Eggplant.place

176d

Seillean
dian, dùrachdach
a’ siubhal nam blàth…

—Ruaraidh MacThòmais, “A’ Siubhal nam Blàth”
from Sùil air fàire: dain ùra le Ruaraidh MacThòmais / Surveying the horizon: recent poems by Derick Thomson (Acair, 2007)

A Gaelic poem for World Bee Day 🐝

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #poem #poetry #20thcentury #bees #WorldBeeDay

A’ Siubhal nam Blàth
Ruaraidh MacThòmais

Seillean
dian, dùrachdach
a’ siubhal nam blàth
mar a bhà
ann an Àird nam Murchan
o chionn dà cheud bliadhna gu leth
agus an dubh-Mhùideartach
ga dhian-amharc,
agus a-rithist
ann am meadhan a’ gheamhraidh
a’ dùsgadh na cuimhne sin.
An dùil am mair
blas na meala sin
dà cheud bliadhna gu leth eile
is a’ Ghàidhlig leth-bheò
ann an duilleagan sgoileir.
Carson nach maireadh
agus Horace is Catullus
fhathast a’ dùsgadh am blàth
nar cridheachan.

ALT

Reconnoitering the Blossoms
Derick Thomson

A bee
steadily, industriously
reconnoitering the blossoms
just as
in Ardnamurchan
two and a half centuries ago
while the Dark-Moidart-man
observed it keenly
and later
in midwinter
revived the memory of it.
I wonder if the taste
of that honey will last
another two and a half centuries,
with Gaelic half-alive
on the pages of scholars.
Why not
when Horace and Catullus
still blossom
in our hearts.

ALT

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176d

Here are my bees,
brazen, blurs on paper,
besotted; buzzwords, dancing
their flawless, airy maps…

—Carol Ann Duffy, “Bees”
published in THE BEES (Picador, 2017)

A poem for World Bee Day 🐝

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/carol-ann-duffy/the-bees/9781509852925

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #bees #WorldBeeDay

Bees
by Carol Ann Duffy

Here are my bees,
brazen, blurs on paper,
besotted; buzzwords, dancing
their flawless, airy maps.

Been deep, my poet bees,
in the parts of flowers,
in daffodil, thistle, rose, even
the golden lotus; so glide,
gilded, glad, golden, thus –

wise – and know of us:
how your scent pervades
my shadowed, busy heart,
and honey is art.

ALT

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192d

It’s living with ships
makes a rough springtime
and who is safe
when they sing and blow
their music …

—Edwin Morgan, “Floating Off to Timor”
published in CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2020)

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

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Spring #Glasgow

Floating Off to Timor
Edwin Morgan

If only we’d been strangers
we’d be floating off to Timor,
we’d be shimmering on the Trades
in a blue jersey boat
with shandies, flying fish,
a pace of dolphins
to the copra ports.
And it’s no use crying
to me, What dolphins?
I know where they are
and I’d have snapped you up
and carried you away
snapped you up
and carried you away
if we had been strangers.

But here we are care
of the black roofs.
It’s not hard to find
with a collar turned up
and a hoot from the Clyde.
The steps come home
whistling too. And a kettle
steams the cranes out slowly.
It’s living with ships
makes a rough springtime
and who is safe
when they sing and blow
their music – they seem
to swing at some light rope
like those desires
we keep for strangers.
God, the yellow deck

ALT

breathes, it heaves spray
back like a shout.
We’re cutting through
some straits of the world
in our old dark room
with salty wings
in the shriek of the dock wind.
But we’re caught – meshed
in the fish-scales, ferries,
mudflats, lifebelts
fading into football cries
and the lamps coming on
to bring us in.

We take in
the dream, a cloth from the line
the trains fling sparks on
in our city. We’re better awake.
But you know I’d take
you all the same,
if you were my next stranger.

ALT

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191d

Alan Sharp (1934–2013) is remembered today as a screenwriter, the author of classic Hollywood movies such as Ulzana’s Raid (1972) & Night Moves (1975), as well as the 1995 film Rob Roy, starring Liam Neeson. But his writing career began with the award-winning – & taboo-breaking – novel A GREEN TREE IN GEDDE. Still controversial, it is nevertheless “a flagship of 1960s Scottish prose”. Preorder the new edition now!

