Carl MacDougall (2006) Scots the Language of the People.

Posted by celticman on Tue, 30 Jan 2018

This anthology of Scottish writers, illustrated by their poetry or prose, was a TV series. I’d quite like to have seen it. I’m not sure how it would have worked, off the page, but no matter. The piece that stuck a real chord with me, was from someone I’d never heard of James Kennedy ‘The Highland Crofter’ (below). It was a lament for the Highland Clearances. Kennedy, a blacksmith and evicted crofter left Loch Tay and settled in Doune, Canada. Scottish history you might think, but with Scotland’s Oxfam revealing that the richest 1% in our wee country have more wealth than the bottom 50% and the very poorest are pilloried for being poor and feckless, treated as subhuman, less valuable than sheep, I ask myself what has really changed. Those that owned the land own the people on the land, as they do now, but they have mortgaged other’s lives in new ways. The answer comes from Blind Harry’s description of ‘The Wallace’ and what it is to be fully human.

Woundis he had many divers place,

Of riches he keepit no proper thing:

Give as he wan, like Alexander the king.

 

The Highland Crofter  by James Kennedy.

Frae Kenmore to Ben More

The land is a’ the Marquis’s;

The mossy howes, the heathery knowe

An’ like bonnie park is his;

The bearded goats, the towsie stots,

An’ a’ the braxie carcasses;

Ilk crofter’s rent, ilk tinker’s tent,

An ilka collie’s bark is his;

The muir-cock’s craw, the piper’s blaw,

The ghillies hard day’s wark is his;

From Kenymore tae Ben More

The warld is a’ the Marquis’s.

 

The fish that swim, the birds that skim,

The fir, the ash, the birk is his;

The castle ha’ sae big and braw,

Yon diamond crusted dirk is his;

The roofless hame, a burning shame,

The factor’s dirty wark is his;

The poor folk vexed, the lawyer’s text,

Yon smirking legal shark is his;

From Kenmore to Ben More

The world is a’ the Marquis.

 

But near, mair near, God’s voice we hear

The dawn as weel’s the dark is his;

The poet’s dream, the patriot’s theme,

The fire that light the mirk is His

They clearly show God’s mills are slow

But sure, the handiwork is His;

And in His grace our hope we place,

Fair Freedom sheltering ark is His;

The men that toil should own the soil,

A note as clear as the lark is this;

Breadabane’s land –the fair, the grand –

Will no’ aye the Marquis’s.

 

Comments

Submitted by Ray Schaufeld on

Carl Macdougall is unavailable on the Devon Library Catalogue so I have taken a punt on 'the lights below' and my used Amazon copy should be plopping through my letterbox tomorrow.

One Scottish poetry anthology which may be much more findable in Scotland(!) than down 'ere is Radical Renfrew ed Tom Leonard. Comprises poetry written by people living mainly in Paisley in the 150 years leading up to WW1. Most had day jobs, a minister, a pedlar, a man seeking his fortune in the Australian outback and a self-employed lady piano teacher who migrated to Canada...Local newspapers used to have a 'poets corner' which was open to anyone who was up for it. IMO the word 'radical' is used 'creatively' - the editor has simply included anything he enjoyed reading. The diversity of mood and topic is impressive - the Scots have always had a grounded notion that we can put anything we like into a poem.smiley

Submitted by celticman on

I'm of that opinoon too Elsie, poetry is what I like and radical comes from the end of The Grapes of Wrath in which the pickers are labelled communist for daring to want enough money to live on. 

 

Submitted by mickleinapickle on

I'd like to have caught the program too. I'll have a bit of search. I think the % difference between rich and poor is much the same as it was back then. Sad old world still.

 

Submitted by celticman on

end of 2nd world war to the start of the 70s we tugged them back a bit, but then the bastards started robbing us again. We lost hte propaganda war. 

 

Submitted by airyfairy on

This one rang a bell with me, celtic, though I've no idea where I might have come across it, but the refrain of 'the Marquis's' sounded familiar.  You're right, there is nothing you can't put in a poem.  In a totally different context, the transfer of public spaces in towns and cities to the ownership of private/corporate landowners, with subsequent loss of rights of assembly, protest etc, is something that is being slipped by us before people notice.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Submitted by Ray Schaufeld on

I have now started on Carl Mac's fiction, 'the lights below' I often start off by reading a book fast to get to the plot. This left me confused. Who was related to whom, and when they change address from one Glasgow Street to another where are they now. I felt this worked - it mirrored the randomness of broken lives in a big city which is falling to bits around the edges and possibly has social and infrastructural cracks faultlining the centre. The confusion also mirrors the underlying undercertainty of human life.

'Getting into it' now. Lots of lovely bits of info put into Orlando's mouth or thrown in by the person telling the whole story and a solidity to places and persons along with the constant changes. A lot to this book and I like it.smiley

Submitted by celticman on

haven't read it elsie, reading Carl's novel  stone over water. (we are skippng the years like a stone over water)