scottish

71d

“In story after story, epicene young men, difficult children, or wild beasts set out to shake up the stifling complacency around them”

Hector Hugh Munro (1870–1916) – Saki – was born #OTD, 18 Dec, in Myanmar. Although born in the Raj & raised in England, his parents were Scots & he considered himself to be a Scot, too. Fatema Ahmed looks at his fierce, funny, & wicked fiction

@bookstodon

1/8

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/43602/untameable-saki

#Scottish #literature #Saki #shortstories #humor #humour #horror #Edwardian

Edited 71d ago

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85d

“What sprang forth from Carlyle’s pen was not a dry account of the French Revolution, but a book brimming with passion and philosophy, one that offered a new style of storytelling that influenced a generation of Victorian writers.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) was born #OTD, 4 Dec. His THE FRENCH REVOLUTION established him as one of the most important social & cultural commentators of his day

🧵

1/7

https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2009/marchapril/feature/the-voracious-pen-thomas-carlyle

#Scottish #literature #Victorian #19thcentury #history #ThomasCarlyle

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71d

Now the ice lays its smooth claws on the sill,
The sun looks from the hill
Helmed in his winter casket,
And sweeps his arctic sword across the sky…

—Edwin Muir, “Scotland’s Winter”
from ONE FOOT IN EDEN (Faber, 1956)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #EdwinMuir #winter

Scotland’s Winter
by Edwin Muir

Now the ice lays its smooth claws on the sill,
The sun looks from the hill
Helmed in his winter casket,
And sweeps his arctic sword across the sky.
The water at the mill
Sounds more hoarse and dull.
The miller’s daughter walking by
With frozen fingers soldered to her basket
Seems to be knocking
Upon a hundred leagues of floor
With her light heels, and mocking
Percy and Douglas dead,
And Bruce on his burial bed,
Where he lies white as may
With wars and leprosy,
And all the kings before
This land was kingless,
And all the singers before
This land was songless,
This land that with its dead and living waits the Judgment Day.
But they, the powerless dead,
Listening can hear no more
Than a hard tapping on the sounding floor
A little overhead
Of common heels that do not know
Whence they come or where they go
And are content
With their poor frozen life and shallow banishment.

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72d

doun riven the tint braith
mawkin scribbles owre the snaw
wee arles o sun-daith
water warstles wechty, slaw …

—Kate Armstrong, “Pantoum fer Winter”
published in A KIST O SKINKLAN THINGS (ASL, 2016)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/a-kist-o-skinlan-things/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #pantoum #Scots #Scotslanguage #winter

Kate Armstrong
Pantoum fer Winter

doun riven the tint braith
mawkin scribbles owre the snaw
wee arles o sun-daith
water warstles wechty, slaw

mawkin scribbles owre the snaw
sternies bou tae the mockrife mune
water warstles wechty, slaw
nou the taid an puddock sloum

sternies bou tae the mockrife mune
houlets hunker saft as haar
nou the taid an puddock sloum
grippit fest in dwinin lair

houlets hunker saft as haar
winter’s nieve is cauld an sterk
grippit fest in dwinin lair
aa maun learn tae dree the mirk

winter’s nieve is cauld an sterk
doun riven the tint braith
aa maun learn tae dree the mirk
wee arles o sun daith

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51d

Creative Conversations – Fidan Nazim Meikle
12 Jan, University of Glasgow, & online – free

Fidan Nazim Meikle writes stories & poems for readers of all ages. Her debut novel, My Name is Samim, inspired by the true story of a young refugee’s courageous journey to safety, is out now from Floris Books

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/creative-conversations-fidan-nazim-meikle-tickets-1977523054690

#Scottish #literature #refugees #ChildrensLiterature #KidLit

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72d

Some December midnight
Christ, lord, lie warm in our byre.
Here are stars, an ox, poverty enough.

—George Mackay Brown, “A Child’s Calendar”
published in FISHERMEN WITH PLOUGHS (Hogarth Press 1971)

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #Christmas #poem #poetry #Orkney

A Child's Calendar
George Mackay Brown

No visitors in January.
A snowman smokes a cold pipe in the yard.

