Eggplant.place

101d

The St  Andrews Chronicles, one of the most important manuscript histories of Scotland, is going on public display for the first time in its 500-year history. The book will be on display at University of St Andrews Wardlaw Museum from 21 November to 7 December

https://news.st-andrews.ac.uk/archive/500-year-old-history-of-scotland-on-public-display-for-the-first-time/

#Scottish #literature #history #16thcentury #manuscript #BookHistory

A sixteenth-century handwritten book, lying open on a dark grey-blue cushion. Cloth-covered weighted cords hold the book open to display the text, including a section underlined in red and a paragraph starting with a large, red capital M.

ALT

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100d

What are you going to do
With what is left of yourself
Now among the rustling
Of your maybe best years?

—WS Graham, “An Entertainment for WS Graham for Him Having Reached Sixty-Five”

The Modernist romantic poet W.S. Graham (1918–1986) was born #OTD, 19 November

A 🎂 🧵

1/7

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/145184/an-entertainment-for-ws-graham-for-him-having-reached-sixty-five

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #modernism #romanticism #WSGraham

An Entertainment for W.S. Graham for Him Having Reached Sixty-Five
by W. S. Graham

What are you going to do
With what is left of yourself
Now among the rustling
Of your maybe best years?
This is not an auto-elegy
With me pouring my heart
Out into where you
Differently stand or sit
On the Epidaurus steps.
What shall I say to myself
Having put myself down
On to a public page?

Where am I going now?
And where are you going
Tricked into reading
Words of my later life?
Let me pretend you are
Roughly of my age.
Are you a boy or a girl?
And what has happened to you?

Look at the chirping various
Leaves of Mr Graham’s
Spanking summer. Where are
You at? I know my face
Has changed. My hair has blanched
Into a wrong disguise
Sitting on top of my head.

Beside each other perched
On the Epidaurus steps.
Where am I going to go?
Shall I rise to follow
The thin sound of the goats
Tinkling their bells?

ALT

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100d

Centre for Robert Burns Studies Conference
17 January, University of Glasgow – £25 (includes tea, coffee, lunch, & a toast)

A day conference exploring the life, work, & legacy of Robert Burns.This year, the conference theme is the Burns Supper: a global phenomenon that celebrates its 225th anniversary in 2026.

@litstudies

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/centre-for-robert-burns-studies-conference-tickets-1851549627779

#Scottish #literature #RobertBurns #18thcentury #poetry #song #romanticism #BurnsSupper

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100d

Is ailbhean.co-shaoghal.net fear de dh’iomadh frithealaiche Mastodon neo-eisimeileach as urrainn dhut cleachdadh airson pàirt a ghabhail sa cho-shaoghal. Tha am frithealaiche seo ann do luchd na Gàidhlig.

https://ailbhean.co-shaoghal.net

Mu dhèidhinn: https://ailbhean.co-shaoghal.net/about
Rianachd le: @gunchleoc

#FeaturedServer #Gàidhlig #ScottishGaelic #ScotsGaelic #Gaelic #Alba #Scotland #Scottish #Mastodon #Fediverse #FreeFediverse

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97d

I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,‍‍
‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,‍‍
‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍An’ fellow-mortal!

—Robert Burns, “To a Mouse, On turning her up in her Nest, with the Plough, November 1785”

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #RobertBurns #Scots #Scotlsanguage #environmentalism #naturewriting #18thCentury #Romanticism #November #winter

To a Mouse, On turning her up in her Nest, with the Plough, November 1785.
Robert Burns

Wee, sleekit, cowran, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,‍‍
Wi’ bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee‍‍
Wi’ murd’ring pattle!

I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,‍‍
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,‍‍
An’ fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen-icker in a thrave‍‍
’S a sma’ request:
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,‍‍
An’ never miss’t!

ALT

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
Its silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,‍‍
O’ foggage green!
An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin,‍‍
Baith snell an’ keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,
An’ weary Winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,‍‍
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past‍‍
Out thro’ thy cell.

That wee-bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,‍‍
But house or hald,
To thole the Winter’s sleety dribble,‍‍
An’ cranreuch cauld!

But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men‍‍
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,‍‍
For promis’d joy!

Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,‍‍
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,‍‍
I guess an’ fear!

ALT

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99d

Whole Duty of Children
by Robert Louis Stevenson

A child should always say what’s true
And speak when he is spoken to,
And behave mannerly at table:
At least as far as he is able.

