Intertwined and impenetrably linked to Scottish culture, poetry has a long and distinguished history in Scotland. And it’s a history that’s continuing to this day – Edinburgh was recently named the world’s first UNESCO City of Literature, the publishing industry is thriving, the country has more literature festivals per capita than any other, and there’s at least a dozen spoken word monthly nights in Glasgow and Edinburgh alone which are frequented by a plethora of experienced and budding poets.

This new generation of Scottish poetry is certainly alive and well, carrying on rich literary traditions of old. However these days you’re more likely to find these modern-day versifiers using hashtags and laptops rather than quills and parchment.

Harry Giles performs in Edinburgh, January 2013. Photo by Chris Scott via The STANZA Blog.

Meet Harry Giles, 27, an Edinburgh-based poet, producer and performance artist. He’s the proud author of two poetry publications, performs regularly in England and Scotland, and is something of a luminary in the Scottish poetry slam scene – winning the UK Student Slam in 2008 followed by the BBC Slam in 2009. I first encountered him at the BBC Slam during last years Fringe festival, where his ranted, passionate ode to Scottishness entitled Brave grabbed me by the ears and demanded my attention.

I sing
o
a Scotland
whit

wadna ken workin class authenticity gin hit cam reelin aff an ile rig douned six pints o Tennent’s n glasst hit in the pus,
   whit it wadna
      by the way;

o google Scotland,
   o laptop Scotland,
      o a Scotland sae dowf on bit-torrentit HBO drama series n DLC packs fer paistapocalyptic RPGs that hit disna ken hits gowk fae hits gadjie;

- Excerpt from Brave.

Harry is one of only a handful of young poets writing and performing in Scots – one of three native languages spoken in Scotland; predominantly in the lowlands, Shetland and Orkney. He grew up immersed in a mixture of Orcadian Scots and English on the tiny island of Westray, part of the Orkney Islands, just off the northern-most tip of the Scottish mainland.

If you, like me, assumed that Orkney was Gaelic speaking, you’re not alone – it’s an assumption that is something of a hot issue amongst Orcadians. Gaelic never had a significant impact on Orkney. Instead a form of Norse introduced by the vikings, called Norn, became the spoken language before Orcadian Scots. You can still see bits of the language around to this day – Westray and many others of Orkney’s islands end in the suffix ‘ay‘, which is Norse for ‘island’.

With Celtic culture so prevalent in defining the image of Scotland both here and abroad, this different kind of Scotland, where things are more Norse than Celt is a theme that pops up in Harry’s poetry. “Scandinavian culture is very influential in Orkney. The place names, peoples names, even the architecture. It kind of feels half Scottish, half Scandinavian. And it’s even more so on Shetland.”

Along with identifying with this different type of Scottishness, Harry was born in London, but his family moved to Orkney when he was two. At that time in Westray, the Giles family were one of the only ‘incomer’ families, the Orkney term for outsiders who have adopted the isles as their home. “I have no feelings of home towards England, I’ve only had feelings of home towards Scotland. So I’ve always had this doubleness where Orkney is my only home but I don’t quite belong either.”

Visa Wedding by Harry Giles

This mash of English/Orcadian/Scottish identity makes good fodder for poetry, with Harry’s 2012 publication of Visa Wedding acting as a kind of therapy, addressing and resolving these questions about himself:

Listen, hit’s semple:

in Orkney I’m English;
in England I’m Scottish;
in Scotland, Orcadian–

this glib-gabbit, mony-littit tongue
snacks at identity as tho hit wis
a gollach piecie sappit wi
the sweet-n-soor o BELONG.

- Excerpt from Visa Wedding #1.

His love of Scots came from the sounds and rhythms, and the way it feels to speak. “When I’m writing in Scots, I’m often digging out words from my memory that have fallen off my tongue as I’ve lived in St. Andrews, London and Edinburgh. They’re words from Orkney that I knew in my childhood and used in my childhood but never identified with enough to keep using and have lost over the years. So I’m recovering a lot of those words, and recovering a part of my own identity which is Scottish and not Scottish at the same time.”