They stand about like ancient women,
The February hills.
They have seen many a coming and going, the hills.

In March Moorfea is littered
With knock-kneed lambs.

Daffodils at the door in April,
Three shawled Marys.
A lark splurges in galilees of sky.

And in May
A russet stallion shoulders the hill apart.
The mares tremble.

The June bee
Bumps in the pane with a heavy bag of plunder.

Strangers swarm in July
With cameras, binoculars, bird books.

He thumped the crag in August,
A blind blue whale.

September crofts get wrecked in blond surges.
They struggle, the harvesters.
They drag loaf and ale-kirn into winter.

In October the fishmonger
Argues, pleads, threatens at the shore.

Nothing in November
But tinkers at the door, keening, with cans.

Some December midnight
Christ, lord, lie warm in our byre.
Here are stars, an ox, poverty enough.

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72d

Scots Whay Hae! Best Crime Fiction 2025 – with Callum McSorley

Alistair Braidwood is joined by award-winning crime writer Callum McSorley to discuss some of the best Scottish crime fiction of 2025, & to take a look at what’s coming in 2026

@bookstodon

https://www.scotswhayhae.com/post/that-was-the-year-that-was-the-best-of-2025-podcasts-crime-fiction

#Scottish #literature #CrimeFiction #podcast

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51d

it wis January
and a gey dreich day
the first day Ah went to the school…

—Liz Lochhead, “Kidspoem/Bairnsang”
published in A CHOOSING: The Selected Poems of Liz Lochhead (Polygon, 2017)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/a-choosing/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #scots #language #MinorityLanguages

Kidspoem/Bairnsang
Liz Lochhead

it wis January
and a gey dreich day
the first day Ah went to the school
so my Mum happed me up in ma
good navy-blue napp coat wi the rid tartan hood
birled a scarf aroon ma neck
pu’ed oan ma pixie an my pawkies
it wis that bitter
said noo ye’ll no starve
gie’d me a wee kiss and a kid-oan skelp oan the bum
and sent me aff across the playground
tae the place Ah’d learn to say
it was January
and a really dismal day
the first day I went to school
so my mother wrapped me up in my
best navy-blue top coat with the red tartan hood
twirled a scarf around my neck
pulled on my bobble-hat and mittens
it was so bitterly cold
said now you won’t freeze to death
gave me a little kiss and a pretend slap on the bottom
and sent me off across the playground
to the place I’d learn to forget to say
it wis January
and a gey dreich day
the first day Ah went to the school
so my Mum happed me up in ma
good navy-blue napp coat wi the rid tartan hood
birled a scarf aroon ma neck
pu’ed oan ma pixie an ma pawkies
it wis that bitter.

Oh saying it was one thing
but when it came to writing it
in black and white
the way it had to be said
was as if you were posh, grown-up, male, English and dead.

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68d

“You are standing in a high, dim stone vault. There is a thick soundlessness, as in a recording studio, or a strongroom.”

—Kathleen Jamie visits Maeshowe chambered cairn at midwinter, for the London Review of Books, 2003

1/5

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v25/n24/kathleen-jamie/into-the-dark

#Scottish #literature #midwinter #solstice #Orkney #archaeology #prehistory #neolithic

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68d

He has gone down into darkness at the wrecked end of the year
And is lying, gaberlunzie, in the needled nest of frost…

—Gerry Cambridge, “Processional at the Winter Solstice”
published in Notes for Lighting a Fire (HappenStance Press 2012)

https://happenstancepress.com/index.php/shop/product/4-notes-for-lighting-a-fire-gerry-cambridge/category_pathway-12

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #midwinter #solstice

Processional at the Winter Solstice
by Gerry Cambridge

He has gone down into darkness at the wrecked end of the year
And is lying, gaberlunzie, in the needled nest of frost.
The arctic thrushes call for him although he cannot hear,

And the worm too understands him in the chilled grip of its dark,
And the ptarmigan in blizzards where no thought is worth a crumb,
And treecreepers in shivering puffs in Wellingtonias’ bark.