—from A CHILD’S GARDEN OF VERSES (1885)

Today, 20 November, is World Children’s Day.

https://www.unicef.org/take-action/campaigns/world-childrens-day

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #19thcentury #children #childrensliterature #kidlit #RobertLouisStevenson #WorldChildrensDay

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99d

“At this novel’s heart – as with all Kelman’s work – is an unfettered inner voice, a living consciousness in motion… Kelman gifts us the consciousness of childhood as an eternal experience”

—Alan Warner on James Kelman’s 2008 novel KIERON SMITH, BOY

@bookstodon

https://www.productmagazine.co.uk/books/world-book-trip/

#Scottish #literature #novel #children #childhood #WorldChildrensDay

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99d

Trouble is not my middle name.
It is not what I am.
I was not born for this…

—Liz Lochhead, “Listen”
A poem written for the Children’s Panel, to encourage new voluntary members, 2012. Published in FUGITIVE COLOURS (Polygon, 2016)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/fugitive-colours/

#Scottish #literature #childhood #children #poem #poetry #WorldChildrensDay

Listen
by Liz Lochhead

Written for the Children’s Panel, to encourage new voluntary members, 2012.

Trouble is not my middle name.
It is not what I am.
I was not born for this.
Trouble is not a place
though I am in it deeper than the deepest wood
and I’d get out of it (who wouldn’t?) if I could.

Hope is what I do not have in hell –
not without good help, now. Could you
listen, listen hard and well
to what I cannot say except by what I do?

And when you say I do it for badness
this much is true:
I do it for badness done to me before
any badness that I do to you.

Hard to unfankle this.
But you can help me.
Maybe.
Loosen
all these knots and really listen.
I cannot plainly tell you this, but, if you care,
then – beyond all harm and hurt –
real hope is there.

ALT

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99d

See ma mammy
See ma dinner ticket
A pititnma
Pokit an she pititny
Washnmachine…

—Margaret Hamilton, “Lament for a Lost Dinner Ticket”
published in NEW POEMS 1972–73: a PEN anthology of contemporary poetry, ed. Douglas Dunn (Hutchinson, 1973)

https://www.scotslanguage.com/articles/node/id/21

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #childhood #children #Scots #Scotslanguage ##WorldChildrensDay

Lament for a Lost Dinner Ticket
Margaret Hamilton

See ma mammy
See ma dinner ticket
A pititnma
Pokit an she pititny
Washnmachine.

See thon burnty
Up wherra firewiz
Ma mammy says Am no tellynagain
No’y playnit.
A jist wen’y eatma
Pokacrisps furma dinner
Nabigwoffldoon.

The wummin sed Aver near
Clapsd
Jistur heednur
Wee wellies sticknoot.

They sed Wot heppind?
Nme’nma belly
Na bedna hospital.
A sed A pititnma
Pokit an she pititny
Washnmachine.

They sed Ees thees chaild eb slootly
Non verbal?
A sed MA BUMSAIR
Nwen’y sleep.

ALT

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99d

The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out
Through the blinds and the windows and bars;
And high overhead and all moving about,
There were thousands of millions of stars…

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “Escape at Bedtime”
from A CHILD’S GARDEN OF VERSES (1885)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Childrensliterature #kidlit #childhood #children #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #WorldChildrensDay

Escape at Bedtime
by Robert Louis Stevenson

The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out
Through the blinds and the windows and bars;
And high overhead and all moving about,
There were thousands of millions of stars.
There ne’er were such thousands of leaves on a tree,
Nor of people in church or the Park,
As the crowds of the stars that looked down upon me,
And that glittered and winked in the dark.

The Dog, and the Plough, and the Hunter, and all,
And the star of the sailor, and Mars,
These shone in the sky, and the pail by the wall
Would be half full of water and stars.
They saw me at last, and they chased me with cries,
And they soon had me packed into bed;
But the glory kept shining and bright in my eyes,
And the stars going round in my head.

ALT

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52d

Playwright & artist John Byrne (1940–2023) was born #OTD, 6 Jan. An extraordinary talent, best known for the SLAB BOYS trilogy & TUTTI FRUTTI & YOUR CHEATIN’ HEART, he also designed album covers for Gerry Rafferty & the set for THE CHEVIOT, THE STAG & THE BLACK BLACK OIL

A 🎂🧵

1/8

#Scottish #literature #art #playwright #screenwriter #albumart #artist #painter #JohnByrne

“The Riddie”, by John Byrne, 2018, ink & watercolour on board.

A stylised head-and-shoudlers self-portrait of the artist. A long forelock of grey hair dangles down from his forehead as he looks askance out of the painting. His eyes are large and expressive, his nose triangular and enormous. His mouth is hidden behind a bristling white moustache and beard, and an unlit cigarette pokes out from between them.

