Janet Little
Janet Little (1759-1813), the self-styled “Scotch Milkmaid” is often compared to Robert Burns, the “ploughman poet”; but in fact her social origins were humbler than his. Little worked as a servant for a clergyman in her birthplace of Ecclefechan, Dumfries, before obtaining a position in the Ayrshire household of Mrs. Frances Dunlop, Burns’s friend and correspondent. From there Little took a place in the dairy at Loudon Castle, where Mrs. Dunlop’s daughter lived. Although Little sent Burns one of her poems, Mrs. Dunlop’s friendship was crucial in obtaining his patronage for her protegée. Burns supported the publication of The Poetical Works of Janet Little, The Scottish Milkmaid (1792) financially, by subscribing to it, and literarily, through his connections. Like Burns, Little draws on neoclassical and folk traditions. She moves between Scots and English, heroic couplets and ballad form, with ease. Her poetic reflections on her position as a maidservant reveal the relative of privilege of Burns’s position in terms of gender and social class.