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The Northern Muse

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20th Century Poets

HUGH MacDIARMID & WILLIAM SOUTAR

The first half of this century saw a great renaissance in Scots poetry led by Hugh MacDiarmid, which was the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve. Bom in Langholm in 1892, the son of a postman, who was also as radical and a republican, he was encouraged in his love of literature at school by his teacher, the composer, Francis George Scott. He became a sort of enfant terrible of the Scots literary and political scene. In Scotland, then and now, to be an activist for Scots language and culture always carries political overtones. MacDiarmid threw himself into the struggle wholeheartedly and set about dragging Scots poetry out of the Kailyaird by the hair of its head and setting it on a loftier plane. He was too much of an individualist to fit into pigeonholes and party frameworks, and was actually excluded from the Nationalist Party for being a Communist, and from the Communist Party for being a Nationalist.

To regenerate literary Scots, he trawled the dictionary and has to take the responsibility for starting off the Lallans movement among writers, some of whom ended up writing in a form of Scots that is essentially artificial. You can say literary language in the past was all to some extent artificial, but that was an accepted convention. Nowadays poetry and other literature, use all kinds of language and there is no longer any specific literary language. MacDiarmid did not confine himself to Scots and certainly, on the occasions when I was in his presence, didn't speak it. But in those poems in which he used it, he certainly used it to tremendous effect. His early lyrics shine as brightly now as when they were first published in Sangschaw 1925 and Penny Wheep 1926. Here's a favourite about a Borders graveyard :-

CROWDIEKNOWE

Oh to be at Crowdieknowe
When the last trump blaws.
An see the deid come lowpin owre
The auld grey waas.

Muckle men wi tousled beards
I grat at as a bairn
'll scramble frae the crrodit clay
Wi feck o swearin.

An glower at God an aa his gang
0 angels i the lift
-Thae trashy bleezin French-like folk
Wha gar'd them shift.

Fain the women folk'll seek
To mak them haud their row
-Fegs, God's no blate gin he stir up
The men o Crowdieknowe !

MacDiarmid's most famous poem is The Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, which as well as being a highly comic satire, is also, as described by Professor Tom Crawford "a verse anatomy of the condition of Scotland. MacDiarmid was a master of invective and polemic and in the Middle Ages would have been a bonnie flyter. Amongst other things in The Drunk Man, he hits up the Burns Supper cult among people who know little of Burns's poetry, don't speak his language, but are just looking for the chance of a good feed and a booze-up in the guise of "culture":-

No wan in fifty kens a wurd Burns wrote
But misapplied's aabody's property
And gin there was his like alive the day
They'd be the last a kennin haun tae gie.

Aa they've tae say was aften said afore
A lad was born in Kyle to blaw aboot.
What unco fate mak's him the dumpin grun
For aa the sloppy rubbish they jaw oot ?

William Soutar, born in Perth in 1898, was a very different man, with a very different life story. Because his poetry was, for the most part, short, he has I think been under-rated until now. But few 20th century Scots poets have used the Scots language with more art and skill. He didn't need to trawl the dictionary for Scots words : he grew up hearing them all round him. He was the son of a craftsman joiner, went to Perth Academy and Edinburgh University and would have become an English teacher, if he hadn't become an invalid due to a form of spondylitis that is probably now curable. In those days, invalids were confined to bedrooms, so he lay for thirteen years and wrote poetry, visited by other Scots writers, including MacDiarmid, with whom he had many a passionate argument about politics and art. The two men were friends but they didn't agree about some things.

Soutar, like other poets of the renaissance, wanted to give new life to the mather tongue and he saw no better way of doing this than through our children, so he wrote a lot of poems specially for them. Here's one called :-

A WHIGMALEERIE

There was an Auchtergaven mouse
(I canna mind his name)
Wha met in wi a hirplin louse
Sair trauchled for her hame.

"My friend I'm hippit; an nae doot
Yell heist me on my wey"
The mouse but squinted doon his snoot
And wi a breenge was by.

Or lang he to his ain door
Doun by a condie-hole;
And thocht as he was stappin owre
"Vermin are ill tae thole !"

