Eggplant.place

275d

Aiste – Rannsachadh air Litreachas Gàidhlig / Studies in Gaelic Literature 8 (2025)
deasaichte le / edited by Sìm Innes & Sheila M. Kidd

Now online:

https://clog.glasgow.ac.uk/ojs/index.php/aiste/issue/view/31

#Scottish #literture #Gaelic #Gaidhlig

Prelims: Sìm Innes, Sheila M. Kidd

The Smith and the Sage: An edition of the heroic ballad ‘An Deilgnach Mhor’: Duncan Sneddon

‘Crìosda Clèireach os ar Cionn’: Reconstructing a vernacular hymn: Mary Low, Michel Byrne

‘Dùisg thus’ às do chodal’ [‘Wake up from your sleep’]: Catrìona nighean Mhic Aonghais, a fresh voice from nineteenth-century Greenock: Sheila M. Kidd

Aonghas MacEanraig (1866–1937), à Àird nam Murchan: A bheatha agus a chuid sgrìobhaidhean: Tòmas MacAilpein

ALT

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275d

In to thir dirk and drublie dayis,
Quhone sabill all the hewin arrayis
With mystie vapouris, cluddis and skyis,
Nature all curage me denyis
Off sangis, ballattis, and of playis…

—William Dunbar (c.1459–1530), “Meditatioun in Wyntir”

Full text with glosses available online (poem no. 15)

https://metseditions.org/read/Kk2rqEDflvYQH57qHG5EqhWNP2p8v3y

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #winter #15thcentury #medieval #Scots #Scotslanguage

Meditatioun in Wyntir
William Dunbar (c. 1459-1530)

In to thir dirk and drublie dayis,
Quhone sabill all the hewin arrayis
With mystie vapouris, cluddis and skyis,
Nature all curage me denyis
Off sangis, ballattis, and of playis.

Quhone that the nycht dois lenthin houris,
With wind, with haill, and havy schouris,
My dule spreit dois lurk for schoir.
My hairt for langour dois forloir
For laik of Symmer with his flouris.

I walk, I turne, sleip may I nocht,
I vexit am with havie thocht.
This warld all ouir I cast about,
And ay the mair I am in dout,
The mair that I remeid have socht.

I am assayit on euerie syde.
Despair sayis ay, "In tyme provyde
And get sum thing quhairon to leif,
Or with grit trouble and mischeif
Thow sall into this court abyd."

Than Patience sayis, "Be not agast,
Hald Hoip and Treuthe within the fast,
And lat Fortoun wirk furthe hir rage,
Quhone that no rasoun may assuage
Quill that hir glas be run and past."

ALT

And Prudence in my eir sayis ay,
"Quhy wald thow hald that will away?
Or craif that thow may have no space,
Thow tending to ane uther place,
A journay going everie day?"

And than sayis Age, "My freind, cum neir,
And be not strange, I the requeir.
Cum, brodir, by the hand me tak.
Remember thow hes compt to mak
Off all thi tyme thow spendit heir."

Syne Deid castis upe his gettis wyd
Saying, "Thir oppin sall thee abyd;
Albeid that thow wer neuer sa stout,
Undir this lyntall sall thow lowt,
Thair is nane uther way besyde."

For feir of this all day I drowp.
No gold in kist nor wine in cowp,
No ladeis bewtie, nor luiffis blys
May lat me to remember this,
How glaid that euer I dyne or sowp.

Ȝit quhone the nycht begynnis to schort
It dois my spreit sum pairt confort,
Off thocht oppressit with the schowris.
Cum lustie Symmer with thi flowris,
That I may leif in sum disport.

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275d

“Hogg defied categorisation. A prolific poet, songwriter, playwright, novelist, short story writer & parodist, he wrote with equal skill in Scots & English”

James Hogg, AKA “the Ettrick Shepherd” (1770–1835, DOB unknown) was baptised #OTD, 9 Dec

🧵

1/10

https://theconversation.com/james-hogg-at-250-the-farmhand-who-became-one-of-scotlands-greatest-storytellers-155534

#Scottish #literature #JamesHogg #romanticism #gothic #18thcentury #19thcentury

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19d

one of those with quiet, naturally restrained, insistently monotoned voices

with that little selfcontained smile, always going on about Respect for History and the Abiding Sense of the Traditional…

