Scotlands Many Voices

Thinking this over – it seems England views Scotland as a north region, like Yorkshire say – rather than a separate country that has centuries old entirely separate history, many ancient traditions and old Celtic ballads and a distinct culture. Before James VI left to become King of England, Scotland had its line of Scottish Kings, from King David and later the Stuart kings. It's really a question of - does Scotland's separate identity matter for the success of the country and for the UK too?

Scotland is one of the oldest countries in Europe. Scotland is also a land of many huge contrasts from the great imposing drama of the highlands; the misty heathers and fast running streams; the green and cultivated lands of the north east; the quiet beauties of St Andrews and Fife and the coastal walks; and the charm of the borders.  

Alasdair Moffat and Alan Raich in their book, Arts of Resistance write of the destruction of Scottish culture. 
“The wholesale reduction of a culture to tartan tourist clichés. Ian Crichton Smith evoked images of the white streams screaming through the moonlight of the Cullen’s – a permanent scream of protest against all the trivialization of our history that has been foisted upon us.”  

Keeping Scots Alive!; culture, words, art and Music

In the 18^th century after union of Parliament – many poets and others worked diligently to keep Scots and what the Scots believe in, alive...such as Allan Ramsay, Fergusson and Robert Burns.

They felt it was vitally important.

In the 17^th century after Union of the Crowns, the Scottish royal court left Holyrood for London. This was good! It meant all the hangers on left too -  and meant the Thinkers and the Philosophers, were free to voice opinions! The Scottish Enlightenment led Europe. Many great Scottish thinkers left a huge mark on the world.

The poet Hugh MacDiarmid said in his Lost Interview, ""Lord [Harold] Acton, the historian, has said that no small nation in the history of the world has had a greater impact on mankind at large than the Scots have had. That influence flowed from the national character which is utterly different from the English. To analyze that national character is to discover the factors comprising our Scottish culture."

*Some Forgotten Scots Heroes – Thomas Muir, George Hamilton, James Clerk Maxwell, (Maxwell is the greatest physicist ever – and yet it was only in 2008 that a statue of him was unnveiled in Edinburgh. Odd really considering)

James Clerk Maxwell

*Scottish Artists – Arthur Melville, Rennie Mackintosh, Margaret MacDonald, Glasgow Boys, Henry Raeburn, 

*Great Scottish Poets – Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson, James MacPherson, Robert Burns, Hugh MacDiarmid,

*Scottish Writers – Walter Scott, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Iain Banks,

Alasdair Gray, Irvine Welsh, Janice Gallowy, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Nan Sheperd, George MacDonald,

*Scottish Scientists  - James Watt, Alexander Graham Bell, James Chrichton, Alexander Fleming, John Napier, John Leslie, Joseph Black, James Hutton, John Leslie, James Clerk Maxwell.

(I'm ashamed and saddened that growing up in Edinburgh I learned practically nothing of Scottish history, culture and the arts. I used to walk down the Royal Mile and wonder about all the history here... I am now teaching myself.

‘To be truly internationalism, we must first be nationalists.’ Hugh MacDiarmid.

The sky in Scotland changes with often rapid speed – when the wind gets up one moment and is suddenly still and clear the next. Then a sharp wind catches us as the skies darken and heavy clouds roll over and there will be a sudden heavy shower as we hurry for cover and wait for the weather to shift and for some warm rays to descend and we are grateful.

The dark and light of our weather.

 

Scottish Women Poets & Writers

 Over the centuries it is the women of Scotland who passed down the oral stories and folk ballads. Most histories were told in poem form.  There were Oral Folk Poets; Ballad singing and Song composition.  Here are a few Scottish Women Poets, we never hear of – strangely. I am certain there must be many more! 

When students study literature – it is the literature of men that is studied.  Many wonder – where are the women writers? 18^th century Scottish culture was transitional and interactive with regard to both oral and written literature.

**Poet Jenny Little

Little was born in 1759, the same year as Burns. She was also a servant to Mrs Dunlop, Burn’s patron. She was the daughter of a farm worker and as a servant to a local clergyman, she had received a good education. She developed a love of reading and became a local poet.  She wrote in both Scots and English as Burns did too. She even wrote an ‘Epistle to Mr Burns. ‘

Because of their class both Burns and Little struggled to be taken seriously. Burns was the ‘Heaven taught ploughman’ and Little was the ‘Scotch Milkmaid’ poet.  She came out with a Poetry Collection in 1792. She is studied in North American universities as significant in the study of 18^th century studies, while she is mostly untaught in Scotland.  She wrote of gender, class and nation.

**Lady Anne Bernard

She was from a noble family of Fife Scotland, born 1750 and wrote the well known ballad ‘Auld Robin Gray’. She lived in Georgian society during the Scottish enlightenment. To reward the nobility of Edinburgh a grand new town was built.

The Scottish aristocracy sold out. Her family were the Lindsay’s of Balcarres and these families carried the Union flag around the globe and helped to shape Britain’s empire. Her father said, “You were born after the Union, Scotland is no more and never likely to revive.”

Was it so great though? Of her 8 brothers, 4 entered the army and 2 went to sea and one joined the East India co. Three died in different corners of the world and a fourth spent years in a Mysore dungeon. Eventually Bernard moved to London, married at 42 and went to live in the Cape of Good Hope.

**Willa Ewina Muir

Willa was a writer and poet, born 1890 – 1970. She and her husband Edwin Muir were part of the Montrose Scottish Renaissance between the great Wars. The Muirs were part of the “restless intellectual group of writers and thinkers” in 1920-30s active during the Renaissance of Montrose along with the poet Hugh MacDiarmid.