ALT

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98d

Cauld, cauld as the wall
That rins frae under the snaw
On Ben a’Bhuird…

—Nan Shepherd, “Cauld, cauld as the wall”
published in A KIST O SKINKLAN THINGS (ASL, 2017)

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

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

Nan Shepherd
Cauld, cauld as the wall

Cauld, cauld as the wall
That rins frae under the snaw
On Ben a’Bhuird,
And fierce, and bricht,
This water’s nae for ilka mou,
But him that’s had a waucht or noo
Nae wersh auld waters o the plain
Can sloke again,
But aye he clim’s the weary hicht
To fin’ the wall that lowps like licht,
Caulder than mou can thole, and aye
The warld cries out on him for fey.

ALT

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98d

Reigniting Spark: Jewish Values in the Modernism of Muriel Spark
26 Nov, University of Edinburgh & online – free

Prof Holli Levitsky investigates how Muriel Spark navigates her Jewish identity amidst the broader themes of modernity, nationalism, & personal identity

@litstudies

https://www.iash.ed.ac.uk/event/professor-holli-levitsky-reigniting-spark-jewish-values-modernism-muriel-spark

#Scottish #literature #murielspark #20thcentury #womenwriters #Jewish #Catholic #modernism #identity

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75d

Finally, I’m done with the phone calls and everything else
and when I switch on the radio it feels like lying in salt water –
all I need to do is breathe: Bach will keep me afloat…

—Elizabeth Burns (1957–2015) was born #OTD, 14 December

1/3

https://www.wayleavepress.co.uk/?page_id=898

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #womenwriters #music #classicalmusic #Bach

Listening to Bach’s B Minor Mass in the kitchen
by Elizabeth Burns

Finally, I’m done with the phone calls and everything else
and when I switch on the radio it feels like lying in salt water –
all I need to do is breathe: Bach will keep me afloat.
I’m mixing yeast into flour, making rolls for my daughter’s
birthday breakfast in the morning, kneading and kneading
the dough then setting it to rise; arranging in a glass
the last of the tiny pink roses with a sprig of green,
finding the blue candles and ironing the tablecloth,
the one my granny embroidered, sweeping the floor,
thinking about the hot August night of the birth,
and about the people we met on Westray last week,
and the presents I still need to wrap, and Bach himself
who is like a mountain covered in wildflowers,
and the singers in the Albert Hall who, the conductor says,
get close to godliness through this performance;
and I’m wondering, as all those voices fill my kitchen
with the Mass, if this is what he means: the sense
of time and place dissolving, so what divides us
from the past and elsewhere, and from each other,
falls away, and everything’s connected and we are all
drops of water in this enormous breaking wave.

ALT

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96d

The City is of Night; perchance of Death…

James “B.V.” Thomson (1834–1882) – poet, journalist, translator, anarchist, atheist – was born #OTD, 23 Nov, in Port Glasgow. Best known for his long poem THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT, he influenced TS Eliot & is seen as a progenitor of Modernism

1/4

https://psychogeographicreview.com/the-city-of-dreadful-night/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Victorian #19thcentury #modernism #TSEliot

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96d

Wha’s Doctor Wha? Wha better kens nor he
that jouks the yetts and rides the birlin wheels
o time and space, shape-shiftin as he reels
through endless versions o reality? …

—James Robertson, “Doctor Wha”
First published in Where Rockets Burn Through (ed. Russell Jones, 2012)

Today, 23 November, is Doctor Who Day!

1/2

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #sciencefiction #SFpoetry #DoctorWho #DoctorWhoDay

Doctor Wha
by James Robertson

Wha’s Doctor Wha? Wha better kens nor he
that jouks the yetts and rides the birlin wheels
o time and space, shape-shiftin as he reels
through endless versions o reality?
Bit dis he ken himsel? Weel, mibbe sae,
yet wha’s tae ken gin aw that’s kent by Wha
maks mair or less or better sense ava
nor whit we ithers ken, or think we dae?
The universe is fou o parallels:
wha’s like us? Hunners? Thoosans? We oorsels
micht be mere glisks o life-forms yet tae be.
Whit’s real? Whaur’s here? When’s noo? Wha’s quick or deid?
Wha’s jist a thochtie in anither’s heid?
Wha’s Doctor Wha? Wha better kens nor he?