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/a-green-tree-in-gedde/

#Scottish #literature #novel #20thcentury #1960s

Book cover

A GREEN TREE IN GEDDE
Alan Sharp

White lettering against a background of bright green overlapping leaves. Between the words of the title, in much smaller lettering, are the following lines:

Here we sit
Birds in the wilderness
Down in Demerara

ALT

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191d

King Dan & the King’s man: Daniel O’Connell & Sir Walter Scott

Dan Mulhall compares 2 towering 19th-century figures: Ireland’s Daniel O’Connell & Scotland’s Sir Walter Scott. But where Scott helped preserve & define Scottish identity through history, literature & tradition, O’Connell was above all a practical political reformer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J94G6Utlek

#Scottish #Irish #history #literature #19thcentury #DanielOCOnnell #SirWalterScott

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175d

The Big Bang Theory of Medieval Scots Literature
10 June, Royal Over-Seas League, London – free

No surviving works in Older Scots appear until the 1370s, when John Barbour – without warning or explanation for the bemused modern literary historian – produced THE BRUS, a vast chivalric biography of Robert the Bruce. Prof Rhiannon Purdie explores the remarkable & seemingly sudden origins of literature in Scots

@litstudies

https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/development/making-waves/lecture-series/

#Scottish #literature #medieval #Scotslanguage

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175d

Celestial Tea!—A fountain that can cure
The ills of passion, and can free the fair
From frowns and sighs, by Disappointment earn’d…

—For International Tea Day: Robert Fergusson’s (1750–1774) “Tea. A Poem” takes a less than enthusiastic approach to the beverage

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #18thcentury #RobertFergusson #tea #InternationalTeaDay

Robert Fergusson
TEA. A Poem

Ye maidens modest! on whose sullen brows
Hath weaning Chastity her wrinkles cull’d,
Who constant labour o’er consumptive oil,
At midnight knell, to wash sleep’s nightly balm
From closing eye-lids, with the grateful drops
Of Tea’s blest juices; list th’ obsequious lays
That come not with Parnassian honours crown’d,
To dwell in murmurs o’er your sleepy sense;
But fresh from Orient blown to chace far off
Your lethargy, that dormant needles rous’d
May pierce the waving Mantua’s silken folds:
For many a dame in chamber sadly pent,
Hath this reviving limpid call’d to life;
And well it did, to mitigate the frowns
Of anger reddening on Lucinda’s brow,
With flash malignant, that had harbour’d there,
If she at masquerade, or play, or ball,
Appear’d not in her newest, best attire.
But Venus, goddess of th’ eternal smile,
Knowing that stormy brows but ill become
Fair patterns of her beauty, hath ordain’d

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175d

“When Jennie first meets the 𝑡𝑜𝑑-𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑒𝑙, she cries enquiringly 𝑄𝑢𝑎𝑖𝑐𝑘? This Scots equivalent of English 𝑞𝑢𝑎𝑐𝑘 has been used to represent duck noises since the 17th century”

—Susan Rennie on translating Beatrix Potter’s 𝐽𝑒𝑚𝑖𝑚𝑎 𝑃𝑢𝑑𝑑𝑙𝑒-𝐷𝑢𝑐𝑘 into Scots

https://scrennie.com/2026/05/16/tods-plaidies-and-fairy-thimmles/

#Scottish #literature #Scots #Scotslanguage #translation #BeatrixPotter #childrensliterature #kidlit

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175d

In a little rainy mist of white and grey
we sat under an old tree,
drank tea toasts to the powdery mountain…

—Edwin Morgan, “The Picnic”
published in COLLECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 1990)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781847779656/collected-poems/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #EdwinMorgan #tea #InternationalTeaDay

The Picnic
by Edwin Morgan

In a little rainy mist of white and grey
we sat under an old tree,
drank tea toasts to the powdery mountain,
undrunk got merry, played catch
with the empty flask, on the pine needles
came down to where it rolled stealthily away –
you lay
with one arm in the rain, laughing
shaking only your wet hair
loose against the grass, in that enchanted place
of tea, with curtains of a summer rain
dropped round us, for a rainy day.