Shop windows glint in city lights like ice and sky, but still
No tinsel gifts can touch him, freed to silence like a stone’s;
His face is white as paper’s white in miles-high midnight chill.

He lies as plain as frost-dust where those starving thrushes call,
And his lime and ray-struck armoury could hardly be less small
On the anvil of beginnings in the sun’s gate on the wall.

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70d

Coming up Buchanan Street, quickly, on a sharp winter evening
a young man and two girls, under the Christmas lights –
The young man carries a new guitar in his arms,
the girl on the inside carries a very young baby,
and the girl on the outside carries a chihuahua…

—Edwin Morgan, “Trio”
published in CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2020)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781784109967/centenary-selected-poems/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Glasgow #Christmas #BuchananStreet #EdwinMorgan

Trio
by Edwin Morgan

Coming up Buchanan Street, quickly, on a sharp winter evening
a young man and two girls, under the Christmas lights –
The young man carries a new guitar in his arms,
the girl on the inside carries a very young baby,
and the girl on the outside carries a chihuahua.
And the three of them are laughing, their breath rises
in a cloud of happiness, and as they pass
the boy says, “Wait till he sees this but!”
The chihuahua has a tiny Royal Stewart tartan coat like a teapot-holder,
the baby in its white shawl is all bright eyes and mouth like favours in a fresh sweet cake,
the guitar swells out under its milky plastic cover, tied at the neck with silver tinsel tape and a brisk sprig of mistletoe.
Orphean sprig! Melting baby! Warm chihuahua!
The vale of tears is powerless before you.
Whether Christ is born, or is not born, you
put paid to fate, it abdicates
under the Christmas lights.
Monsters of the year
go blank, are scattered back,
can’t bear this march of three.

– And the three have passed, vanished in the crowd
(yet not vanished, for in their arms they wind
the life of men and beasts, and music,
laughter ringing them round like a guard)
at the end of this winter’s day.

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70d

The NEW SCIENTIST Book Club is reading the science-fiction masterpiece THE PLAYER OF GAMES by Iain M. Banks. In this video, Iain’s friend & fellow author Ken MacLeod discusses everything from how the pair met as teenagers at school to Banks’s literary influences, & even his idea for a final novel set in the universe of the Culture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7OW6A8XCgg

#Scottish #literature #sciencefiction #scifi #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture

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50d

This was the year before the year
that collapsed on us, a roof brought down by snow.
The year of riding through abandoned stations
on the riverside line that never crossed the river
but danced among warehouses, silos and factories (deceased)
beside battleships settling into red mud…

—Pippa Little, “This Was the Year”
published in OVERWINTERING (Carcanet, 2012)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781906188061/overwintering/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

This Was the Year
by Pippa Little

This was the year before the year
that collapsed on us, a roof brought down by snow.
The year of riding through abandoned stations
on the riverside line that never crossed the river
but danced among warehouses, silos and factories (deceased)
beside battleships settling into red mud.
This was the year that, too exhausted to sleep,
I boiled down the pink and ivory and blue of other women’s hands
into a single grey slab. The soap pot next the soup,
fumes of gardenia and bone.
This was the year we were always coming home.
Three steps and a garden where the splayed trike in the frost said
better to have careless love than none at all.
This was the year before the year
I found out that we are fused from lightning, our bodies
maps across which electrical storms flare
and move on. This was the year
extremely far rooftops and lit windows
seen from a plane flying its late night mission
had their glow zapped by pinball fire.
This was the year I closed the door underneath the porch light
and stood out on the first of the three front steps, listening.
Our children’s beds expecting their bodies
to come warm them like small fires
but growing cold with waiting.

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69d

“If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say ‘give them up,’ for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.”