—Tom Leonard, “The Elect”
published in MARKINGS 27, 2008

https://www.tomleonard.co.uk/online-poetry-and-prose/the-elect.html

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #TomLeonard

The Elect
Tom Leonard

one of those with quiet, naturally restrained, insistently monotoned voices

with that little self-contained smile, always going on about Respect for History and the Abiding Sense of the Traditional

who want all poets to have a sense of “basic form” and who are always quoting Yeats’s “Under Ben Bulben” about poets having to Learn Their Trade and not be All Out of Shape from Toe to Top

who think this has nothing to do with Yeats’s views on eugenics – "the better stocks have not been replacing their numbers” – “The results are already visible in the degeneration of literature” –

who complain of people with voices yclept loud, varied, opinionated, up and down, showy, the insufferably “engaged”, the political johnnies, the performance crowd, the “disastrous influence of the sixties”

who hate poets who carry electrical appliances and who cling fast to Aristotle’s dictum that a poet is a poet insofar as they have a command of metaphor

who do not want to know all this stuff about “the page as a field of semantic tension” or blethers about “the connection between lower case and democracy” or pontificatory nonsense about “the punctuation of spacing” and “the reader being present at the shared point of articulation”

one of them leant over and said to me quietly

do you know if the 44 bus still goes to Knightswood

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317d

Poet, writer, artist, & avant-gardener Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925–2006) was born 100 years ago #OTD, 28 Oct, in Nassau, Bahamas – a fact which he would later describe as “ridiculous, not in character at all”. His father was a bootlegger, smuggling rum to the USA, & Finlay was sent, aged 6, to Larchfield, a boarding school in Helensburgh, Scotland, where WH Auden had recently joined the staff

A 🎂🧵

1/9

#Scottish #literature #poetry #visualart #gardening #sculpture #IanHamiltonFinlay

“Et In Arcadia Ego”, a stone sculpture by ian Hamilton Finlay (1976)

A slab of pale stone, showing a stylised scene in a woodland. In the foreground is what looks like a tank (i.e. a military vehicle), except it has incised lines across it suggesting that it is in fact made out of stone blocks. The scene is framed and under the frame the words

ET IN ARCADIA EGO
After Nicholas Poussin

are carved into the slab.

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317d

Jessie Kesson (1916–1994) was born #OTD, 28 Oct. Taken from her mother at 10, she spent 6 years in an orphanage; although she displayed obvious academic talent she was denied any chance of further education & was sent into domestic servitude aged 16.

Despite these & other hardships she became a highly regarded novelist whose works explore ordinary women’s lives with clarity & poetic prose

A 🎂🧵

1/5

https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/9964/jessie-kesson-novelist

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #womenwriters #workingclass

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314d

But gin the auld fowks’ tales are richt
An’ ghaists come hame on Hallow nicht,
O freend o’ freends! what wad I gie
To feel ye rax yer hand to me
Atween the dark an’ caun’le-licht?

—Violet Jacob, “Hallowe’en”
first published in COUNTRY LIFE, 1920

Jacob’s only son, Harry, was killed at the Somme in 1916

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Halloween #warpoem #warpoetry #WW1

Hallowe’en
Violet Jacob

The tattie-liftin’s nearly through,
They’re ploughin’ whaur the barley grew,‍‍
And aifter dark, roond ilka stack,‍‍
Ye’ll see the horsemen stand an’ crack
O Lachlan, but I mind o’ you!

I mind foo often we hae seen
Ten thoosand stars keek doon atween‍‍
The nakit branches, an’ below‍‍
Baith fairm an’ bothie hae their show,
Alowe wi’ lichts o’ Hallowe’en.

There’s bairns wi’ guizards at their tail
Clourin’ the doors wi’ runts o’ kail,‍‍
And fine ye’ll hear the skreichs an’ skirls‍‍
O’ lassies wi’ their droukit curls
Bobbin’ for aipples i’ the pail.

The bothie fire is loupin’ het,
A new heid horseman’s kist is set‍‍
Richts o’ the lum; whaur by the blaze‍‍
The auld ane stude that kept yer claes—
I canna thole to see it yet!

But gin the auld fowks’ tales are richt
An’ ghaists come hame on Hallow nicht,‍‍
O freend o’ freends! what wad I gie‍‍
To feel ye rax yer hand to me
Atween the dark an’ caun’le licht?

