For the eighteenth-century Somerset archaeologist and antiquarian, see John Skinner (archaeologist)
John Skinner (1721 - 1807), historian and song-writer, son of a schoolmaster at Birse, Aberdeenshire, was educated at Marischal College.
Brought up as a Presbyterian, he became an Episcopalian and ministered to a congregation at Longside, near Peterhead, for 65 years. He wrote The Ecclesiastical History of Scotland from the Episcopal point of view, and several songs of which The Reel of Tullochgorum and The Ewie wi' the Crookit Horn are the best known, and he also rendered some of the Psalms into Latin. He kept up a rhyming correspondence with Robert Burns.
He died at the home of his son, John Skinner, Bishop Coadjutor of Aberdeen on June 16, 1807.
This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J.M. Dent & sons; New York, E.P. Dutton.