DESPITE Dr Johnson’s observation that the best place to witness human vanity is a public library, I was fair chuffed when I had my first novel published after decades of scribbling until I happened to recall Burns’ lines:
We are na fou, we’re nae that fou,
But just a drappie in the e’e…
In just two lines, as he zeroes in on the glistening eye, he deftly captures the essence of a drunk, and puts my 180,000-word opus into perspective.
Writing in Scots came easily to Burns – it was the everyday tongue of the majority of the folk around him – and even though he had perfect command of English, Scots was (thank goodness!) the vehicle he deliberately chose to express himself in his writing.
There is something wonderfully evocative and colourful in written and spoken Scots; doesn’t the image of “a drooket speug…” reveal the pathos and misery of the wee bird far better than the English, “a wet sparrow”? And ‘dreich…’ I believe that to capture the essence of what that word conveys would take half a dozen in English. The list is almost endless.
I was mystified on my first visit to Aberdeenshire when I heard Doric; it is much more than an accent with a few strange words thrown in. I drove up from Glasgow with a pal, and outside Aberdeen we got lost on a country road and drew up alongside a fermer chiel leaning on a dyke, puffing contentedly on his cuttie pipe.
I asked him if we were on the right road. “Aye, gin ye ging doon past the hoosie yonder, an’ then wee bittie efter passing the kirk, ye’ll see a field ahint a wudden yett wi’ some coos an’ a cuddy in’t… Tak the yin tae the left whaur the herst’s hauf in… …”
I thanked him and we drove off. “What the hell was that?” I asked my pal. He looked puzzled. “I think he was a Dutchman.”
Adding to the challenge of writing in Scots is the great range of spelling, and there’s sometimes quite a variation in meaning. My mother used ‘wersh’ to mean extremely ‘sour,’ while, according to the dictionary, in some areas of Scotland, it means ‘insipid.’
Even if defining the value is elusive, to my mind, Scots has value. I have no doubt that the more we lose it, the more we lose part of our character, our humour, our national identity. Can you imagine what would have been lost if Lex McLean had delivered his lines in standard English? I still laugh at his opening lines one night at the Pavilion Theatre:
“Wis oot last nicht wi’ a wumman wi’ hair a’ doon her back… Nane oan her heid – jist doon her back!”
Of course, that raises the question, Do we consider Lex was a Scots speaker, or was he using a kind of English with an accent? The distinction is surely a fine one.
Having lived in North America, many Americans find almost everything associated with Scotland, including Scots language, quaint and intriguing. But just as the pronunciation of ‘loch’ eludes many Englishmen, the vocabulary of Scots is a charming head scratcher to most North Americans.
I didn’t consciously plan to use Scots in my novel, but the protagonists, Gourlay and McMinn, almost begged me to let them at least sprinkle their speech with Scots… I went along with that notion and have no regrets. That it took me so long to complete I console myself with the auld Scots saw, “Naething suld be done in haste but the gruppin’ o’ fleas!”
A Parcel Of Rogues, by James Sleigh, is published by Livingston Press, University of West Alabama
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