsters.com/new-kickstarters/firefly-drinking-songs-continued-by-marc-gunn-kickstarter/

A NEW KICKSTARTER IS LAUNCHED:

Even 15 years after the show was released, I find myself as passionate about Joss Whedon’s Firefly as ever. In fact, I host Firefly Drinking Songs shows at conventions, at least twice a year. These are some of my most-popular performances. Browncoats unite to relive our passion for this cancelled TV show. 

In 2011, I recorded Firefly Drinking Songs with the Bedlam Bards. Recorded live, it is still one of my most-popular albums. My fans enjoy it and my concerts so much that they funded the initial launch of the album on my Patreon page. In fact, you can own a digital copy of the album when it is released, just by becoming a patron of my music.

Many folks still want a physical copy of the album to treasure. So for you, I am running this limited-edition CD campaign. Right now, I don’t plan to make more than one printing of this album. You can be one of the few to own the physical CD. Plus, you can own some really shiny swag in the process.

My name is Marc Gunn. I am a geek who sings Celtic songs with a twist. 

You’ll hear me sing traditional Irish and Scottish songs. But you’ll also hear me fuse new and old melodies with science fiction and fantasy, with themes of Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Doctor Who, dragons, cats and yes, Firefly! 

I put my passion into my music. Then I try to create something that you will love as much as I do. It’s Nerd Pub Songs that are easy and fun to sing-along with.

Show your Browncoat pride and help me bring this album to life.

In 2009, I recorded a song called “Monahan’s Mudder’s Milk” on my album Kilted For Her Pleasure. The song was a hit among Browncoats. That success inspired me to make an album of Firefly Drinking Songs with my friends, the Bedlam Bards (who already had a Firefly album out).

I started performing Firefly Drinking Songs-themed concerts at science fiction conventions. In the show, I pretend I am a musician touring the Verse, playing at pubs from Canton to Whitefall, Shadow to Persephone. All the while, I sing these “hit songs” of the Verse.

The shows are raucously amazing and fun.

Another song that was recorded on Kilted For Her Pleasure was a song by Daniel Glasser called “Close Your Eyes”. Most people who don’t catch the title refer to it as “the Demon Lullaby”. It’s all about a scaring your children to sleep.

A couple years back, I gave the song a Firefly twist. My audiences loved it. They made me promise to record it. 

I needed something to force my hand to record. So I set a goal that when I hit $500 on Patreon, I would record a 4-song EP. But when I sat down to record the four songs, I had a crazy idea about continuing the Verse touring musician story. So I kept recording Firefly songs I had on hand, including a few new ones by Rie Sheridan Rose. The next thing I knew, I had a full-length CD.

I thought about keeping this album 100% exclusive to my Patreons. Largely, I still plan to. In fact, I’m only planning to release a limited number of physical CDs that are funded through this Kickstarter. After that, it will be Patreon-only. 

I’m doing that because I have found that CD sales are declining overall. Plus, I really want to have an EXCLUSIVE album for my Gunn Runners who are so generous to support me every month on Patreon.

It’s Good to Have Jayne On Our Side 

Reavers Lullaby 

Blue Sun 

The Long Arm 

Hero of Canton 

Browncoat Baby 

As Long As I’m Flyin’ 

She Said Her Name Was Saffron 

Wear the Brown with Pride 

Sail the Sky 

These are the songs I have already recorded. All are new recordings. I’m quite proud of how they sound so far. And I may add a couple more before the album is done.

One of my earliest memories involves me dancing around my home in Silver Spring, Maryland as my mom introduced me to her collection of 45s and her tube record player. I remember dancing goofy-like to “Poison Ivy” by The Coasters, before raising my lip like Elvis Presley, moving my hips and legs, trying to sing “I Gotta Know”, the B-side of “Are You Lonesome Tonight”. Music is a part of my soul. 

My life is crowdfunded by you!

It’s is not easy making a living as a musician, especially when you have a wife, two young daughters, and three cats to feed. Right now, I’m barely making ends meet. CD sales are declining. Streaming music is changing the music business and is currently less-profitable than album sales. 

Despite the challenges, I love to create. I love to make music and podcasts. I love to share. I love to give. I wish I could just give all of my music away for free. But would I still be able to survive and feed my family and cats? Could I even afford to create new music? Or would I have to go back to the dreaded day job? 

I need your help to pay collaborators, royalties, produce CDs, shirts, and totes, to mix and master my music, pay for daycare for my children, submit music to iTunes and Spotify, to pay for servers and newsletters and even an internet connection, and of course, to create something new and beautiful and fun for you!

Thank you for supporting the arts, keeping Firefly alive, and making the world a place of heart n soul. Slainte!