“Even as a written language, you can’t get away from how Scots sounds. It’s impossible to write without thinking about the speaking of it possibly because of the tradition of Scots literature which is so connected to speaking. So I really like that aspect of it. Something that people say to me now is that they look at my Scots poem on the page, and they have no idea what it says, and then I’ll speak it and it becomes immediately intelligible. And that’s really interesting to me.”

The status of Scots as a language is a hotly contested topic, with some claiming it’s merely a dialect, or ancient variety of English; or at the other end of the scale a completely distinct language from English, in much the same way that Norwegian is closely linked yet vastly different to Danish. Harry’s view is that what matters is where people can be understood by each other.

“If somebody in Glasgow can’t be understood by somebody in the East End of London, talking the way they would in those places, then I think it’s pretty sensible to say that they’re separate languages.”

In the 2011 Scottish census, 1.54 million Scots (30%) indicated they were able to speak Scots, however an earlier study of the language by the Scottish Government found that 64% of respondents “don’t really think of Scots as a language”. This may be because of Scots reputation as slang, as for many years the language was discouraged by officialdom and schools. Today Scots is promoted and fostered, but it’s nowhere near as threatened and in decline as Scotland’s other traditional language, Gaelic, with only 58,000 respondents in the 2011 census indicating they could speak fluently.

A leading light of the Scots Renaissance, Hugh MacDiarmid.

“There are also different type of Scots, not just regional variants, but what I would call vernacular Scots, which is the way that people actually speak. So if you go into a pub in Leith you will actually hear people speaking in what I call the (Leith Scots) vernacular. There’s also a sort of literary Scots which is not necessarily how people speak.” Harry explained that during the 50s there was an active reclamation known as the Scots Renaissance by people like Hugh MacDiarmid and Hamish Henderson who were deliberately working to preserve and recreate the language.

“Folk like MacDiarmid would read ancient Scots dictionaries and travel around and collect words from people, and then construct what he called a ‘syncretic’, as in synthesised Scots from that, taking the words the people spoke and making a literary language out of them.”

“And most poets writing in English are writing in a kind of English that’s nothing like people speak, ya know. So I’m writing mostly in literary Scots, in a sort of constructed Scots, rather than the Scots that people speak.”

While Harry agrees that cultural dominance can threaten and water down traditional language, he’s skeptical of some of the recent efforts employed to promote Scots. “It’s a very optimistic utopian project to imagine that we might have a complete body of work that’s written only in Scots. There’s too many different types and regional variants of Scots, and I’m really resistant to the idea of there being a monolithic Scots that has one form of spelling and one form of words. I’m much more interested in people writing new work and working in new ways in Scots than I am in reading a translation of Asterix in Scots.”

Harry is currently writing about 50% of his work in Scots, and said he can usually tell straight away when writing a poem if it will be in English or Scots. However sometimes he bounces a poem between the two languages, or if the poem is about Scotland, then it’s almost always in Scots. Cue what is fast becoming known as his signature piece, Brave, which was written in 2011, just as the Independence debate was starting to heat up.

cadna hink o a grander wey tae end a nite as wi a poke o chips n curry sauce,
   whit chacks the date o Bannockburn on Wikipaedia,
   whit draws chairts on the backs o beermats tae lear ye aboot rifts n glaciation
      n when hit dis hit feels this oorie dunk,
         this undesairvt wairmth
            o inexplicable luve;

- Excerpt from Brave.

“I was thinking a lot about my past, and how I felt about Scotland and was reading a lot of Scots poetry. I wanted to get across something of the contradictions and complexities of Scottish-ness. I wanted to react against the tartan tat vision of Scotland. And even though Orkney is the only home I know I am still an incomer. I wanted to claim Scotland for myself in some way, and also talk about how it is and isn’t mine at the same time.”

“And I like being funny, and I like being angry, and I like being ranty, so I just wrote the longest rant that I could in Scots, about what Scotland meant to me. And what pissed me off and what I liked about Scotland. It’s kind of like my state of the nation poem; as if a wee scrote like me could write a state of the nation!”

The poem has gone on to have a life of its own, being featured on podcasts, websites, and in the Scottish literary journal New Writing Scotland. He thinks the poem gained significance as it came out just at the right time, when all across the land people are questioning their identity, just before the looming independence referendum this September.

