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 :-

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":-

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 :-

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.

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

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 :-

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

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

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 :-

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

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              SCOTCH RELIGION          SCOTCH LOVE
Kent his                      Damn                Barely
Faither                       Aa    	          A bargain.

SCOTCH OPTIMISM         SCOTCH PESSIMISM          SCOTCH PASSION
Through a gless              Nae                   Forgot
Darkly                       Gless                 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 :-

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

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