INFORMATION PROVIDED BY Kickstarter.com and Kicktraq.com VISIT PAGE SOURCE

[thevalicemultiverse]

Things You Need To Know About: Somebody I Used To Know

Tag: ~V: Somebody I Used To Know

Premise: Victor Van Dort’s best childhood friend was Alice Liddell – until the fire that killed her family and sent her into bedlam. Victor was kept ignorant of her fate for years, being told only that she was “sick,” until driver Mayhew accidentally let the news spill. Furious, Victor demanded he be allowed to visit her in Rutledge Asylum, where he became one of the few able to get a reaction out of the catatonic Alice. And then, one day, after the exchange of a drawn ticket for the Looking-Glass Line and the return of Alice’s rabbit by a kindly nurse, Victor took his friend’s hand – and was pulled down into a world of wonder and danger, forced to fight by her side if he wanted any chance of getting home with his sanity and will intact…

This AU was based off an RP/OTP prompt I saw a LOOONG time ago and unfortunately forgot to like. The gist of it was: Person A is catatonic in an asylum, and Person B comes in to read to them on a regular basis. Just as Person B despairs of ever getting a response, Person A looks directly at them. End result is Person B finally breaking through Person A’s silence. Naturally my mind put Victor and Alice into the appropriate roles, and this universe was born.

The starting-off point is a really old story of mine where I had Victor and Alice meet as children: By The Riverside. In this universe, though, Victor delays leaving at the end, and Nell comes storming up demanding to know what's happened and who this little girl who's also sopping wet is. The moment Alice's boating companions mention she's the Dean's daughter, though, Nell's suddenly a picture of politeness, offering them all a lift back in their carriage. And once back at Alice's house -- well, they could stay for tea, couldn't they, their children get along so well after all. . .

The end result is Victor and Alice soon develop a close friendship through little visits and exchanged letters. Unfortunately, when the fire happens, Victor finds himself abruptly cut off from his pal -- his parents don't want to traumatize him with Alice's burned state, and when she gets committed, they certainly don't want to be seen in Rutledge. They fob him off with stories that she's become very sick, limiting his contact to letters that never get a response.

Roughly ten years later, Mayhew, seeing Victor writing his latest missive, lets slip that Alice is in bedlam. Victor, horrified and infuriated, insists on going to visit her. Dr. Wilson is surprised to see a friend of hers after so long, but nevertheless lets him in gladly, hoping he'll be able to provoke a response from the catatonic Alice. Which he does, eventually, via the situation described in the prompt. Shortly afterward, Alice does some of her famous asylum drawings, as described in the casebook. Victor, delighted, reminds her of all the stories she used to tell him about the place and how he'd always wished he could see it -- in return, she draws him a ticket for the Looking-Glass Line railway. A few days later, he arrives in time to see the nurse return her beloved bunny toy, and takes her hand as he sits by her side --

Which, unknowingly for both of them, is the catalyst for casting the spell Travel Into Fantasy, the first condition of which (written permission) was fulfilled earlier by the ticket sketch. So when Mr. Bunny suddenly comes to life and sends Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole -- Victor comes with.

From then on, Victor and Alice find themselves dealing with all the dangers and wonders of AMA-era Wonderland, while in the real world the doctors are absolutely baffled about why Victor's suddenly lapsed into a semi-lucid state where he's talking about bouncy mushrooms and snapping Snarks with Alice -- and won't let go of her hand no matter what they do. They make it all the way to Queensland together, but Alice has him wait in the Castle Keep while she takes on the Queen of Hearts alone, frightened he'll be killed otherwise like all her Wonderland friends. She defeats the Queen, restores Wonderland, and the two return to lucidity. Victor remains at the asylum long enough to see Alice off to Houndsditch (and reassure the doctors that yes, he's fine now, he doesn't need leeches), then heads home, thinking his adventures are over and preparing to settle back into a pen-pal relationship.

However, their separation doesn't last long -- in late December 1874, Victor's parents inform him he's getting married to the daughter of the lord and lady across the square. Astonished, Victor informs Alice -- and admits that he fell in love with her during their adventure and will run away with her in a heartbeat if she asks. Alice replies that while she cares deeply for Victor, she's not sure if she's ready for that sort of a relationship and doesn't want to leave him hanging. Victor, understanding if sad, agrees to go along with the marriage, and Alice promises she'll come to the wedding for moral support. She and Bumby show up for the rehearsal, where Victor discovers he does like Victoria -- but his nerves sabotage things, and the rehearsal is rendered a shambles, with him fleeing in shame. Alice sticks around the Everglots to reassure Victoria on Victor's good qualities and to get to know this new person in her and Victor's life --

And thus is present when Victor shows up on the balcony, followed by a dead woman claiming to be his wife. The shock of learning that the afterlife is real, coupled with some growing doubts about the story she's been having about Dinah's role in the fire, makes something click in Alice's head, and suddenly Wonderland opens up beneath her, ready for a second adventure. But as it turns out, her natural talent for Travel Into Fantasy -- awoken when she took Victor with her to Wonderland in the asylum -- is stronger than ever, and as Victor and Victoria both grab her to steady her and Emily grabs Victor to ask what's going on --

All FOUR of them end up in Wonderland.