ALT

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94d

“Laidlaw is the melancholy heir to Marlowe. Reads like a breathless scalpel cut through the bloody heart of a city’ – Denise Mina

William McIlvanney discusses and reads from his LAIDLAW trilogy at Dundee Literary Festival 2013, in conversation with Russel D. McLean

@bookstodon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K879j3KVFvo

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #CrimeFiction #WilliamMcIlvanney

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93d

Unveiling Lady Scott
Walter Scott, French Influence & Transcultural Connections
Free online from 26 Nov–10 Dec 2025

Céline Sabiron sheds new light on Walter Scott’s work by investigating the French influence of his wife, Charlotte Charpentier & argues that she, as a knowledgeable art & literature enthusiast, greatly assisted him in his work as his secretary, amanuensis, & proofreader

@litstudies

https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/unveiling-lady-scott/312FE027B29B98DEA13AEFD0A39EA095

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury #romanticism #WalterScott

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94d

Burns and Nature
21 January, Glasgow – free

An exploration of Robert Burns’s relationship to nature, told through poetry, spoken word & film.

This event, presented in partnership with the Centre for Robert Burns Studies at the University of Glasgow, will examine Burns’s relationship to place, his life as a farmer, & his perspective on humanity’s relationship to the natural world.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/burns-and-nature-tickets-1975112411391

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury #RobertBurns #poetry #environmentalism #nature

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95d

Computer’s First Christmas Card: a Poetry/Coding workshop
4 December, Mitchell Library, Glasgow – free

Inspired by Edwin Morgan’s poem ‘The Computer’s First Christmas Card’, attendees at this Poetry/Coding workshop will code a festive poem & leave with a handmade Christmas card! There will also be a chance to see some items from the Edwin Morgan collection.

No experience of coding or creative writing necessary.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/computers-first-christmas-card-a-poetrycoding-workshop-tickets-1969671946815

#Scottish #literature #Glasgow #poetry #coding #writing

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128d

Investigating Irish & Scottish Women Writers of Children’s Literature
12 December, Edinburgh University – free

A one-day symposium exploring regional & national identities in children’s literature c.1750–1940 – an era of major cultural & political upheaval in Ireland & Scotland

@litstudies

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/investigating-irish-scottish-women-writers-of-childrens-literature-tickets-1838781518019

#Scottish #Irish #literature #childrensliterature #kidlit #womenwriters #identity

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95d

The night tinkles like ice in glasses.
Leaves are glued to the pavement with frost.
The brown air fumes at the shop windows,
Tries the doors, and sidles past…

—Norman MacCaig, “November night, Edinburgh”
published in The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Birlinn, 2011)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/the-poems-of-norman-maccaig/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #November #winter #Edinburgh #normanmacCaig

Norman MacCaig
November night, Edinburgh

The night tinkles like ice in glasses.
Leaves are glued to the pavement with frost.
The brown air fumes at the shop windows,
Tries the doors, and sidles past.

I gulp down winter raw. The heady
Darkness swirls with tenements.
In a brown fuzz of cottonwool
Lamps fade up crags, die into pits.

Frost in my lungs is harsh as leaves
Scraped up on paths. – I look up, there,
A high roof sails, at the mast-head
Fluttering a grey and ragged star.

The world’s a bear shrugged in his den.
It’s snug and close in the snoring night.
And outside like chrysanthemums
The fog unfolds its bitter scent.

ALT

Edited 95d ago

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93d

Scotland’s Gutenberg: William Ged & the Invention of Stereotype Printing, 1725–49

Examining the ‘non-moveable type’ productions of Edinburgh goldsmith William Ged (c.1683–1749), Dr William Zachs hypothesises the existence of a group of previously unknown stereotyped books, thus offering a revised history of book production in 18th-century Britain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMcEZ9FK6ak

#Scottish #literature #history #BookHistory #printing #bookproduction #18thcentury

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94d

‘A Tartan Belle’: Jane, Duchess of Gordon and the Romanticisation of Scottish Identity in London, c.1780–1812
25 Nov, online – free

At a time when markers of Scottish identity were still viewed with suspicion in England, Jane, Duchess of Gordon used her social influence to make Scottish culture interesting & romantic to the British elite

https://www.history.ac.uk/news-events/events/tartan-belle-jane-duchess-gordon-romanticisation-scottish-identity-london-c1780-1812

#Scottish #literature #history #culture #identity #18thcentury #romanticism

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94d

“Scottishness is not some pedigree lineage. This is a mongrel tradition!”

William McIlvanney (1936–2015) – author & poet (& provider, at a rally in Edinburgh in 1992, of our profile header, as quoted in Neal Ascherson’s 2002 book STONE VOICES) – was born #OTD, 25 November

A 🎂 🧵

@bookstodon

1/9

#Scottish #literature #20thcentury #WilliamMcIlvanney #Scottishness #identity

And then, in a tone of tremendous pride, he said this. “Scottishness is not some pedigree lineage. This is a mongrel tradition!” At those words, for reasons which perhaps neither he nor they ever quite understood, the crowd broke into cheers and applause which lasted on and on.

ALT

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