Christian Gray (1772 – c. 1830) was a Scottish poet, known in her own time as the Blind Poet. Born in April 1772 at Aberdalgie, Perthshire, into a farming family, she was the elder of two children to survive to adulthood, and lost her sight in childhood to smallpox. Unable to write, she composed her verse mentally and recited it from memory for others — often the local schoolmaster — to transcribe. After her parents' deaths she lived in a cottage provided by the Earl of Kinnoull, supported by her neighbours, and spent her days listening to scripture and poetry, knitting as she walked. She wrote in both Scots and English, on marriage, slavery, religion, war, and her own blindness. Her published works are Tales, Letters, and Other Pieces in Verse (1808) and A New Selection of Miscellaneous Pieces in Verse (1821). Among her notable poems are The Victims of War (1811), a tragic wartime romance, and Bessy Bell and Mary Gray, a Legendary Tale, which reflects on her own intellectual growth. The historian Peter Robert Drummond recorded an account of her life around 1827.
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