David Herd - Definition and Overview

David Herd (1732 - 1810) was a Scottish anthologist.

The son of a farmer in Kincardineshire, he became clerk to an accountant in Edinburgh, and devoted his leisure to collecting old Scottish poems and songs, which he first published in 1769 as Ancient Scottish Songs, Heroic Ballads, etc. Other and enlarged editions appeared in 1776 and 1791. Sir Walter Scott made use of his manuscript collections in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.

This article is originally from A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature.