Mary Symon was a Scottish poet who wrote in Scots with a regional and rural focus. Her work was praised by Hugh MacDiarmid during Scottish Renaissance. Mary was born to John Symon (1836 - 1908), a landowner and saddler, and Isabella Duncan (1837 - 1924) in Dufftown, on the estate of Pittyvaich. She was educated first at Mortlach public school, and then at the Edinburgh Institute For Young Ladies. She was a graduate of the University of St. Andrews. Mary grew up fluent in the Scots of rural Banffshire. Her first works are dated to 1876, and she utilised various pseudonyms for publication. Her work was influenced by the First World War: her 1916 poem The Glen's Muster-Roll is written from the perspective of a local schoolmaster, reflecting on the future of the boys in his community, while her poem A Whiff o Hame was sent to troops in the same year as part of a Christmas book. After Neuve Chapelle, written in 1915, describes the losses suffered by the Gordon Highlanders at the Front. The first edition of her Deveron Days was published in 1933, and sold out instantly, moving straight to a second edition.