Basil R Anderson
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Author and poet, born Unst, died Edinburgh, aged 26. Best known works include 'Comin fae da hill' and 'Auld Maunsie's Crö', perhaps the greatest of all Shetlandic Scots poems. He is also the uncle of Willa Muir, though he was already dead by the time she was born in Montrose.
Basil Anderson was born on the 6th of August, 1861 at Wasterhouse, Cadiback in Unst, the son of Elizabeth Ramsay of Unst and a haaf fisherman from Yell, Peter, who in 1866 was drowned as his own father reputedly had been in 1832. Basil was clearly a gifted child, writing poetry from the age of 13, who became a pupil teacher in the local school. However, Elizabeth Anderson decided to move the family south to Edinburgh. She is described in the census of 1881 as a ‘knitter of hosiery’ residing at 11 Market Place, St. Cuthberts, Edinburgh. Here Basil found work as a clerk in a lawyer’s office and came under the wing of the Unst author, Jessie M. E. Saxby, president of the Edinburgh Orkney & Shetland Association. Basil Anderson contracted a virulent form of TB – at the time of the 1881 census he is a patient in the Old Royal Infirmary, Lady Yesters, Edinburgh. He suffered a rapid decline and died on 7th January 1888, at 12 Albert St. His work in the dialect of his native Unst appeared in newspapers from 1881 onwards, but was not collected till after his death.
William Sandison, in Shetland Verse: Remnants of the Norn, (1952) writes that “Anderson wrote most naturally, exactly the way he would have talked when among his own people … His dialect is simple, with no pretence at any great knowledge of the Norn, what words he used falling unconsciously from his pen as they would, in speech, have fallen from his lips. He was a born poet with the instincts of a dramatist … He died, perhaps, before he attained his full strength as a poet, but he left behind him 'Auld Maunsie’s Crö', which is to Shetland crofter life what 'The Cottar’s Saturday Night’ is to Lowland Scottish.”
Laurence I. Graham, in ‘Shetland Literature and the idea of community’ in Shetland’s Northern Links: Language and History, (1996) suggests that “ … his masterpiece … is about an old Unst crofter and his crö, how he built it and how as well as providing food for him and his livestock, it became a noted landmark, a mied at sea, even a time piece for the folk round about and a shelter for sheep, cattle and ponies … the whole development of the poem is beautifully shaped. It unfolds in ever-widening circles around the centre point of the crö, like ripples on a pond. It describes in turn the cycle of a typical crofting day from dawn to dusk, then the cycle of the seasons, next with Auld Maunsie’s death – a human life come full circle. And finally the cycle not only of the years, but of the generations."
A collection of his work, edited by Mrs. Saxby, was published after his death, entitled Broken Lights: poems and reminiscences of Basil R. Anderson (Edinburgh 1888, 128p.)