Soutar had a great love of the old ballads and thought they were our best poetry and he used the deceptively simple form of the ballad verse for his own poetry a good deal. One of his most beautiful poems The Tryst - which many people have set tunes to - to me has the same magic quality found in these ancient songs.

THE TRYST

Sae luely luely cam she in,
And luely she lay doun
I kent her be her caller lips
And her breists sae sma and roon.

Aa thru the nicht we spak nae word
Nor sindered bane frae bane
Aa thru the nicht I heard her hert
Gang soundin wi my ain.

It was boot the waukrife hour
When cocks begin tae craw
That she smool'd saftly thu the mirk
Afore the day wud daw

Sae luely luely cam she in
Sae luely was she gaen
An wi her aa my simmer days
Like they had never been.

Soutar also wrote in English, especially about contemporary events in Europe and once again the four-line verse carried his meaning with telling effect :-

No man outlives the grief of war
Tho he outlive its wreck;
Upon the memory a scar
Through all his years will ache.

Hopes will revive when horrors cease
And dreaming dread be stilled
But there shall dwell within his peace
A sadness unannulled.

Upon his world shall hang a sign
Which summer cannot hide:
The permanence of the young man
Who are not by his side.

Soutar used good Perthshire Scots that sounded natural in its context and he attacks MacDiarmid for scorning his own Border tongue to write in pretentious literary Scots in a poem, called appropriately "The Thistle looks at the Drunk Man". The thistle was. of course, MacDiarmid and if you've seen Coia's wonderful caricature of the poet, you'll see how this small, fiece, bristly-haired man really looked like a thistle. Soutar records his dream of a conversation with this creature, whose poetry had put him to sleep, observing that "namely fare was no for him; He laidled owre his gutsy rim Aa kinds o meat tae stap each whim, Kittlin his void" and "Wi booze o aa guffs he wad droon That honest Doric, as a loon He throve on in a bonnie toon Whaur fowk still speak Nae hash o German. Slav, Walloon An bastard Greek." Soutar did not find MacDiarmid's use of Scots conducive to the enjoyment of his poetry :-

Nae doot he thocht his reekin braith
Wad be about me as a graith
0 livin water: but Guid faith!
It was a splore
That brocht me hantle nearer daith
Than ocht afore.

In the second last verse he addresses MacDiarmid in a way that reveals his friendly relationship with him :-

Hughie! Nae doot ye think I'm waggin
My heid owre lang at ye and naggin:
But it's my naitur tae be jaggin
Baith freen and fae."

This is one of Soutar's longer poems, so although its tone is light-hearted, it undoubtedly expresses seriously intended criticism.

Alexander Scott and Hamish Henderson

It would take a series longer than this brief sampling to look at all the Scots poets of this century. Names such as Sidney Goodsir Smith, Robert Garioch, Norman McCaig, George Mackay Brown, Iain Crichton Smith, Edwin Morgan and a host of others come tumbling in a splendid cavalcade through my mind. Some of them write in Scots and some in English and some in both and there are Gaelic poets too : the modern Northem Muse makes full use of all the languages of Scotland.

Scots poetry tradition is very male-dominated, as is Scots culture generally, but now more women are coming to the fore. The Scotsman's view of woman-kind has always been rather sexist : a recent feminist magazine called itself Harpies and Quines and these two names rather sum it up. But in the renaissance there were women's names as well : Violet Jacob, Marion Angus, Helen B. Cruikshank, Flora Garry, and now there is Liz Lochhead, Sheena Blackball, Kate Armstrong , Janet Parsley and quite a number of others.

I'd like to give special mention to two poets who write in Scots. First, the late Alexander Scott, 1920-1989, an Aberdonian who became the first Scots academic to be appointed to a post in Scots Literature in 1948 at Glasgow University. Like many North-Easterners, Scots was his first language, so he wrote it naturally and with a sinewy strength. This and his satiric wit can be seen even in a short poem like :-

CALVINIST SANG

A hundred pipers canna blaw
Our trauchled times awa,
Drams canna droun them out nor sang
Hap their scarecrow heids for lang.

Gin aa the warld was bleezin fou
Whit gowk wad steer the ploo?
Gin chiels were cowpan quines aa day
They'd mak, but niver gaitlier hay.