So Alice's hunt for the truth behind the fire is undertaken with three extra helpers -- the now-an-old-hand-at-this Victor, the somewhat-stunned-but-gamely-pushing-forward Victoria, and the surprisingly-enthusiastic-because-she-temporarily-gets-her-living-form-back Emily. The four grow very close over their adventures, to the point where they all eventually admit their love for all the others. Alice of course discovers the truth about Bumby and Houndsditch, while a little additional prodding from Wonderland has Victor, Victoria, and Emily realize Emily's killer is the newcomer at the Van Dort/Everglot wedding rehearsal. So when they wake up after finally reaching the Infernal Train, they're all furious and ready to enact some justice. Bumby and Barkis try to talk their way out of it, but eventually decide murder might just be the best solution, and a battle occurs, which ends with the two men very soundly defeated. Emily, now having had her murder avenged, moves on to the next stage of the afterlife a bit reluctantly, while Victoria "hires" Alice as her lady's maid so she can stay with her and Victor without suspicion. And on their honeymoon, they discover two things:

A) They can all still enter Wonderland in their dreams (Alice jokes they must have a season ticket on the Looking-Glass Line)

B) Emily is now a permanent resident of Wonderland. No, she has no idea how it happened, and nobody's going to question it -- they're just going to settle into being as happy a quartet as they can be under the circumstances.

This verse has three distinct time periods/locations threads can be set in:

The Red Pool: August to November 1874, the rough time period of American McGee's Alice. Victor's visiting Rutledge and either dealing with the characters there (yes, thank you Monroe twins, he knows he's stick-thin and too pale), visiting Alice during one of her rare lucid moments, or recovering from Wonderland adventures during one of his lucid moments. Please tell him he didn't hurl that teapot across the room. . .

Van Dort Wedding Rehearsal: December 1874 onward, including Corpse Bride (January 1875) and the pushed-up four-player version of Alice: Madness Returns. Victor can be dealing with the terrors of his upcoming arranged marriage, or settling into a much happier life than he ever expected with his wife and their mutual mistress. (And if you threaten to tell his parents about the arrangement, he has months of simulated combat experience under his belt. Tread carefully.)

Destroy The Queen Of Hearts: Like Derail The Infernal Train in Valice Madness Returns, the name is non-indicative -- it's meant for just Wonderland in general. That means threads can be set during Victor and Alice's initial run to destroy the Queen; the four-player quest with Victoria and Emily to derail the Train; or even the quiet times afterward with Victor and Victoria happily married, Alice pretending to be Victoria's "lady's maid," and Emily making a home for herself in the Vale of Tears. Victor (or indeed any of them) wouldn't be too surprised to find a stranger in Wonderland -- after all, if Victor, Victoria, and Emily can be pulled in, why not someone else? -- but he will be on his guard. And again, that Vorpal Fork may look silly, but it is sharp.

Common NPCs:

Alice Liddell (throughout)

Victoria Everglot (Van Dort Wedding Rehearsal, Destroy The Queen Of Hearts)

Emily Cartwell (Van Dort Wedding Rehearsal, Destroy The Queen Of Hearts)

Wonderlanders (Destroy The Queen Of Hearts)

Dr. Wilson (The Red Pool)

Lightning the corgi (Van Dort Wedding Rehearsal)

Shipping: Welcome to our first poly AU! While Victoria and Emily are only present in threads set after AMA (aka Van Dort Wedding Rehearsal or post-AMA Destroy The Queen Of Hearts), by the end of the main plotline of the universe, the two have joined up with Victor and Alice in a happy little quartet. (Or, well, trio during waking hours, quartet during sleeping ones.) So Victor's open to romantic interactions with any of them.

NPC Ships: None

Important Facts:

Victor has all the same Wonderland weapons from Valice Madness Returns -- the Vorpal Fork, the Grim Scythe, the Quill Bow, the Wedding Wine, the Sketchbook, and the Altar Candle (yes, I'm aware the Fork makes less sense in this world but I still like it). He'll also use Alice's weapons from the first game, favoring the Cards and the Croquet Mallet.

NPC Victoria and Emily also have Wonderland weapons -- these are still being designed, but I know Victoria has a fireplace poker and a sewing-needle rapier, and Emily has a rose-thorn whip. More to be added later!

The four are very close, especially near the end-game of this world’s version of A:MR. Threatening one of them is basically inviting yourself to a world of pain from the other three.

Victor knows some magic (if being pulled into Alice's head in Rutledge wasn't enough to convince him it exists, raising a dead bride certainly was), although he's not nearly as far along on his journey as either Forgotten Vows or Valice Madness Returns Victor. He obviously knows Travel Into Fantasy, and he's picked up Glowing Orb, Mend the Shattered, and Imagination Into Reality. Others may be added later!

NPC Alice has Travel Into Fantasy as a natural affinity magic-wise, and it's strong enough to pull others into her mind if they're just touching her (instead of the usual rigamarole with exchanging written permission and then having to hold hands). With Victor and Victoria she might not even need that much (though they generally keep their Wonderland escapades to sleeping times and almost always share a bed, so the point is kind of moot). She also knows Victor's spells, plus Write Across The Miles and Reaper's Speech (because the moment she learned she COULD talk to Lizzie again, she was going to).

NPC Victoria knows Victor's spells, plus Scrub & Shine and Eden's Blessing (creates food from fruit seeds). NPC Emily had an affinity for Converse With Beasts (allows one to speak with a specific animal species; this is how she understood Scraps), but as most animals in Wonderland speak English. . .