Awa in France, across the wave,
The wee lichts burn on ilka grave,‍‍
An’ you an’ me their lowe hae seen—‍‍
Ye’ll mebbe hae yer Hallowe’en
Yont, whaur ye’re lyin’ wi’ the lave.

There’s drink an’ daffin’, sang an’ dance
And ploys and kisses get their chance,‍‍
But Lachlan, man, the place I see‍‍
Is whaur the auld kist used to be
And the lichts o’ Hallowe’en in France!

ALT

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248d

“Despite its premise of the distillation of evil through shapeshifting, the anchoring concerns of this gothic tale are profoundly & universally human”

Robert Louis Stevenson’s STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL & MR HYDE was first published #OTD, 5 Jan, 1886

🧵 1/8

https://theconversation.com/jekyll-and-hyde-a-tale-of-doubles-disguises-and-our-warring-desires-187173

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #JekyllandHyde #horror #gothic

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314d

The Grey Paw (Spòg liath)

In the big church of Beauly (Eaglais mhor na manachain, i.e. of the Monastery) mysterious and unearthly sights and sounds were seen and heard at night, and none who went to watch the churchyard or burial-places within the church ever came back alive…

—from Witchcraft & Second Sight in the Highlands & Islands of Scotland (Glasgow, 1902), via @gutenberg_org

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/58894/pg58894-images.html#Page_194

#Scottish #literature #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #folklore #folktale #supernatural #Halloween

A page image of the folk tale “The Grey Paw” (“Spòg liath”). Unfortunately too long for ALT text – full text is available via the link.

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316d

WRITERS!

Submissions invited to NEW WRITING SCOTLAND 44! We want poetry & prose in English, #Gaelic, & #Scots from writers who are Scottish by residence, birth, or inclination. All successful contributors are paid – deadline 31 Oct!

@writingcommunity

Submit free via Submittable 👇

https://nws.submittable.com/submit

#Scottish #literature #writing #WritingCommunity #IAmWriting #poetry #shortfiction #shortstories #Scots #Scotslanguage #Gaelic #Gaidhlig

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274d

I am a human being
and I exist

a human being
and a citizen of the world

responsible to that world
– and responsible for that world

—Tom Leonard, “Being a Human Being”
First published in PN Review 32 (2005)

Today, 10 December, is Human Rights Day

https://www.un.org/en/observances/human-rights-day

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #HumanRights #HUmanRightsDay

Being a Human Being
Tom Leonard

for Mordechai Vanunu

not to be complicit
not to accept everyone else is silent it must be alright

not to keep one’s mouth shut to hold onto one’s job
not to accept public language as cover and decoy

not to put friends and family before the rest of the world
not to say I am wrong when you know the government is wrong

not to be just a bought behaviour pattern
to accept the moment and fact of choice

I am a human being
and I exist

a human being
and a citizen of the world

responsible to that world
– and responsible for that world

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248d

Off Lindisfarne
the waves shiver like monks
at their ablutions.

Under high horizontals
of ice-cloud, the sky
scrubbed clean as a dairy.

The train darts north,
hungry as a tongue…

—Alison Fell, “January, 5”
published in LIGHTYEAR (Smokestack Books, 2005)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/january-5/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #winter

January, 5
by Alison Fell

Off Lindisfarne
the waves shiver like monks
at their ablutions.

Under high horizontals
of ice-cloud, the sky
scrubbed clean as a dairy.

The train darts north,
hungry as a tongue.

Only the exile longs for
the words to name a country:

either live it or learn,
at a bare table,

ancestral silence, like a rumble
deep in the loch’s throat,

the forgotten song
of the curling-stone,

the snow slipping like white meat
from the bones of the mountain.

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314d

Oidhche Shamhna – a South Uist Halloween

Ethnomusicologist, photographer, folklorist, & scholar Margaret Fay Shaw (1903–2004) recorded a traditional Hebridean Halloween on South Uist in the 1930s, in photographs & on film – via the National Trust for Scotland

https://www.nts.org.uk/stories/oidhche-shamhna-a-south-uist-halloween

#Scottish #Halloween #Hebrides #folklore #tradition #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #Samhain #culturalstudies #ethnology #photography

A black and white image of two children dressed for Halloween, standing on a flat patch of scrubby ground with a rocky hillside rising behind them. The children are wearing multiple layers of outsized clothes, bundled and knotted around them. Their hands are hidden within their sleeves, and they have huge adult work-boots on their feet. The figure on the left is wearing a crude mask with tiny eyeholes and a mouth hole; tufts of dried grass have been added to create a beard and moustache. The figure on the right doesn't seem to have a mask – just a large clump of heather for a head, protruding from a jacket collar swathed in scarves.