Born Wilhemina Anderson in Montrose of Shetlandic parents (unlike her husband Edwin who did not attend secondary or higher education) Willa earned a 1st class degree in Classics from University of St Andrews in 1910. She taught languages before marrying Edwin 1919. For 40 years the couple travelled and worked in Europe before their five years at Newbattle, and went from there to Edwin’s post as Norton Professor of Literature at Harvard University in the United States.

Much of her work explores feminism, gender & the position of women of 1920-30s and is said to contain “perceptive comments of the patriarchal world she existed in”. There has been a recent re-evaluation of her published and unpublished work, including Aileen Christianson’s 2007 Moving in Circles: Willa Muir’s Writings. 1996 Imagined Selves: Willa Muir and many translations with her husband and under the pseudonym ‘Agnes Neill Scott’

Her publications include: Women: An Inquiry, Imagined Corners, Mrs Ritchie, Mrs Grundy in Scotland, Living with Ballads, Belonging

Scottish Poets

The stories we tell and pass on through our songs and poets inform and illuminate who we are, how we wish others to see us and how we view our future and past. 

I studied higher 'English' at school and also at college in Edinburgh. I am sad that I never learnt of Burn's story or of other Scottish stories or poets. Has Scottish history, arts and music been suppressed the past decades? Of course it has! - and often deliberately.  Robert Crawford mentions how the establishment sought to 'tone down' Robert Burns.

** THE SCOTTISH VISIONARIES

In the 1930s there was a Scottish Enlightenment that happened in Montrose led by poet Hugh MacDiarmid. He is one of Scotland's leading contemporary poets and a founding member of Scotland's national party.

*Liz Lochhead, Scottish poet, playwright, translator and broadcaster. She has been the Scottish Makar  2011 - 2016, or National Poet of Scotland. She is a great character and I have met her and taken her photo at Edinburgh International book festival (EIBF).

* James MacPherson

I read of the Ossian poems and their effect on Robert Burns. When I went to research this blog I was astonished at his story! (more on another blog) The author of the epic poems of Ossian - supposedly about the Celtic hero Fingal (more later). At this time in the late 18th century there was a rebirth in romantic thinking which led to the Romantic movement and had a big impact on all the arts in Europe. Macpherson tapped into this revival and had huge international success. Today most accept that he used poetic licence to create his own Celtic hero. 

According to the clan Donald site Fingal of the Ossian poems was based on the Greatest Hero of the Celtic Race -  (Somerled) Somhairlidh mac Gillebride mhic Gilledomnan.  (and not an ancient Irish hero as some made out at all).  Did Macpherson equate the Scottish hero to Irish legend, in order to have his works published at all? At this time, after the Jacobite 45 wars, Highland culture was being severely repressed (the punishment was Transportation) Poetic license in other words - and one of the beauties of poetry - that we can express ideas, concepts and beliefs we cannot so clearly in prose.   The Scottish Highlands suddenly became a place of great beauty and romance - rather than one of wild warriors and hardships.

*Robert Burns.  Then there is of course our very famous national bard , the incomparable Robert Burns, who is revered and admired the world over. Especially in Russia, where they value the great emotional sweep that Burns expresses in his poetry.  In the footnotes to his first Book of Poems Mostly in the Scots Dialect 1786, Burns mentionedcxccc Ossian and how he too wanted to be a national bard. After this other countries, such as England, also wanted to have a national poet.

SCOTTISH POETS

Robert Burns, Robert Fergusson, Edwin Morgan, Walter Scott, James MacPherson,

Hamish Henderson, Frances Wright, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, Liz Lochhead, Hugh MacDiarmid, Jackie Kay, Norman MacCaig, Sorley MacLean .... and more. 

Scottish Writers Museum?

We lack a serious and expansive writers museum in Edinburgh on the scale of Dublin's which is housed in a impressive Georgian mansion -  most of our great writers are not represented properly. It is a massive disgrace. I believe there is talk of housing a new decent sized Scottish Writers Museum perhaps near the Scottish National Library in George IV bridge?   The present one is in Lady Stairs Close up a winding narrow staircase has poor access. And only houses three Scottish writers - Burns, Scott and Stevenson.   

I heard an Irish lady remark at Celtic - when I mentioned the Scottish Writers museum and the wonderful Irish writers museum she remarked that Scotland had few great writers!  

 Much of Scottish culture has been lost and forgotten - so that the teachers are no longer able to pass on . Unless we stand on the shoulders of greatness we are as nothing. 

The Scottish Visionaries.  One of the highly interesting aspects of the SNP and Scottish nationalism is that it is primarily inclusive and outward looking.  Is this because it was started by visionary poets - Robert Burns,  Hugh MacDiarmid and others?

What is civic nationalism?

It is not about any national superiority or about being narrow and inward looking - as compared to other right wing nationalist parties. Rather it is about our past stories. 

Scotland’s Makar Liz Lochhead

Scotland’s Makar poet Liz Lochhead has joined the SNP! Wonderful all these Scottish writers, poets, musicians and authors who back Scottish independence! : ))  This photo was of Liz at Edinburgh Book festival 2014.

She's been told as Scottish makar she should speak for all Scots and have kept quiet on her views. Must admit I'd have thought her religion or politics are personal. As with historian Tom Devine, I have wondered some artists feel intimidated to keep quiet on Scottish independence. Liz said she is about 'the language of life and the dance of words.'