All the AMA and A:MR Wonderland realms are open for threads (yes, the same domains from canon appear here in the four-player A:MR, just with different “triggers” -- the Van Dorts being fish merchants is what inspires the Deluded Depths this time around for example). Post the Barkis and Bumby mess, Victoria ends up taking over the Dollhouse as “her” domain, and Victor and Emily each create one of their own -- the Butterfly Jungle for Victor, and a moon-based one (like in the artbook) for Emily.

This verse is open to everyone!

[scotianostra]

On September 5th 1750, the poet Robert Fergusson was born in the Canongate in Edinburgh.

He may have only lived for 24 years, the last of which was traumatic, but those short years not only inspired Scotland’s best-known bard Robert Burns and the writer Robert Louis Stevenson, it also paved the way for better treatment of people with mental health conditions thanks to the work of Doctor Andrew Duncan.

Robert Fergusson was born of Aberdeenshire parents in Cap-and-Feather Close, in Edinburgh’s Old Town, on 5 September, 1750. The street has since disappeared, having been demolished during Fergusson’s lifetime to make way for the North Bridge, many of you will have walked over where Cap-and-Feather Close, it is said to have been where the junction at the Tron Church is, the road that now takes you over North Bridge towards Princes Street.

After primary education in Edinburgh, Fergusson entered the city’s High School in 1758, attaining a bursary to attend the Grammar School in Dundee in 1762. Two years later, he enrolled in St. Andrews University. As a student, Fergusson became infamous for his pranks, having once come close to expulsion. Despite this riotous reputation, the poet’s education stayed with him, he moved back to Edinburgh to support his mother, after the death of his father.

He got a job as a copyist for the Commissary Office main concern was, of course, poetry, and on 7 February, 1771 he anonymously published the first of a trio of pastorals in Ruddiman’s Weekly Magazine. Originally he wrote in English but by 1772 he had started to use the Scottish dialect in the standard Habbie verse form - a form which would later be copied and made famous by Robert Burns, indeed this style is now called the Burns stanza, perhaps it should be The Fergusson Stanza?

Fergusson’s own muse was Allan Ramsay and, like the be-turbaned Ramsey, followed a bit of a bohemian lifestyle in Edinburgh, which was then at the height of an intellectual and cultural tumult as the nerve centre of the Scottish Enlightenment. He wrote a total of fifty poems in Scottish English and thirty-three in the Scots language, but it is for his remarkable exploits in the latter genre that he should be acknowledged and acclaimed. His poetic subject matter paints vivid accounts of the life and characters of ‘Auld Reekie’ and drunken encounters with the notorious Edinburgh City Guard of Captain Porteous, the ‘Black Banditti’ of ‘The Daft Days’.

Fergusson began to suffer from depression in 1773, biographers have described his condition as ‘religious melancholia’, but regardless of whether or not that was the case, he gave up his job, stopped writing, withdrew completely from his riotous social life, and spent his time reading the Bible. He had heard about an Irish poet, John Cunningham, who had died in an asylum in Newcastle. That inspired ‘Poem to the Memory of John Cunningham’, and Fergusson became terribly afraid that the same thing was going to happen to him. Tragically, his dark prediction came true. In August, 1774, Fergusson fell down a flight of stairs and received a bad head injury, after which he was deemed ‘insensible’. His friend, the good doctor Andrew Duncan, had no choice but to admit him to Darien House “hospital”, Bedlam.

Doctor Andrew Duncan, the name might be familiar to those from Edinburgh, on finding Fergusson before being admitted to the “hospital” described him as being in a “state of furious insanity” he saw no choice but to have Fergusson taken to the city’s Bedlam madhouse. Conditions at the Bedlam, which was attached to the Edinburgh Charity Workhouse behind modern-day Teviot Place, were notoriously awful. Patients were treated as inmates, locked in cold stone-flagged cells, with only straw for bedding. The young poet was only there for a matter of weeks when he suddenly died. He had only just turned 24.

Fergusson was buried in an unmarked plot in The Canongate Kirkyard. On visiting Edinburgh in 1787, Burns paid for a headstone over his long-neglected grave, commemorating Fergusson as ‘Scotia’s Poet. I have taken many friends to visit Fergusson’s last resting place over the years, mainly down to my late mother’s love of Burns, but also because I love showing people around my hometown.

The first picture shows the statue of Robert Fergusson outside the Canongate Church, with my very own Saltire attached to it, if passing go pay your respects to the man, who inspired Rabbie Burns, who, under different circumstances might have been lauded as our National Bard, if you like a wee whisky perhaps raise a glass tonight on what might have been “Fergusson’s Night”

The pics are my own, I drop into Canongate Kirkyard almost every time I am in the area.

[scotianostra]

On September 5th 1750, the poet Robert Fergusson was born in the Canongate in Edinburgh.

‘Auld Reikie wale o ilka town’ 

This line from Auld Reikie, by Ferguson sets the tone for the main body of his output as a poet, written in the Scots tongue that Burns would later write so successfully in, if this other Robert had lived longer than the short years on this planet, I really do think that he would have been our national poet. The line means  Edinburgh: best of every town, so he was a champion of the city that he was born in.

Fergusson was brought up initially in Edinburgh but then moved to Dundee where he attended high school before being matriculated to the St Andrews University in 1765.

