Scottish Book Tour: Scotland Ten Years On

My attempt at Substack didn't work, so I'll stick to notes there and my blog here. 

The sun's back. Two weeks ago I had solar panels installed and then Finland went into autumn mode with mists and overcast darkness. It's good to have this burst of sunlight to make the huge cost seem worthwhile. The cats and I have been recharging our batteries in pools of light, though the throw blanket has found it's way back to the couch. I'm not ready to turn the heat on yet. 

The trees are just starting to turn, hints of gold and red around the edges. We're about a month behind season-wise. I have pictures of the kids from past years, knee-deep in piles of leaves. Gold birch coins and mushrooms are just starting to sprinkle the lawn. 

My pictures also show the Scottish Independence Referendum from ten years ago, September 18. My social media is full of people remembering, many mourning the loss. It's still a blow, especially after Brexit and the recent mess in the Scottish Government. The possibility of independence seems further away than ever before. 

Speaking of Scottish, I'm still trying to work my way through the pile of books I bought this summer in Scotland. I picked up a few older books that I had never read, including Jackie Kay's Trumpet and some George Mackay Brown titles. 

I also tried John Burnside's Dumb House. I haven't been able to get through it. It reminds me a lot of The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks which I love. Burnside was a poet, novelist and editor who recently died and I had never read any of his work. But I couldn't get into this book, the main character is messed up. The book starts with him just saying that he's fed a set of twins poison, similar to Banks' character Frank announcing he'd killed three people so far in the opening scene. I couldn't find anything redeemable in the main character, even though the book tries to show the loss that led to his horrible actions. I may go back to it as it's impelling to find out about the twins, but I just can build up any sympathy for the main character. 

Trumpet, however, really builds empathy for the characters, Millie and Colman, the wife and son of a famous trumpeter Joss Moody who has just died. Joss's secret is out and his family are left to deal with the aftermath of the explosion left between them, Millie by hiding herself away and Colman by exploring his father's past with a journalist. Here the backstory doesn't truly explain Joss' choices but lays a foundation for the person he becomes. The writing is beautiful and quite raw with emotion, beautifully done.

And beautiful isn't quite the right adjective for George Mackay Brown's seminal novel Greenvoe. Wrapped in myth, landscape, history and humour, Greenvoe is a village full of character and characters set on an imaginary Orcadian island. Their secrets are all laid bare and knit into the village's spirit, Alice has seven children all named after the men she had affairs with, guileless Timmy buys his meths for his Tilley lamp, but everyone knows he drinks it himself and the school teacher impotently lusts after the ferryman who has his eye set on a bigger prize. Mackay Brown builds up a close-knit community that doesn't always have each others' best interests at heart. When modern incursions of an secret industry called Dark Star threaten the island, the villagers have little choice, but to accept their own natures. The writing is poetic, woven with sea and island culture. This is no surprise as Mackay Brown is also a brilliant poet. An absolute gem and I'm looking forward to my next book by Mackay Brown. 

It's been over ten years since I left Scotland and almost twenty since I completed my Masters in Scottish Literature and there's still so much to explore in its literature. 

No real news in my own writing. Moving forward slowly. 

If anyone is interested in Scots language, the Dictionary of the Scots Language has their own version of Wordle - https://www.macwordle.co.uk/ which is quite fun. 

Scotstober: Days 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16

Five more Scots words for you to discover through poetry and song for #Scotstober - a celebration of the Scots language. 

Scotstober Word of the Day 12: 'stramash' - meaning an uproar or a disturbance. Poem by J K Annand who was mostly known for his children's rhymes.  

Street Talk

There was a rammie in the street,

A stishie and stramash.

The crabbit wifie up the stair

Pit up her winda sash.

“Nou what’s adae?” the wifie cried,

“Juist tell me what’s adae.”

A day is twinty-fower hours, missis,

Nou gie us peace to play.

“Juist tell me what’s ado,” she cried,

“And nane o yer gab,” cried she.

D’ye no ken a doo’s a pigeon, missis?

Nou haud your wheesht a wee.

“I want to ken what’s up,” she cried,

“And nae mair o yer cheek, ye loun.”

It’s only yer winda that’s up, missis.

For guidsake pit it doun.

Day 13: Word of the Day 'dour'. One of the most well known Scots words, meaning 'hard, stern, sullen, gloomy'. Marion Angus' poem captures that grim atmosphere in her poem 'The Tinker's Road'. Here's a link to her collection by the same name, well out of print. 

The Tinker's Road

The broon burn’s speerin’,

Frettin’ a’ the wye,

“What gars ye gang,

Auld Tinker’s Road,

Whaur there’s naither fouk nor kye,

“Kirk nor croft nor mill,

A’ thing lane and still?”

But it’s aye “Haud on”

Wi’ the Tinker’s Road

Fur the far side o’ the hill.

Stannin’ stanes gloomin’,

Grim an’ straucht an’ dour—

“An unco place for a Tinker’s Road

On sic a ghaist-rid moor!”

Ghaist or witch or de’il,

Stanes o’ dule an’ ill,

It’s aye “ Hing in ”

Wi’ the Tinker’s Road

Fur the far side o’ the hill.

The black thorn’s maenin’,

“O rauch winds, let me be !

Atween ye a’

Ye’ve brak ma he’rt,

An’ syne I canna dee!”