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116d

Short Works: Algo by Kirstin Innes
Available on BBC Sounds

One woman faces a reckoning when asylum hotel protests dredge up unwelcome memories. Once the house goes quiet and she has a moment to herself, a woman is gradually being reawakened to the world around her – but can the algorithm give her what she’s really looking for?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002w8cd

#Scottish #literature #shortfiction #audiofiction

Edited 116d ago

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248d

RE: https://mastodon.scot/@scotlit/115842616105911298

“The killer is never assumed to be a local East Ender… He’s always judged to be a man out of place, flipping between high society by day & the dark & dirty streets of Whitechapel by night”

Lucy Worsley on how Robert Louis Stevenson’s JEKYLL & HYDE influenced the legend of Jack the Ripper

https://www.salon.com/2014/10/18/jack_the_rippers_long_shadow_from_sherlock_holmes_to_jekyll_hyde/

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #JekyllandHyde #horror #gothic #JacktheRipper

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315d

Rubbing a glistening circle
on the steamed-up window I framed
a pheasant in a field of mist…

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

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781784109967

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #ChineseArt #EdwinMorgan #autumn #October

Edwin Morgan
Aberdeen Train

Rubbing a glistening circle
on the steamed-up window I framed
a pheasant in a field of mist.
The sun was a great red thing somewhere low,
struggling with the milky scene. In the furrows
a piece of glass winked into life,
hypnotized the silly dandy; we
hooted past him with his head cocked,
contemplating a bottle-end,
and this was the last of October,
a Chinese moment in the Mearns.

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315d

He telt us his wife had run aff wi Super Mario.
Noo, he wis dinin on the dustbins, dwinin awa
for want o a pouer pill and a braw sheenie cherry…

—Amy Jo Philip, “Pac-Man’s Last Stand”
in DOUBLE BILL (Red Squirrel Press 2014)
🟡 🍒 👻

Happy 45th birthday to Pac-Man!

https://www.redsquirrelpress.com/product-page/double-bill-andy-jackson

#Scottish #literature #PacMan #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #gaming #retrogaming #GoogleDoodle

Pac-Man’s Last Stand
Amy Jo Philip

We funt him dossin in a piss-scented close
oot the back o a defunct arcade,
his canary coupon dulled fae dool and stour
tae say naething o the bargain booze he swallied
fae a bottle happed in a broun paper poke.

He telt us his wife had run aff wi Super Mario.
Noo, he wis dinin on the dustbins, dwinin awa
for want o a pouer pill and a braw sheenie cherry;
in a constant, feartie, blootered dwam
o Inky, Blinky, Pinky and even Clyde closin in

for the kill. Haurdly a shaddae o his auld sel.
The worst o it wis, every time he yawned
his gub wid gant that wee tait wider till it seemed
he’d fauld in on hissel and the air aroun him growe
shairp wi they twa wirds ilka gamer dreids.

Naiturally, we taen him hame wi’s and fed him up
on spare fou stops, Morellos and tartrazine.
Man, ye shuid hae seen thon appetite!
The trouble stairted wi a toattie bite taen out
the sofa. Afore lang, the living room was a guddle

o sawdust, torn swatches and chowed wires. Im gey feart
he’ll soon hae eaten us oot o hous and hauld.
And that’s whaur youse come in. A puckle wee ghosties
dinnae fleg me, but yon yellae golach’s anither story.
The doors and windaes is aw locked. He’ll no suspect a thing.

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315d

R.B. & Gabriela Cunninghame Graham: International Travel, Domestic Reality
28 November, University of Glasgow – free

A symposium exploring the cultural & political significance of Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham’s travels & travel-writing; the question of his wife Gabriela’s identity & his collusion in the deception at its heart; his writing about women & the equality of the sexes.

https://wegottickets.com/event/677550

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #travel #travelwriting #equality

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315d

“While the clearances in Sutherland were at their height in the second decade of the 19th century, around 1815, the clearances of the late 1840s and early 1850s – in places like South Uist and Barra – were far worse in terms of sheer brutality.”

