STARN: Scots Teaching and Resource Network
A Question of Language
In the ongoing debate about the Scots language, folk are aye threipin on aboot a standard literary Scots, as well as a standard spoken Scots. Neither of them exist at the moment, although they did in the past. The argument today is about how they should be reclaimed. One school of thought looks to the literature that has come down to us to form the basis of a spoken language, superior to dialect, that would be understood from the Borders to Buchan and beyond.. Another group sees the living forms of Scots we have inherited as the starting point for encouraging a Standard Scots to evolve, as presumably it did in the past. It was from the spoken Scots of their day that the Medieval Makars evolved their literary language. These warring factions seem to me to have missed a point that is fairly obvious to anyone who has studied both language and literature, whether in Scots, English, American or anything else.
Here are two quotations to compare. The first is from John Galt's "The Last of the Lairds" and describes a man in thirties :-
"Dr Lounlans was one of those ornaments of the Scottish church, by whom her dignity, as shown by the conduct and intelligence of her ministers, is maintained as venerable in public opinion, as it was even when the covenanted nation, for the sake of their apostolic bravery and excellence, broke the iron arm of both the Roman and Episcopal Pharaoh. He was still a young man, being only in his thirty third year; but patient study, and the gift of a disceming spirit, had enriched him with a wisdom almost equal in value to the precepts and knowledge of experience."
Here is another paragraph about a man of the same age from Ron Butlin's critically-acclaimed novel
"The Sound of my Voice ":-
"You were at a party when your father died - and immediately you were told, a miracle happened. A real miracle. It didn't last, of course, but was convincing enough for a few minutes. Then, an hour later, you took a girl home and forced her to make love. She cried and pleaded with you; even now, her tears are still the nearest you have come to feeling grief at your father's death. You are thirty-four years old; everything that ever happened to you is still happening."
Now what am I talking about ? Both of these paragraphs are written in English, so what has this to do with the debate about literary Scots ? If you consider that one was written in 1826 and the other was written in 1987, you may see the reason for the difference between them, which is that while Galt's paragraph is couched in elegant prose that bears no resemblance to everyday spoken language, Butlin's is written as something you might hear someone say. In fact reading it is very like listening to the writer's voice. Butlin isn't the only present day Scots writer to do this : think of Jeff Torrington and "Swing, Hammer, Swing", think of Alasdair Gray and James Kelman, Liz Lochhead and Dilys Rose, Brian McCabe and Bess Ross, all award-winning writers.
The point I am making is that even the best writers today don't keep a special language for writing in that is remote from everyday speech. That is a thing of the past and those who are exercising themselves in a strenuous pursuit of as "literary Scots", even for poetry, are wasting their time. It's worth remembering when Wordsworth and Coleridge reacted against the poetic diction of the eighteenth century in the Preface to their Lyrical Ballads, aiming rather to write in "the real language of men", Burns had already been doing just that for many years. One of the finest Scots poets of the twentieth century, William Soutar, wrote a good deal of his poetry in the Scots that can still be heard "aside o Craigie Hill."
Sheena Blackhall, native Scots speaker and many times winner of the Scots Language Society's Literature Competition, writes in Aberdeenshire Scots :-
"Jist merriet, Janet McHardie wis bein led roon the guests like a prize heifer, bi her faither, Jeems Cochrane. The guests hid pyed guid siller for the presents - hidna mockit her - was entitled tae gie her the aince-ower. She wis wearin a wee fite hat, clapt abune her lugs like a booed ashet. She passed Kirsty's table wi nae davaul - a shargered scrat o a bride : it nocht merriege and bairns tae beef her oot sa bittie."
Now what more descriptive power and virr could that passage possibly gain from being written in some as yet unevolved literary language ? If we want to write in Scots we should use the rich and varied language we still possess.