RAMPUR BOALIA, a town of British India, the adminis trative headquarters of Rajshahi district in Bengal, on the left bank of the Ganges. Pop. (1931), 27,064. It is 28 m. by road from the Nator station of the Eastern Bengal State railway and has a steamer station on the Ganges. The town contains a Govern ment college, and the museum of the Varendra Research Society. RAMSAY, ALLAN (1686-1758), Scottish poet, was born at Leadhills, Lanarkshire, on Oct. 15, 1686. He was educated at the parish school of Crawford, and in 1701 was apprenticed to a wig-maker in Edinburgh. He married Christian Ross in 1712; a few years after he had established himself as a wig-maker (not as a barber, as has been often said) in the High Street, and soon found himself in comfortable circumstances. His first efforts in verse-making were inspired by the meetings of the Easy Club (founded in 1712), of which he was an original member; and in 1715 he became the Club Laureate. In the society of the mem bers he assumed the name of "Isaac Bickerstaff," and later of "Gawin Douglas." By 1718 he had some reputation for occa sional verse, which he published in broadsheets, and then (or a year earlier) he turned bookseller. A rough transcript (1716) of Christ's Kirk on the Green from the Bannatyne ms., with some additions of his own, was followed in 1718 by a new edition with supplementary verses. In the following year he printed a collec tion of Scots Songs. The success of these ventures prompted him to collect his poems in 1722. The volume was issued by subscrip tion, and brought in the sum of 400 guineas. He then opened a
circulating library (the first in Scotland) in new premises, and ex tended his business as a bookseller.
Meanwhile he had issued the first instalments of The Tea-Table Miscellany and The Ever Green (both 1724-27). The Tea-Table Miscellany is "A Collection of Choice Songs Scots and English," containing some of Ramsay's own, some by his friends, several well-known ballads and songs, and some Caroline verse. In The Ever Green, being a Collection of Scots Poems wrote by the Ingenious before 1600, Ramsay sought to reawaken an interest in the older national literature. He produced, in 1725, his dramatic pastoral The Gentle Shepherd, which passed through several edi tions, and was performed at the theatre in Edinburgh; its title is still known in every corner of Scotland, even if it be no longer read. Ramsay wrote little afterwards, though he published a few shorter poems, and new editions of his earlier work. A complete edition of his Poems appeared in London in 1731 and in Dublin in 1733. In 1736 he set about the erection of a new theatre, "at vast expense," in Carrubber's Close, Edinburgh, but the opposition was too strong, and the new house was closed in 1737. In 1755 he retired from his shop to the house on the Castle Rock, still known as Ramsay lodge where he died on Jan. 7, 1758.
The Tea-Table Miscellany was reprinted in 1871; The Ever Green in 1875; The Poems of Allan Ramsay in 1877. A selection of the Poems appeared in 1887. There are many popular reprints of The Gentle Shepherd.