“Literature and poetry in particular are quite central to Scotland’s self understanding. Poetry and folk music are our art forms. There are poems carved on the walls of Scottish parliament, so it definitely has a place in our political discourse. So I do feel like artists are central to the way Scotland constructs and presents itself.”

Oam by Harry Giles

Post-Brave and Visa Wedding, Harry says his writing has moved on, and he’s not writing as much about Scotland as a whole these days. His second publication Oam was the result of a five month residency at Govanhill Baths in Glasgow, with proceeds from the sale helping the project reopen as a community swimming pool and well-being centre. The poems are all written in contemporary Scots and describe the baths and their incredible history.

“(Writing Oam) was quite nice because I was writing in Scots intensely, but I wasn’t writing about Scotland. I was just writing about this one place. So I’m less interested in the big questions of Scotland at the moment, in poetry, and more interested in local stuff.”

As his body of work moves and evolves, Harry says the reason he talks so much about Orkney now is because he has an urge to go back to discover more of that part of himself. “The Scots that I write is influenced by the Scots that’s spoken in the lowlands, it’s very influenced by urban Scots, partly because that’s what i’m living in now, and partly because that has dominated the Scots literary tradition. I have an ambition to spend much longer in Orkney digging to try and get more of the Orcadian Scots into my own writing, and that would involve investigating Norn a bit more. I’m also interested in the Viking forms of poetry and how this has influenced Scots poetry. But that’s more of a long term ambition.”

As Harry’s work expands and evolves, he’s the latest in a long line of innovative writers who have been inspired and shaped by Scotland and Scottishness. As the country considers its future, Harry’s body of work mashes literary traditions of old and new, providing a pertinent and contemporary review of Scotland’s identity.

—–

You can read more about Harry here, and listen to a recording of Brave here.

The post An Ode to Scotland – Meeting a Modern-Day Scots Poet appeared first on ScotClans | Scottish Clans.

Scotland’s Gaelic TV channel BBC Alba is hoping Bannan will appeal to a wider audience.

Here’s some great news for my fellow small-screen junkies – a new Scottish series will soon be hitting our screens, filmed entirely in Gaelic and influenced by cult-hit Breaking Bad. Filming of Bannan (trans. The Ties That Bind) has recently begun on the Isle of Skye, with three pilot episodes commissioned by BBC Alba.

Bannan follows the story of Mairi Macdonald, who returns to the island for a funeral having left eight years earlier, and rediscovers the emotional ties that bind her there. The series will be directed by River City actor Tony Kearney and if successful up to 20 episodes per year could be produced. The latest annual report for BBC Alba identified original drama as something that was lacking on the channel.

Chris Young, who produced E4 comedy The Inbetweeners, is working with screenwriter Chrisella Ross and Kearney on the series, and said the soap will be made on a low budget. Mr Young, a Gaelic speaker who lives on Skye, said he wanted Bannan to have the feel and structure of the Danish political drama Borgen or the US crime series Breaking Bad.

“We’re keen to do something contemporary and I think we want to bring a drama in Gaelic to a firmly 21st century audience,” he said. “We want to talk about 21st century Gaels, who are of course living in 21st century Scotland.”

He added that the drama departed from any previous Gaelic productions by being immersed in the language from start to finish. “We originated the script in Gaelic, and I think the big step forward with this is director Tony Kearney directed his actors in Gaelic. And we have a crew that is Gaelic. I think that is revolutionary.”

In other Scottish language news, the latest results from the 2011 Census have revealed the decline in Gaelic speakers in Scotland has slowed. The 2001 Census results recorded an 11% drop in speakers, while the new figures suggest a 1.2% fall from 59,000 to 58,000. The results also showed a 0.1% increase in the number of Gaelic speakers aged under 20.

The Scottish Government called the results ‘encouraging’ and said their investment in the language was paying off. Alasdair Allan, minister for Scotland’s languages, said: “While the census shows a slight fall overall, we can take real encouragement from the growth in Gaelic speakers under the age of 20… Our efforts to support Gaelic and create more learning opportunities for all ages has also significantly slowed down the decline in the overall numbers of speakers, many of whom tend to be in older age groups.”

