“COMFY?” William McIlvanney would ask me. “Glasgow!” I’d respond. Our running joke. The Scots language as ritualistic greeting.

As a novelist and essayist, Willie personified humane irreverence. I was an undernourished student when he warned me, “If you were a wishbone, you’d be snapped in two.” “Willie. I’m a student,” I’d say, “We’re all as thin as a cartoon witch’s finger. We’re supposed to look like symbols on a pirate flag.” “Ach, you’re havering, son.” Havering? Another guid Scots word resplendent with soft rebuke.

Despite this, Willie held a defeatist attitude to the Scots language. As a teacher, his ears were attuned to playground parlance. It was dominated by TV cop shows. He’d ask, “Brian, how can it compete with Kojak speak?”

We’re now learning the answer to Willie’s question. Scots is resurrected, reflecting the renewed confidence of a people. Language, second only to love, insinuates itself into our life so uniquely and utterly, our relationship to it must be deeply personal. It expresses our thoughts, longings, emotions … memories. It was, and remains, our collective heritage.

Scots is now reaching new heights of expressiveness, innovation. And ... well, gallusness. Contrary to doom-laden predictions, technology is aiding this renaissance. Power once lay in the hands, and mouths, of educators.

My parents’ generation were belted at school for speaking the “language of the gutter”. Received Pronunciation (RP) was all-pervasive in UK culture, delineating the born to rule from the proles. Educators either ignored, or where truly ignorant, of the honourable lineage of a language spoken by scientists, philosophers and writers.

The masses are now the masters. I scroll on my Scots App, discovering vibrant words with which to insult people. Scots had been worn to a shadow by the dominance of English as our lingua franca. Is it any surprise our “Leed” is now spoken and written in reprisal?

Through the 80s and 90s, The Scots Language Society stalwarts, “Dante Jack” Clegg and Andrew Slimon were derided as grotesques. As poets, they railed against the “Dead language of Augustine English.”

It caused a rammy, of course, our national characteristic being starting a war in an empty howff. The folk singer, and song collector, Gordon McCulloch called them revivalists as if they were members of a pentecostalist sect. Others, refusing to coat their disdain with subtlety, dubbed them resurrectionists. That really was a call to arms. Wordsmiths always see argument as a vehicle for acerbic humour, but there was gie few laughs in the ensuing melee.

If Scots is merely a subliterate dialect or stunted patois, fit only for street and pub, how can it spawn such wonderous creations as Hamish Henderson’s Freedom Come All Ye? It’s sung the world over, especially by liberation movements, inspired by its egalitarian sentiments. Parochial? Aye. That’ll be right.

But any language leavened by levity is in no danger of being lost. The Society of Musicians Club in Glasgow boasted – if that’s the word – the great Sean Teirney. Sean was a magnificent parodist who perpetrated songs like Fly Me to Dunoon and I Get a Kick Out of Rhu.

I heard Sean, with Gordon McCulloch, one New Year’s Eve. In that club, so far as the corkscrew was concerned, every night was New Year’s Eve. I recall floating like a helium balloon, so full of bubbles was I.

With what little concentration I had, I originated Take the Ayr Train. A parody of Billy Strayhorn’s Take the ‘A’ Train. It went: If you Take The Ayr Train. You’re Sure to Wind Up at Rabbie’s Cottage. If You Take The Ayr Train, You’ll Find Yersel’ Whisky and Pottage… Sean’s facial expression suggested he thought there was no beginning to my talents.

I wrote a book on the Scots language with Jimmy Reid. One publisher spoke for many when he said the commercial appeal didn’t quite reach the “tickly bit”. Perhaps we should’ve written about Bible John?

Our research was unalloyed joy. Cliff Hanley recounted being sacked from BBC Scotland, in 1970, after the Earl of Haddow objected to Cliff’s “dense, incomprehensible, guttural Glasgow patois”. Cliff recalled, “It was decreed that Scots was permissible for sport and comedy. Not for important subjects like the news of the day, innat.”

Attitudes had scarcely changed, in 1994, when we spoke to Charlie and Craig Reid of The Proclaimers. London producers hinted to them that singing in broad Scots might limit their appeal.

Their accents, and use of Leith colloquialisms didn’t stop global fame finding The Proclaimers. Jimmy and I were dubbed The Complainers due to our indignation on behalf of unsung keepers of the linguistic flame. I feel that indignation still.

We speak not only to be understood. Our words are what’s remembered of us. The “realists” wrote off our language. The poets and punters kept it alive. Oh, and the dreamers. Let’s salute those dreamers.