After the death of his father and completing his studies, the responsibility for supporting his mother fell upon Fergusson and he moved back to Edinburgh, taking up a post as a copyist. This caused some friction with his uncle as Fergusson had essentially rejected the excepted professions of the time such as lawyer or going into the church as a priest.  In 1771 he began to contribute poems to Ruddiman’s Weekly Magazine..

It was after he met Scottish preacher John Brown in Haddington Cemetery in 1772 that Fergusson, the 22-year-old copyist and author of Auld Reekie, had until then been a convivial man, at the heart of Edinburgh’s literary and social scene. But soon after encountering the theologian, he became gripped by “religious melancholia”. He shunned the limelight, preferring to stay at home and read his Bible, and his works took on a gloomy air. Then, a year after predicting he might share the fate of John Cunningham, a poet who had died in a mental asylum in Newcastle, young Robert had a fall in which he suffered a head injury, his fears were to become reality and ended up in Darien House, part of the city’s Bedlam asylum, on Bristo Place, where those with mental illnesses were offloaded. The conditions were terrible – food was in short supply and the use of restraints was commonplace.

Within weeks Fergusson was dead. His brutal end deprived Scotland of another potential bard (Robert Burns, who was inspired by his verse, erected a memorial on his unmarked grave in Canongate Kirkyard). His death was also a catalyst for a change in the way the city of Edinburgh looked after it’s mental health patients, thanks to a man who was a visitor of Robert Fergusson in Bedlam, Doctor Andrew Duncan.  In a letter to the Scottish Sheriff Deputy the doctor wrote of his experience of his visits with the poet that it “afforded me an opportunity of witnessing the deplorable situation of Pauper Lunatics even in the opulent, flourishing, and charitable Metropolis of Scotland”. By establishing the asylum in Morningside, Duncan contributed to Fergusson’s legacy, not just as a brilliant poet, but as someone who had a lasting impact on public health in Scotland.

I’ve chosen Fergusson’s poem  Braid Claith today, the title is a simple one and easily translates to Broad Cloth a  traditionally woollen fabric 

The Daft Days.

Now mirk December's dowie face Glours our the rigs wi' sour grimace, While, thro' his minimum of space, The bleer-ey'd sun Wi' blinkin light and stealing pace, His race doth run.

From naked groves nae birdie sings, To shepherd's pipe nae hillock rings, The breeze nae od'rous flavour brings From Borean cave, And dwyning nature droops her wings, Wi' visage grave.

Mankind but scanty pleasure glean Frae snawy hill or barren plain, Whan Winter, 'midst his nipping train, Wi' frozen spear, Sends drift owr a' his bleak domain, And guides the weir.

Auld Reikie! thou'rt the canty hole, A bield for mony caldrife soul, Wha snugly at thine ingle loll, Baith warm and couth; While round they gar the bicker roll To weet their mouth.

When merry Yule-day comes, I trow You'll scantlins find a hungry mou; Sma' are our cares, our stamacks fou O' gusty gear, And kickshaws, strangers to our view, Sin Fairn-year.

Ye browster wives, now busk ye bra, And fling your sorrows far awa'; Then come and gie's the tither blaw Of reaming ale, Mair precious than the well of Spa, Our hearts to heal.

Then, tho' at odds wi' a' the warl', Amang oursells we'll never quarrel; Tho' Discord gie a canker'd snarl To spoil our glee, As lang's there's pith into the barrel We'll drink and 'gree.

Fiddlers, your pins in temper fix, And roset weel your fiddle-sticks, But banish vile Italian tricks From out your quorum, Nor fortes wi' pianos mix, Gie's Tulloch Gorum.

For nought can cheer the heart sae weil As can a canty Highland reel, It even vivifies the heel To skip and dance: Lifeless is he what canna feel Its influence.

Let mirth abound, let social cheer Invest the dawning of the year; Let blithesome innocence appear To crown our joy, Nor envy wi' sarcastic sneer Our bliss destroy.

And thou, great god of Aqua Vitæ! Wha sways the empire of this city, When fou we're sometimes capernoity, Be thou prepar'd To hedge us frae that black banditti, The City-Guard.

[scotianostra]

On September 5th 1750, the poet Robert Fergusson was born in the Canongate in Edinburgh.

He may have only lived for 24 years, the last of which was traumatic, but those short years not only inspired Scotland’s best-known bard Robert Burns and the writer Robert Louis Stevenson, it also paved the way for better treatment of people with mental health conditions thanks to the work of Doctor Andrew Duncan, a name many in Edinburgh will associate with the The Royal Edinburgh Hospital. The famous English writer Charles Dickens also visited Fergusson’s grave, mote on that later. 

Although still relatively unknown, Fergusson was one of the most influential writers of his time despite dying at the tender age of 24, I wonder how many of you have maybe posed at his statue outside Canongate Kirkyard, but paid little attention to who he was?

Fergusson was brought up initially in Edinburgh but then moved to Dundee where he attended high school before being matriculated to the St Andrews University in 1765.

After the death of his father and completing his studies, the responsibility for supporting his mother fell upon Fergusson and he moved back to Edinburgh, taking up a post as a copyist. This caused some friction with his uncle as Fergusson had essentially rejected the excepted professions of the time such as lawyer or going into the church as a priest.