The Census also revealed that 1.5 million people regularly speak Scots at home. Michael Hance, director of the Scots Language Centre, said Scots had suffered from “centuries of neglect”.

He said: “It is good to see figures being produced for the first time on the number of those speaking Scots and now that we have these figures we are calling on the Scottish government to draw up a Charter for Scots outlining how the language and its dialects can be supported more effectively… The data gathered during the 2011 census means that we can now begin to plan how to support communities of Scots speakers and to encourage those communities to value their language and pass it on to future generations.”

The post Move Over Breaking Bad, Here Comes Bannan appeared first on ScotClans | Scottish Clans.

From Ayrshire, the land of Robert Burns, across the Central Belt – through Glasgow, Edinburgh and Fife to Dundee – accents are variations on the Lowlands Scots Dialect. There are those who will argue that Scots is a language of its own, separate from English; and while I see this, to me it simply a tongue that developed from the same root and a variation on a theme. Even those who claim to speak it this is not what was taught to them at school. Scotland has her own independent educational system, which is broad-based, and the national curriculum imposes Maths and English as compulsory subjects to the age of 16. The English taught is that of Received Pronunciation or ‘Proper English’ (whatever that might be). Thus, ‘English’ is the written language of Scotland, despite its distinct vernacular.

Lowland Scots has several distinct features both in dialect and accent – the rolling of the Rs, and the famous Glottal Stop: “Scawe-land” rather than Scot-land, “Buh-ur” rather than but-er, and so on. The ‘helpful vowel’ or Svarabhakti is often employed – wur-um and wur-uld for worm and world. These and a large range of words unused elsewhere in the English speaking world (e.g. – ken for know; thrawn for stubborn; drouthy for thirsty; etc.) make the accent instantly recognisable – and account for the stereotype. Outwith the Central Belt, the diversity of the accent becomes even more pronounced, with striking differences in both diction and enunciation.

Perhaps the most striking of Scottish accents is that of the Doric, spoken essentially in Aberdeenshire. The term ‘Doric’ is a reference to the rough speech of the Spartan people (to Athenian ears), and came to mean ‘rustic’ or ‘rural’. One of the most noticeable differences from Lowland Scots is the use of ‘f’ instead of ‘whi’ in words like what, who (pronounced fit and fa’ respectively). Doric speakers share most of the dialectal words used further south, but have plenty others of their own – ‘louns’ for boys, and ‘queans’ for girls being well known examples.

The small village of Auldearn near Nairn is one of Scotland’s linguistic boundaries, where the Doric of the east switches to the lilt and nasal accent of the Inverness area – itself an extension of the Highland dialects of Strathspey, the Great Glen and Easter Ross. The change is not just in phonology, but in grammar and structure. In many ways the language constructs of Highland English mirror that of the Southeast of England, and the Oxbridge world. This is due to the language being first introduced and then forced upon Gaelic speakers over the course of the last 200 years, and more importantly since the Education Act (Scotland) 1872. When a new language enters an area and is systematically taught one generation on another from textbooks, then the formula tends to stick – this is the reason why Inverness is often quoted as having the ‘Best Spoken English in the World’.

As you continue west towards the Hebrides (but also in pockets like Perthshire), where Gaelic is still spoken or was until relatively recently then the English begins to adopt idiosyncrasies from the mother language; which, as a Celtic tongue is arranged in a very different way. As well as more aspiration in the speech, and grammatical constructions which mimic Gaelic, such as “I am after buying a newspaper”, there is the strange phenomenon of the ‘Gaelic Gasp’.

The ‘gasp’ is a sharp intake of breath signifying agreement, often accompanied by an ‘aye’, or a nodding of the head. This breathy acquiescence isn’t restricted to the Highlands, but can be found across the North Atlantic including the Faeroes, Iceland and Norway – which suggests a Viking origin to this linguistic oddity. It also gives us insight to the varieties of English spoken across Scotland: from the sing-song lilt of the islands to the barking gruff of the Lothians. A thousand years ago an Anglo-Saxon (or early English) language was spoken in southeast; Welsh languages dominated both the southwest and central Scotland (Briton and Pictish were part of this family); in the west, beyond the mountains the Picts of Argyll spoke Gaelic; and, in the far north Norse was spoken. Each would contribute to accents and dialects that would emerge in their areas – but why English?