ALT

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190d

Narratives of Illness and Dis/ability in Scottish Literature I: Holly Faith Nelson & Graham Morgan
15 May, free online

The Dis/ability & Scottish Studies Working Group has formed to encourage critical engagement with narratives of illness & dis/ability in Scottish literature & culture. This webinar series will balance 2 15-minute presentations with a lively discussion period

@litstudies

https://scotlit-iassl.org/2026/04/27/narratives-of-illness-and-dis-ability-in-scottish-literature-i-holly-faith-nelson-graham-morgan/

#Scottish #literature #disability

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175d

Outwith Reality – Scottish Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror
26 August, Waterstones, Leeds – £5

Hosted in conjunction with the British Fantasy Society, this panel will be a conversation about all things Scottish storytelling, mythology & folklore. With authors Ian Green, Shona Kinsella, Rafael Torrubia & Lorraine Wilson, & moderated by Katie Bruce.

https://www.waterstones.com/events/panel-out-with-reality-scottish-science-fiction-fantasy-and-horror/leeds

#Scottish #literature #scifi #fantasy #mythology #SFF #Leeds

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122d

The room has been emptied for decorating.
White paint, wooden floor and window frames,
sun bursting through summer’s open doors,
a single chair for me to sit and read…

—Mark Russell, “Tabula Rasa”
published in nobody remembers the birdman: New Writing Scotland 40 (ASL, 2022)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws40/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

Mark Russell
Tabula Rasa

The room has been emptied for decorating.
White paint, wooden floor and window frames,
sun bursting through summer’s open doors,
a single chair for me to sit and read.

Next door takes the chance to mow the lawn;
rose and salvia stretch and yawn, posturing;
a buzz of far-off traffic settles beneath
birdcall in the ripe mountain’s steep slumber.

Just when I think there’s nothing, nothing
floods the space, pregnant, brisk, swarming.

ALT

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175d

“Robert Louis Stevenson was neither a medical doctor nor a dentist, but undeniably, his character and writings were significantly influenced by the medical culture of his time in Edinburgh’s Old Town, with our College having played a central role”

https://www.rcsed.ac.uk/news-resources/rcsed-blog/2026/may/dental-dean-update-incisive-ink-the-curious-connections-between-robert-louis-stevenson-and-rcsed

#Scottish #literature #Edinburgh #EdinburghUniversity #RSCEd #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson

A metal plaque attached to the wall of Number 1 Drummond Street at the University of Edinburgh. The plaque reads:

IN MEMORY OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, 1850-1894, son and student of Edinburgh.

“and when I remembered all that I hoped and feared as I pickled about Rutherford’s in the rain and the east wind; how I feared I should make a mere shipwreck, and yet timidly hoped not; how I feared I should never have a friend far less a wife, and yet passionately hoped I might; how I hoped (if I did not take to drink) I should possibly write one little book. And then now – what a change! I feel somehow as if I should like the incident set upon a brass plate at the corner of that dreary thoroughfare, for all students to read, poor devils, when their hearts are down.”

from the South Seas, September 1888

Presented on behalf of all Stevenson lovers ....... September 1995

ALT

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190d

NPR Fresh Air: Douglas Stuart

“It’s hard to tell people about grief. It’s hard to talk to people about poverty... and so I’d got very used to the silence in my own life, and my writing is the only thing that allows me to connect with myself.”

Douglas Stuart speaks to Terry Gross about Scotland, masculinity, and the isolation of secret-keeping.

https://www.npr.org/2026/05/04/nx-s1-5810167/scottish-novelist-douglas-stuart-on-the-isolation-of-secret-keeping

#Scottish #literature #novel #writing #Scotland #masculinity

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189d

“More decidedly evil is the nosferatu, or vampire, in which every Roumanian peasant believes as firmly as he does in heaven or hell…”

—from THE LAND BEYOND THE FOREST: Facts, Figures, & Fancies from Transylvania, by the 19th-century Scottish author & anthropologist Emily Gerard (1849–1905) – born #OTD, 7 May

1/3

https://crimereads.com/the-scottish-anthropologist-who-inspired-dracula/

#Scottish #literature #Dracula #vampire #Transylvania #folklore #anthropology #19thcentury #Victorian #womenwriters

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188d

Now the soldier has come home.

He has fought his way back
To the faces of the gnome-children
With still magic in their glances…

—James Findlay Hendry (1912–1986), “The Return”

Today, 8 May, is the 81st anniversary of VE Day

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/from_the_line/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WarPoetry #WW2 #VEDay

The Return
J. F. Hendry

Now the soldier has come home.

He has fought his way back
To the faces of the gnome-children
With still magic in their glances.

Wearing the green birk in his hat
And clad in the brown earth
He has torn barbed sorrow down
With his bare hands.

He has gone out into the open fields
Superb, in final camouflage.