There is plenty of reason to believe that the young Fergusson had started developing his poetic sensibilities whilst at St Andrews, including beginning work on a play about Scottish brave-heart William Wallace. Moving to Edinburgh allowed Fergusson to get to known the writers and other artistic talent in the city, and he mixed largely in bohemian circles, befriending William Woods who managed some of the theatres there.

At the time, he also became friends with opera singer Tenducci who was touring the country with his company. This was when Fergusson was asked to produce Scottish songs for the Edinburgh section of the tour and marked his first published work. Buoyed by his success he began to produce satirical and pastoral poems for the Weekly Review that was run by Walter Ruddiman.

His initial offerings were traditional poems but it wasn’t long before Fergusson began writing verses that were considered more ‘Scots’. In 1772 he published The Daft Days which drew a good deal of attention and from then on he would submit poems in both English and the Scots dialect. His popularity also grew and in 1773 a collection of his work was published by Ruddiman which sold well enough for Fergusson to earn some money from his artistic endeavours.

Fergusson wrote his most well-known work, Auld Reekie, about this time and was confident enough of success to arrange to publish it himself. It was intended to be part of a much longer poem and provides an engaging and masterful portrait of Edinburgh at the time.

Unfortunately, Fergusson also suffered from bouts of depression and, if any further work was done on the poem it was probably destroyed by him in one of his darker moments.

Fergusson became a member of the famous Cape Club that would regularly meet in a local hostelry in the city. Each member of the club had a name and characteristic attached to them and drawings from the time show Fergusson as ‘Mr Precentor’.

Towards the middle of 1773, despite his growing success and popularity, Fergusson’s work grew a little darker and included Poem to the Memory of John Cunningham where he wrote about his fears of suffering a similar fate and ending up in a mental institution or asylum.

At the end of 1774, Fergusson suffered from an injury to his head and, though details are sketchy, did indeed end up in the Edinburgh equivalent of Bedlam. Two weeks later he was dead, at the tender age of 24, and had been buried in an unmarked plot in the city cemetery.

Now that may have been the end to the story and our fine Edinburgh poet may well have disappeared into obscurity if it weren’t for Robert Burns arrived in Edinburgh in 1786, he made a pilgrimage to the Canongate kirkyard to pay his respects to the young man who had inspired his poetry and whose grave lay unmarked for 12 years since his death at the age of 24 in October 1774.

Had Robert Fergusson lived and written more than one slim volume of poems, Scotland might now have two national bards and celebrate Fergusson Night with a feast of his favourite seafood on September 5th, the date of the neglected poet’s birth in 1750.

Burns himself acknowledged it long ago, when he paid for the headstone that now marks Fergusson’s grave and composed a heartfelt inscription:

No sculptur’d marble here, nor pompus lay,

No story’d urn nor animated bust;

This simple stone directs pale Scotia’s way

To pour her sorrows o'er her poet’s dust.

When Charles Dickens went to see Robert Ferguson’s grave It was dusk,  he saw another grave stone and Ebenezer Scrogge Because it was dark, he thought his grave stone had mean man written on it But it read Meal man, meaning grain merchant, , , he thought how could a man be so mean, that they’d write it on his grave, the rest is history.

I touched upon Dr Andrew Duncan earlier he was Fergusson's doctor, and was moved by the poet's death, and he resolved to set up a hospital in the city which would look after the mentally ill with greater dignity and respect. Duncan launched a fundraising appeal in 1792, and eventually, in 1806, Parliament granted £2000 from estates forfeited during the Jacobite rebellion in 1745.

The money was used to buy a large house in Morningside with four acres of land, and the architect Robert Reid was commissioned to design a new building, which came to be called the East House.

Originally called the Edinburgh Lunatic Asylum, the hospital opened in 1813, initially for patients whose families could afford to pay. The West House, designed by William Burn, opened in 1842, for poor patients, and taking over the care of the city's Bedlam inmates in 1844. The West House was demolished in 1896, but the Royal Edinburgh Hospital remains. It includes the Andrew Duncan Clinic, opened in 1965.

I posted a bit of his epic poem Auld Reikie   last year so this year here is another of his famous works, The Daft-days, in which Auld Reikie takes a central role, it is the old nickname for Scotland's capital city. The Daft-Days is the old name given to the period from Christmas to Handsel Monday  because it is given over to celebration, merriment and excess, with many people having licence to act in frivolous or daft (mad) ways. It is still the primary period of national celebration in Scotland

The Daft-Days.

Now mirk December’s dowie face Glowrs owr the rigs wi sour grimace, While, thro’ his minimum of space, The bleer-ey’d sun, Wi blinkin light and stealing pace, His race doth run.

From naked groves nae birdie sings, To shepherd’s pipe nae hillock rings, The breeze nae od’rous flavour brings From Borean cave, And dwyning nature droops her wings, Wi visage grave.

Mankind but scanty pleasure glean Frae snawy hill or barren plain, Whan winter, ‘midst his nipping train, Wi frozen spear, Sends drift owr a’ his bleak domain, And guides the weir.

Auld Reikie! thou’rt the canty hole, A bield for many caldrife soul, Wha snugly at thine ingle loll, Baith warm and couth, While round they gar the bicker roll To weet their mouth.