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “A Christmas Sermon”

1/4

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #Christmas

A double-page spread of an ornate layout of Stevenson’s “A Christmas Sermon” – a limited edition with gilded title, rules & initial capitals, by John Henry Nash (San Francisco, 1928)

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69d

“He looks much older than he is, for it is not quite twenty years ago that Johnnie founded the Society for the Abolition of Christmas”

—Muriel Spark, “The Leaf-Sweeper”
in THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES, published by @canongatebooks

1/2

https://canongate.co.uk/books/1371-the-complete-short-stories/

#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #Christmas #shortstory #shortstory #womenwriters #20thcentury

THE LEAF-SWEEPER

Behind the town hall there is a wooded parkland which, towards the end of November, begins to draw a thin blue cloud right into itself; and as a rule the park floats in this haze until mid-February. I pass every day, and see Johnnie Geddes in the heart of this mist, sweeping up the leaves. Now and again he stops, and jerking his long head erect, looks indignantly at the pile of leaves, as if it ought not to be there; then he sweeps on. This business of leaf-sweeping he learnt during the years he spent in the asylum; it was the job they always gave him to do; and when he was discharged the town council gave him the leaves to sweep. But the indignant movement of the head comes naturally to him, for this has been one of his habits since he was the most promising and buoyant and vociferous graduate of his year. He looks much older than he is, for it is not quite twenty years ago that Johnnie founded the Society for the Abolition of Christmas.

Johnnie was living with his aunt then. I was at school, and in the Christmas holidays Miss Geddes gave me her nephew's pamphlet, How to Grow Rich at Christmas. It sounded very likely, but it turned out that you grow rich at Christmas by doing away […]

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69d

Anette Degott’s talk ‘“No Extra Words” – The Scottish Poet Norman MacCaig (1910–1996)’, recorded on 16 December

@litstudies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3OGDm8x6ak

#Scottish #literature #poetry #NormanMacCaig #20thcentury

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1y

Curly Highland cow portrait - handmade acrylic painting.
Have a great day!

See more here:
https://karen-kaspar.pixels.com/featured/curly-highland-cow-portrait-karen-kaspar.html

#cow #highlander #cattle #farm #MastoArt #art #AYearForArt #FediArt #FediGiftShop #artist #arte #InteriorDesign #MastodonArt #ArtistsOnMastodon #TraditionalArt #kunst #contemporaryArt #creativeToots #ArtForSale #handmade #farming #animals #portrait #scottish #animal #painting #schottland

Curly highland cow portrait is a handmade acrylic painting by artist Karen Kaspar.
A shaggy Highland cow with a thick, reddish-brown coat looks directly at the viewer, its long horns extending outward. The background is a solid light blue, contrasting with the textured appearance of the cow's fur.
I painted this portrait in landscape format. This painting is also available in my shop. Here I cropped it to portrait format, so you can choose what best suits your walls.

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28d

It is late January and at last the snow.
I lie back dreaming about Glencoe
as fluent, hungry, dressed in red,
you climb up and over me…

—Andrew Greig, “The Winter Climbing”
Published in Getting Higher: The Complete Mountain Poems (Polygon, 2011)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/getting-higher-2/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #mountains #mountaineering #climbing #winter #Glencoe

The Winter Climbing
Andrew Greig

It is late January and at last the snow.
I lie back dreaming about Glencoe
as fluent, hungry, dressed in red,
you climb up and over me. That passion
claimed the darkest, useless months
for risk and play. You rise
up on me, I rise through you ...

The shadowed face of Aonach Dubh
where Mal first took me climbing
and as we clanked exhausted, happy,
downwards through the dark, I asked
“What route was that?” “Call it
what you want – it’s new.”

You reach the top and exit out;
from way above, your cry comes down.
The rope pulls tight. What shall we call
this new thing we’re about?
These days we live in taking
care and chances. Why name it?
My heart is in my mouth as I shout Climbing ...

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68d

Angus at midwinter
or near as makes no odds –
faint shadows raxed
over fields of dour earth,

every fairmer’s fenceposts
splashed with gold.