Pit by your pipes and brak the gless,
Wi quines, keep aff the gress,
The day ye need a hert and hams
Dour as diamant, cauld as the sterns.

In another poem he remembers Robert Fergusson's obscurity inspite of a Burns's debt to him :-

Dear Fergusson - They've Ramsey's statue clean,
But yours they cudna touch - ye haena ane,
And wadna hae a stane abune your lair
But Burns, your younger brother laid it there -
For wha's the lad to love a maker's sang
(When baxters, bylies and the haill jing-bang
0 toun-heid patrons pass his singin by
For ither makars wi a fremmit cry)
Gif no the screiver, like yoursel a Scot,
That kens your screivin saved his page a blot
A hantle whiles, and shawed his words the gait
To lead them fairheid-weys whan they were blate ?

Scott's gift for succintness was illustrated in a brilliant series called Scotched, in which he hits a whole series if nails on the head with immense precision and gives a whole new meaning to the cliche "a few well-chosen words." Here are some examples

SCOTCH GOD Kent his Faither	SCOTCH RELIGION Damn Aa	SCOTCH LOVE Barely A bargain.
SCOTCH OPTIMISM Through a gless Darkly	SCOTCH PESSIMISM Nae Gless	SCOTCH PASSION Forgot Masel
SCOTCH EDUCATION A telt ye A telt ye.

Hamish Henderson was born in Blairgowrie, Perthshire in 1919 and was educated at Dulwich College and Cambridge University. He served in North Africa and Italy with the 51st Highland Division in the Second World War. He then joined the newly-founded School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh in 195 1; he is an Honorary Fellow of the School, and has honorary doctorates from Dundee and Edinburgh Universities. An outstanding poet, singer and songwriter, he was a great pioneer of the Folk Song Revival, bringing together source singers and young Revivalists. He has a great interest in and knowledge of both Scots and Gaelic tradition and has been a major collector of songs and stories.

As well as some of the finest songs to come out of the Folk Revival, such as The Freedom Come-All-Ye, The John McLean March and Farewell to Sicily, all written to pipe tunes, Hamish Henderson wrote Elegies for the Dead in Cyrenaica, which earned him the Somerset Maugham Prize just after the War. One of his finest poems in Scots in undoubtedly The Flytin o Life and Daith. Flyting was the sport of argumentative scholars in the middle ages , a kind of civilised slanging match :-

Quo Life, the warld is mine,
The flooers and trees, they're aa my ain,
I am the day an the sunshine,
Quo life the warld is mine.

Quo Daith, the warld is mione,
Your lugs are deef, your een are blin
Your flooers maun dwine in my bitter win
Quo Daith, the world is mine.

Quo Life, the warld is mine,
I hae saft win's an healin rain
Aipples I hae an breid and wine
Qui life, the warld is mine.

Quo Daith, the warld is mine,
Whit sterts in dreid gangs doon in pain,
Bairns wantin breid are makin mane,
Quo Daith, the warld is mine.

Quo Life, the warld is mine,
Your deidly wark, I ken it fine,
There's maet on earth for ilka wean,
Quo life, the warld is mine.

Quo Daith, the warld is mine,
Your silly sheaves crine in my fire,
My worm keeks in your barn an byre,
Quo Daith, the warld is mine.

Quo Life, the warld is mine,
Dule on your een! Ae galliard hert
Can ban tae hell your blackest airt
Quo Life, the warld is mine.

Quo Daith, the warld is mine.
Your rantin hert in duddies braw
He winna lows my preeson waa,
Quo Daith, the warld is mine.

Quo Life, the warld is mine.
Though ye bigg preesons o marble stane
Hert's love ye canna presson in,
Quo Life, the warld is mine.

Quo Daith, the warld is mine.
I hae dug a grave and dug it deep
For war and the pest will gar ye sleep,
Quo Daith, the warld is mine.

Quo Life, the warld is mine.
An open grave is a furrow syne,
Yell no keep my seed frae faain in,
Quo Life, the warld is mine.

With a voice like that, the Northern Muse is surely alive and well and ready for the 21st century.