When merry Yule-day comes, I trou, You’ll scantlins find a hungry mou; Sma are our cares, our stamacks fou O’ gusty gear, And kickshaws, strangers to our view, Sin fairn-year.

Ye browster wives, now busk ye braw, And fling your sorrows far awa; Then come and gie’s the tither blaw Of reaming ale, Mair precious than the well of Spa, Our hearts to heal.

Then, tho’ at odds wi a’ the warl’, Amang oursels we’ll never quarrel; Tho’ Discord gie a canker’d snarl To spoil our glee, As lang’s there’s pith into the barrel We’ll drink and ‘gree.

Fidlers, your pins in temper fix, And roset weel your fiddle-sticks; But banish vile Italian tricks Frae out your quorum, Not fortes wi pianos mix – Gie’s Tulloch Gorum.

For nought can cheer the heart sae weel As can a canty Highland reel; It even vivifies the heel To skip and dance: Lifeless is he wha canna feel Its influence.

Let mirth abound, let social cheer Invest the dawning of the year; Let blithesome innocence appear To crown our joy; Nor envy wi sarcastic sneer Our bliss destroy.

And thou, great god of Aqua Vitae! Wha sways the empire of this city, When fou we’re sometimes capernoity, Be thou prepar’d To hedge us frae that black banditti, The City Guard.

More on Fergusson and some of his poetry here https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poet/robert-fergusson/

[scotianostra]

On September 5th 1750, the poet Robert Fergusson was born in the Canongate in Edinburgh.

He may have only lived for 24 years, the last of which was traumatic, but those short years not only inspired Scotland’s best-known bard Robert Burns and the writer Robert Louis Stevenson, it also paved the way for better treatment of people with mental health conditions thanks to the work of Doctor Andrew Duncan. 

Robert Fergusson was born of Aberdeenshire parents in Cap-and-Feather Close, in Edinburgh’s Old Town, on 5 September, 1750. The street has since disappeared, having been demolished during Fergusson’s lifetime to make way for the North Bridge, many of you will have walked over where Cap-and-Feather Close, it is said to have been where the junction at the Tron Church is, the road that now takes you over North Bridge towards Princes Street.

After primary education in Edinburgh, Fergusson entered the city’s High School in 1758, attaining a bursary to attend the Grammar School in Dundee in 1762. Two years later, he enrolled in St. Andrews University. As a student, Fergusson became infamous for his pranks, having once come close to expulsion. Despite this riotous reputation, the poet’s education stayed with him, he moved back to Edinburgh to support his mother, after the death of his father. 

He got a job as a copyist for the Commissary Office  main concern was, of course, poetry, and on 7 February, 1771 he anonymously published the first of a trio of pastorals in Ruddiman’s Weekly Magazine. Originally he wrote in English but by 1772 he had started to use the Scottish dialect in the standard Habbie verse form - a form which would later be copied and made famous by Robert Burns, indeed this style is now called the Burns stanza, perhaps it should be The Fergusson Stanza? 

Fergusson’s own muse was Allan Ramsay and, like the be-turbaned Ramsey, followed a bit of a bohemian lifestyle in Edinburgh, which was then at the height of an intellectual and cultural tumult as the nerve centre of the Scottish Enlightenment. He wrote a total of fifty poems in Scottish English and thirty-three in the Scots language, but it is for his remarkable exploits in the latter genre that he should be acknowledged and acclaimed. His poetic subject matter paints vivid accounts of the life and characters of ‘Auld Reekie’ and drunken encounters with the notorious Edinburgh City Guard of Captain Porteous, the ‘Black Banditti’ of ‘The Daft Days’. 

Fergusson began to suffer from depression in 1773, biographers have described his condition as ‘religious melancholia’, but regardless of whether or not that was the case, he gave up his job, stopped writing, withdrew completely from his riotous social life, and spent his time reading the Bible. He had heard about an Irish poet, John Cunningham, who had died in an asylum in Newcastle. That inspired ‘Poem to the Memory of John Cunningham’, and Fergusson became terribly afraid that the same thing was going to happen to him. Tragically, his dark prediction came true. In August, 1774, Fergusson fell down a flight of stairs and received a bad head injury, after which he was deemed ‘insensible’. His friend, the good doctor Andrew Duncan, had no choice but to admit him to Darien House “hospital”, Bedlam.

Doctor Andrew Duncan, the name might be familiar to those from Edinburgh, on finding Fergusson before being admitted to the “hospital” described him as being in a “state of furious insanity” he saw no choice but to have Fergusson taken to the city’s Bedlam madhouse. Conditions at the Bedlam, which was attached to the Edinburgh Charity Workhouse behind modern-day Teviot Place, were notoriously awful. Patients were treated as inmates, locked in cold stone-flagged cells, with only straw for bedding. The young poet was only there for a matter of weeks when he suddenly died. He had only just turned 24.

Fergusson was buried in an unmarked plot in The Canongate Kirkyard. On visiting Edinburgh in 1787, Burns paid for a headstone over his long-neglected grave, commemorating Fergusson  as ‘Scotia’s Poet. I have taken many friends to visit Fergusson’s last resting place over the years, mainly down to my late mother’s love of Burns, but also because I love showing people around my hometown. 