—Kathleen Jamie, “Solstice II”
in SELECTED POEMS (Picador 2018

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/kathleen-jamie/selected-poems/9781509882953

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #midwinter #solstice

Solstice II
by Kathleen Jamie

Here comes the sun
summiting the headland – pow!
straight through the windows of the 10.19
– and here's us passengers,
splendid and blinking
like we're all re-born,
remade exactly, and just where we left off:
the students, the toddler, the tattoo'd lass,
the half dozen roustabouts
headed off-shore
cracking more beers
and more jokes.
Angus at midwinter
or near as makes no odds –
faint shadows raxed
over fields of dour earth,

every fairmer's fenceposts
splashed with gold.

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67d

“It was the time of year when things could change their nature. […] And already, my true love said taking my arm, we're past the shortest. Light is shaving the darkness off already, a couple of minutes a day. Have you noticed?”

—from 2008: “Do you call that a Christmas present?” – a short story by Ali Smith

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/ali-smith-do-you-call-that-a-christmas-present-1203321.html

#Scottish #literature #shortstory #Christmas #AliSmith

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50d

Poetry Workshops with Rebecca Sharp
17 & 24 January, Arbroath – free, ticketed

Led by poet & playwright Rebecca Sharp, these workshops will explore the ways stories are preserved, forgotten, or reinvented – from history to legends & folklore. No experience needed.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/poetry-workshop-with-rebecca-sharp-tickets-1977268333813

#Scottish #literature #poetry #poetryworkshop #history #legend #folklore

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67d

“Of old, Edinburgh University was the scene of heroic snowballing; and one riot obtained the epic honours of military intervention.”

—Robert Louis Stevenson, PICTURESQUE NOTES: EDINBURGH (1878)

🎨 : “Snowballing Outside Edinburgh University”, by Samuel Bough (1822–1878). Watercolour on paper, 1853

1/3

Download PICTURESQUE NOTES as a free ebook from @gutenberg_org

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/382

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #Edinburgh #winter

“Snowballing Outside Edinburgh University”, by Samuel Bough (1822–1878). Watercolour on paper.

A mid-nineteenth-century street scene in Edinburgh. At a street corner, on either side of the road, two groups of youths are throwing snowballs at each other. Some people watch from windows; other onlookers stand by. On one side of the street two women and a child hurry past.

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50d

An Evening of Scottish Speculative Fiction
22 Jan, Waterstones Argyle Street, Glasgow. Tickets £5.

A trio of fantastic Scottish writers of spectacular speculative fiction – Christopher Caldwell, Angie Spoto, & Lorraine Wilson – in a discussion chaired by Elaine Gallagher.

https://www.waterstones.com/events/an-evening-of-scottish-speculative-fiction/glasgow-argyle-street

#Scottish #literature #ScienceFiction #Fantasy #SFF #SpeculativeFiction #SpecFic #Glasgow

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50d

Snaw is bluffertin’ the toun,
Gurly wunds are roustin’ roun’,
Peety fowk in broken shoon
This winter nicht…

—Helen Burness Cruickshank (1886–1975), “Song of Pity for Refugees”
published in Collected Poems (Reprographia, 1971)

#Scottish #literature #Scots #Scotslanguage #poem #poetry #refugees #winter

Song of Pity for Refugees
by Helen Burness Cruickshank

Snaw is bluffertin’ the toun,
Gurly wunds are roustin’ roun’,
Peety fowk in broken shoon
This winter nicht.

Peety help the weary auld,
Claes nor fire to fend aff cauld,
Hoose nor ha’ them safe to hauld
This winter nicht.

Peety wham in a’ the warld
Fortune fell through hell has harled,
Hungert, hameless, broken, marled,
This winter nicht.

Peety men withooten kin,
Ne’er a freend to cry them ben,
Nane their deein’ sauls to sain
This winter nicht.

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28d

“I love winter… I love the peace of the nature reserve with its labyrinths of bare branches and its startling sunsets. I love the blitz of wee birds at the feeders in the garden. I’m not so keen on the damp grey days, I admit. So It’s no hardship to stay at my desk.”

—Val McDermid on how winter fuels her creative process – via @literaryhub

@writingcommunity

https://lithub.com/ice-and-inspiration-an-ode-to-writing-in-winter-from-val-mcdermid/

#Scottish #literature #writing #winter #creativity #crimefiction

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