—James Hunter, Director of the Centre for History at the University of the Highlands & Islands, selects five books on the history of the Highland Clearances

https://fivebooks.com/best-books/james-hunter-on-the-highland-clearances/

#Scottish #history #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #19thcentury #HighlandClearances

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315d

The Uncanny Scot

To get you in the mood for Halloween, this back issue of The Bottle Imp pursues the spectre of the Scottish Gothic – including HP Lovecraft’s favourite Scots word …

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggity beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!

🎃
(the absence of a neep emoji is cultural imperialism at its worst)

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2009/11/editorial-the-uncanny-scot-scottish-gothic/

#Scottish #literature #horror #gothic #halloween #Lovecraft #HPLovecraft

The Uncanny Scot
By The Unreliable Narrator

Readers of a nervous disposition, turn away! This issue of The Bottle Imp pursues the spectre of the Gothic. Naught but ruined towers, blasted heaths, and cold wastes lie within.

Horror seeps in to this our waking world from the margins, and the marginalised. Scotland lies on Britain’s edge, a ragged, ancient fringe. The very rocks beneath our feet are primeval: they count their years in billions, and were old past knowing when first things sneaked and scuttled from out the slime. The skin is thinner here, stretched more tightly over the bones of the Earth.

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274d

George MacDonald (1824–1905) was born #OTD, 10 Dec. One of the earliest theorists of the fantastic, & grandfather of modern fantasy literature, he was read & admired by CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien & Madeleine L’Engle, among others

@litstudies

🎨 : Cecilia Harrison (1863–1941)

🧵 1/5

https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/3082

#Scottish #literature #Victorian #19thCentury #fantasty #childrenslit #CSLewis #Tolkien

“George Macdonald, 1824–1905. Poet and novelist”, by Cecilia Harrison (1863–1941). Oil on canvas.

A portrait of an elderly man with a full white beard, wearing a brown jacket and a deep crimson-coloured cap. His pale grey-blue eyes look down and to the left of the painting, as he sits with his head resting on his right hand.

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313d

Naomi Mitchison (née Haldane, 1897–1999) was born #OTD, 1 Nov, & saw almost every day of the #20thcentury. A hugely influential writer, with 80+ books—poetry, politics, historical novels, #ScienceFiction, #Fantasy, #ChildrensLiterature & more—to her credit

A 🎂🧵

“She liked to challenge, she liked to shock, she liked to deliver the unexpected, she liked to experiment”

—Jenni Calder looks at Mitchison’s life & work

@litstudies
1/9

https://dangerouswomenproject.org/2016/09/25/naomi-mitchison/

#Scottish #literature #womenwriters

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314d

Someone was playing the piano when suddenly
there they were standing in the room.
They would not sing or speak or tell their names.
Their skull faces blankly shifted round
as if they were studying us implacably…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “Halloween”
first published in the TLS (1982)

#Scottish #literature #Halloween #poem #poetry #20thcentury

Halloween
Iain Crichton Smith

Someone was playing the piano when suddenly
there they were standing in the room.
They would not sing or speak or tell their names.
Their skull faces blankly shifted round
as if they were studying us implacably.

“Yokels”, one thought. “Rustics”, thought another;
and truly they had trudged in out of the rain
with their masks, tall and white and bony-looking.
“Macbeth”, someone said, and someone “Hamlet”.
Or perhaps at least the “Elegy” by Gray.

The rain drummed on the roof and they were gone
in their muddy boots, squelching past cowering doors.
We looked at each other. It was graveyard time
as our black ties on our white shirts might say.

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314d

The wind blew as ’twad blawn its last;
The rattling showers rose on the blast;
The speedy gleams the darkness swallow’d;
Loud, deep, & lang the thunder bellow’d:
That night, a child might understand,
The Deil had business on his hand…

—Robert Burns’s “Tam o’ Shanter”, read by Hamish MacDonald; illustrations by Gary Welsh

Happy Halloween!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAqVwCa_x5o

#Scottish #literature #Halloween #poem #poetry #18thcentury #witch #witches #supernatural #folklore