The picture shows the statue of Robert Fergusson outside the Canongate Church, with my very own Saltire attached to it,  if passing go pay your respects to the man, who inspired Rabbie Burns, who, under different circumstances might have been lauded as our National Bard, if you like a wee whisky perhaps raise a glass tonight on what might have been “Fergusson’s Night” The pis are my own, I drop into Canongate Kirkyard almost every time I am in the area.

[scotianostra]

On September 5th 1750, the poet Robert Fergusson was born in the Canongate in Edinburgh.

Most of you will not have heard of Robert Fergusson, he suffered from ill health, physical and mental, during his short life, he passed away in barbarous conditions in Edinburgh's notorious Bedlam. 

Doctor Andrew Duncan, the name might be familiar to those from Edinburgh, on finding Fergusson before being admitted to the "hospital" described him as being in a "state of furious insanity" he saw no choice but to have Fergusson taken to the city's Bedlam madhouse.Conditions at the Bedlam, which was attached to the Edinburgh Charity Workhouse behind modern-day Teviot Place, were notoriously awful. Patients were treated as inmates, locked in cold stone-flagged cells, with only straw for bedding.

Fergusson may have only lived for 24 years, the last of which was traumatic, but those short years not only inspired Scotland’s best-known bard Robert Burns and the writer Robert Louis Stevenson, it also paved the way for better treatment of people with mental health conditions thanks to the aforementioned Dr Duncan. 

Robert Fergusson was born of Aberdeenshire parents in Cap-and-Feather Close, in Edinburgh’s Old Town, on 5 September, 1750. The street has since disappeared, having been demolished during Fergusson’s lifetime to make way for the North Bridge, many of you will have walked over where Cap-and-Feather Close, it is said to have been where the junction at the Tron Church is, the road that now takes you over North Bridge towards Princes Street.

After primary education in Edinburgh, Fergusson entered the city’s High School in 1758, attaining a bursary to attend the Grammar School in Dundee in 1762. Two years later, he enrolled in St. Andrews University. As a student, Fergusson became infamous for his pranks, having once come close to expulsion. Despite this riotous reputation, the poet’s education stayed with him, he moved back to Edinburgh to support his mother, after the death of his father. 

He got a job as a copyist for the Commissary Office  main concern was, of course, poetry, and on 7 February, 1771 he anonymously published the first of a trio of pastorals in Ruddiman’s Weekly Magazine. Originally he wrote in English but by 1772 he had started to use the Scottish dialect in the standard Habbie verse form - a form which would later be copied and made famous by Robert Burns, indeed this style is now called the Burns stanza, perhaps it should be The Fergusson Stanza? 

Fergusson’s own muse was Allan Ramsay and, like the be-turbaned Ramsey, followed a bit of a bohemian lifestyle in Edinburgh, which was then at the height of an intellectual and cultural tumult as the nerve centre of the Scottish Enlightenment. He wrote a total of fifty poems in Scottish English and thirty-three in the Scots language, but it is for his remarkable exploits in the latter genre that he should be acknowledged and acclaimed. His poetic subject matter paints vivid accounts of the life and characters of ‘Auld Reekie’ and drunken encounters with the notorious Edinburgh City Guard of Captain Porteous, the ‘Black Banditti’ of ‘The Daft Days’. 

Fergusson began to suffer from depression in 1773, biographers have described his condition as ‘religious melancholia’, but regardless of whether or not that was the case, he gave up his job, stopped writing, withdrew completely from his riotous social life, and spent his time reading the Bible. He had heard about an Irish poet, John Cunningham, who had died in an asylum in Newcastle. That inspired 'Poem to the Memory of John Cunningham', and Fergusson became terribly afraid that the same thing was going to happen to him. Tragically, his dark prediction came true. In August, 1774, Fergusson fell down a flight of stairs and received a bad head injury, after which he was deemed ‘insensible’. His friend, the good doctor Andrew Duncan, had no choice but to admit him to Darien House "hospital", Bedlam, where after a matter of weeks, he suddenly died. He had only just turned 24.

I return to the fact that Burns was a fan and after Fergusson’s death Burns wrote of him, “my elder brother in misfortune, by far my elder brother in the muse.” Fergusson was buried in an unmarked plot in The Canongate Kirkyard. On visiting Edinburgh in 1787, Burns paid for a headstone over his long-neglected grave, commemorating Fergusson  as ‘Scotia’s Poet. I have taken many friends to visit Fergusson's last resting place over the years, mainly down to my late mother's love of Burns, but also because I love showing people around my home town. 

The picture shows the statue of Robert Fergusson outside the Canongate Church, if passing go pay your respects to the man, who inspired Rabbie Burns, who, under different circumstances might have been lauded as our National Bard, if you like a wee whisky perhaps raise a glass tonight on what might have been "Fergusson's Night"

This few lines are from The Daft Days, by Fergusson, you will get the drift of Edinburgh being a comforting, hospitable place where they aren't afraid of a drink, which is as true today as it was back in 1772, when they were written. 

Auld Reikie ! thou'rt the canty hole, A bield for mony a cauldrift soul, Wha snuggly at thine ingle loll, Baith warm and couth ; While round they gar the bicker roll, To weet their mouth.

More about the man and his poems can be found here http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/.../robert-fergusson