In 1070 King Malcolm III married Margaret Ætheling, an Anglo-Saxon Princess fleeing the conquest of England by William of Normandy. She was a dominant woman, thorough in her religious convictions: establishing abbeys and influencing the Scottish court. She made sure that ‘English’ became the ‘natural’ language of diplomacy. Her son, David I, introduced the feudal system into Scotland – including Royal Burghs (towns with specific trading rights). The linga-franca of these new towns was English: David’s first language. The nobility followed, and by the necessity of trade, so ultimately did the farmers. Formed from a more antiquated Anglo-Saxon, this version of English would evolve into Scots. Words such as ‘kirk’ for a church, or ‘gate’ for a street hint at the older Germanic root; now lost in modern English. This accounts for the origins of the Scots dialect; where the accent differs depends on the level of Celtic/Norse influence beyond adoption.

A second revolution saw the assimilation of ‘Proper English’ – the Reformation of 1560. While a truly Scottish event, the influence of the English Reformation played a part. There, bibles were already printed in English, and while there were significant vocabulary differences, most Scots could read and understand them. The Church of Scotland decided not to bother printing bibles in the vernacular, and so from then on English became the ‘written’ expression of the language. This was cemented in 1603 when James VI of Scotland became the king of England.

In the Highlands, the bible was actually translated into Gaelic, but inroads are long in the making. The decline of Gaelic is well documented and the reasons legion; and the effect on the language remains to this day. The Gaidhealtachd, the Gaelic speaking areas of Scotland, have for a thousand years been receding against the never-ending tsunami of English. There are milestones along the way, and we should be thankful that the language exists far less thrives, in the Hebrides. The Highland line still provides a major boundary, such as Auldearn, or Dunkeld – where the age-old usage of English meets the recently taught variety in the traditional Gaelic lands. Yet, whatever the origin, whatever the accent, the Scottish dialect is vibrant and truly fascinating.

This blog was written by David McNicoll, owner of Highland Experience USA – which specialises in Vacation Packages and Tours of Scotland

Link – www.highlandexperience-usa.com

The post The Gaelic Gasp & The Glottal Stop appeared first on ScotClans | Scottish Clans.

Driech as in its a driech day ootside
yer erse is oot the windae….you are revealing your bottom
boak . to be sick, a dry boak to wretch
bonglie – Highlanders call tourists ‘Bonglies’
Cushie meaning pigeon (From Lanark)
Gutties meaning Trainers (From Lanark)
Clatty bint …. dirty girl
awa an boil yer heed, ya baw heeded, potlicker, that’s pure dead brilliant …. is very Glasgwegian
I was dead crabbit, cos the weather was dreech!
guay strangy bairn… meaning babies nappy needs changed!
“auld strangy wifie” means “urine soaked old lady” use quite regularly re older people, never taken as offensive just observation
“the snow was so deep it was up to my oxters” The snow was so deep it was up to my armpits, “ive got an itchy oxter”
jakie
gadgie
wee swally
crabbit
waldies …… wellies
Radge
Bawbag
eejit
gomeril
stumor
Shoogle
peched ‘i am fair peched oot’
haud your wheest which means quite
giving it laldy
glaikit
scunnered
stramash as in “a stramash in the goalmouth”
getting in a “fankle”
aye
Ottie ‘I went out in the wind and me hair’s ottie’
Keech ‘Eech feech hen’s keech tolie bum fart’
Bowfin ‘Yer feet are bowfin’
Stoori Nash ‘I was late for the bus and I had to stoori nasj up the road’
Numpty
jaked
steamin
Skooby ‘dont have a skooby’
Choob ‘what a choob’ or ‘tube’
bisom ‘ya wee bisom’ which means difficult women, spoilt bratty girl
baltic cold
jobbies poo
peely wally
Blootered
awa an bile yer heid
I dinnae ken – don’t know
Blether – inane chat
It’s just as guid a’ Paisley Patter
cludgie
bonglie
greetin’ crying

Also some modern ones:
My friend’s son uses the chatroom abbreviation: kwam – as in “ken what ah mean?”

Please help us and tell us some more – keep our crazy Scottish words alive and use them as often as you can!

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