Weerin’ til a threid,

Smoored wi’ mosses reid,

The soople road wins ower the tap

An’ tak’s nor tent nor heed.

Day 14: 'stookie' - a plaster cast. Word of the Day 13: 'stookie' - a plaster cast. I found a lovely wee poem by Angela Blacklock-Brown on the StAnza Poetry's Poetry Map. So happy to share this site, not only because one of mine appears on there. A great site with some amazing work. 

Ben Gulabin

(Glenshee)

Snaw crooned ben

toorin abuin,

still as a stookie,

nae wun skirlin.

Hairst's gowden chaff

keeks thru the white

an the brig, quate as the sabbath,

stauns wi the gates snecked ticht.

Day 15: 'lowp' which usually means to leap or jump as in the English equivalent lope, but I've most often heard it in Glasgow used as an expression of pain 'mah heid is lowpin'. Here's a lovely tune by the singer-poet Sheena Blackhall who uses a North-Eastern version of Scots often cried Doric.

Braes o Skene

Tune: Plooman Laddies

Fan first I cam tae the Braes o Skene,

The corn parks they stood thick an green.

Chorus: Noo ferm rigs, they growe hooses gray,

Anither change comes wi ilkie day.

The milkin kye gaed frae park tae byre,

An Hillie’s wids fed a lowpin fire.

The bramble buss fulled the berry pan,

The chaumer bed held the orra man.

Noo cottar bairns they hae roved awa,

An swallas bigg in the kitchie waa.

The toon creeps oot like a swallin tide,

Haps steen an lime ower the kintraside.

Fin lost I cam tae the Braes o Skene,

The fowk war gaen an the fermhoose teem.

Word of the Day 16: 'grue'. A new word and a new poet for me today. The DSL seems to mostly define grue as a shudder of fear or cold. This beautifully wrought poem Pietà by Alastair Mackie uses Scots with scalpel precision. A contemporary and friend of George Mackay Brown, the Orkney poet, Mackie's life was tragic and inspiring. You can read about his life here. It's especially interesting his reaction to how schooling beat his Scots out of him.

Pietà

Her face was thrawed.

She wisna aa come.

In the trams o her airms

the wummin held oot her first bairn.

It micht hae been a mercat day

and him for sale.

Naebody stoppit tae niffer.

His life bluid cled his breist

wi a new reid semmit.

He’d hippens for deid claes.

Aifter the boombers cleck

and the sodgers traik thro the skau

there’s an auld air sterts up –

bubblin and greetin.

It’s a ballant mithers sing

on their hunkers i the stour

for a bairn deid.

They ken it by hert.

It’s the cauldest grue i the universe

yon skelloch.

It niver waukens the deid.

More Scotstober Fun: Days 10 and 11 - Older examples of Scots

A reminder of the word list here for Scotstober, where Scots words are explored through writing. 

Word of the Day 10: 'sprauchle' - means to move slowly and awkwardly or a person who does so. I have to admit I hadn't come across this poem before and struggled to find anything. It didn't help that it could be several ways. As Scots fell out of use and Scots speakers discouraged from using it because it was seen as uneducated or coarse, it became primarily a spoken language. This is reflected in the spelling which is erratic because people spell it how they say it. 

Even the Scottish Poetry Library didn't have an entry that used sprauchle, so I did some deeper internet diving and through the DSL (Dictionary of the Scots Language/Leid) found a poet called Henry Scott Riddell (1780-1870) who wrote a poem that used the word in a song. Even the poem was hard to find, buried in an internet archive.

Geordie Tair’s Courtship

 

Air — "Willie was a wanton wag"

A wilfu' man maun hae his way,

 

At least, if he's like Geordie Tait,

Ae night when lately he wad gae

 

To court his curlie-headed Kate.

The rains rushed doun spate after spate,

• And murky were the moorlands grey.

Yet manfully he took the gait —

A wilfu' man maun hae his way.

 

He thocht to loup the Bogle syke.

 

But landed in it to the chin,

And seiched, and said, Do as ye like.

 

Ye canna cool the love within.

Near was he borne out-owre the linn,

 

Ere he gat spraugheled to the brae ;

But then, my sooth ! how he did rin ! —

 

A wilfii' man maun hae his way. 

And if you're interested in the song he based the words on here's a wee link. 

Day 11: 'bourach'. I knew the word, meaning 'a mess, confusion, a crowd', but finding a poem wasn't that easy. It's hit mainstream media lately as it was used in politics as 'clusterbourach' to describe an absolute mess, as in Brexit. But finding it in a short Scots poem. I branched out and found it in a translation by Robert Forbes in the mid-1700s of Ajax's Speech from Ovid's Metamorphoses, describing the moment when his men settle down to listen to him. 

The wight an’ doughty Captains a’ 

Upo’ their doups sat down; 

A rangel o’ the common fowk 

In bourachs a’ steed roun.

The use of bourach here is brilliant because it shows the disorganised mess of the common soldiers beyond the Captains - an English translation describes it as "when the captains were seated, and the rank and file were standing, in a circle, around them". 

I think the Scots does so much more, using bourach.

Little is known about Forbes other than he was a hosier based in London, but what this wee stanza reminds me, and I think it's often forgotten, that Scots used to be a language used broadly enough that it needed classics translated into so they could be understood by those who could read, Gavin Douglas' translation of the Aeneid for example in 1513.

I'm really enjoying all this research, it's been a while since I've read older versions of Scots.