ALT

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188d

Thàinig uair-san leis na sligean,
leis na spealgan-iarainn beàrnach,
anns an toit is anns an lasair,
ann an crith is maoim na h-àraich…

—Somhairle MacGill-Eain (Sorley MacLean) (1911–1996), “Curaidhean” (“Heroes”)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/from_the_line/

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #poem #poetry #WarPoetry #WW2 #VEDay

Curaidhean
Somhairle MacGill-Eain

Chan fhaca mi Lannes aig Ratasbon
no MacGillFhinnein aig Allt Èire
no Gill-Ìosa aig Cùil Lodair,
ach chunnaic mi Sasannach san Èipheit.

Fear beag truagh le gruaidhean pluiceach
is glùinean a’ bleith a chèile,
aodann guireanach gun tlachd ann –
còmhdach an spioraid bu trèine.

Cha robh buaidh air ‘san taigh-òsta
’n àm nan dòrn a bhith gan dùnadh’,
ach leòmhann e ri uchd a’ chatha,
anns na frasan guineach mùgach.

Thàinig uair-san leis na sligean,
leis na spealgan-iarainn beàrnach,
anns an toit is anns an lasair,
ann an crith is maoim na h-àraich.

Thàinig fios dha san fhrois pheilear
e bhith gu spreigearra ’na dhiùlnach:
is b’ e sin e fhad ’s a mhair e,
ach cha b’ fhada fhuair e dh’ùine.

Chùm e ghunnachan ris na tancan,
a ’ bocail le sgreuch shracaidh stàirnich
gus an d’ fhuair e fhèin mun stamaig
an deannal ud a chuir ri làr e,
beul sìos an gainmhich ’s an greabhal,
gun diog o ghuth caol grànda.

Cha do chuireadh crois no meadal
ri uchd no ainm no g’ a chàirdean:
cha robh a bheag dhe fhòirne maireann,
’s nan robh cha bhiodh am facal làidir;
’s co-dhiù, ma sheasas ursann-chatha,
leagar mòran air a shàillibh
gun dùil ri cliù, nach iarr am meadal
no cop sam bith à beul na h-àraich.

Chunnaic mi gaisgeach mòr à Sasainn,
fearachan bochd nach laigheadh sùil air;
cha b’ Alasdair à Gleanna Garadh –
is thug e gal beag air mo shùilean.

ALT

Heroes
Translator: Sorley MacLean

I did not see Lannes at Ratisbon
nor MacLennan at Auldearn
nor Gillies MacBain at Culloden,
but I saw an Englishman in Egypt.

A poor little chap with chubby cheeks
and knees grinding each other,
pimply unattractive face –
garment of the bravest spirit.

He was not a hit ‘in the pub
in the time of the fists being closed,’
but a lion against the breast of battle,
in the morose wounding showers.

His hour came with the shells,
with the notched iron splinters,
in the smoke and flame,
in the shaking and terror of the battlefield.

Word came to him in the bullet shower
that he should be a hero briskly,
and he was that while he lasted,
but it wasn’t much time he got.

He kept his guns to the tanks,
bucking with tearing crashing screech,
until he himself got, about the stomach,
that biff that put him to the ground,
mouth down in sand and gravel,
without a chirp from his ugly high-pitched voice.

No cross or medal was put to his
chest or to his name or to his family;
there were not many of his troop alive,
and if there were their word would not be strong.
And at any rate, if a battle post stands,
many are knocked down because of him,
not expecting fame, not wanting a medal
or any froth from the mouth of the field of slaughter.

I saw a great warrior of England,
a poor manikin on whom no eye would rest;
no Alasdair of Glen Garry;
and he took a little weeping to my eyes.

ALT

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188d

“She’s writing stories about smaller areas in the West Coast, that are not a major city – urban, rural, borderland kind of spaces, and the particular desperations of those lives”

—Novelist Kirstin Innes & artist Hayley-Jane Dawson on the life & work of Agnes Owens

https://www.greatergovanhill.com/latest/in-conversationon-writing-class-scots-and-agnes-owens

#Scottish #literature #womenwriters #20thcentury #workingclass #AgnesOwens

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188d

Borders Book Festival 2026
11–14 June, Melrose

Tickets are available for the 2026 Borders Book Festival, which celebrates the arts and literature in Scotland and beyond.

https://bordersbookfestival.org/programme-2026/

#Scottish #literature #bookfestival #Borders #Melrose

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156d

What Lies Beneath? Pictish Monsters & the Living Frame
25 June, online – tickets £3.96–£7.21

“Medieval art is well known for its monsters but Pictish art seems to take this fascination to another level.”

Join Professor Heather Pulliam from the Edinburgh School of Art in Groam House Museum's Annual Academic Lecture

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/what-lies-beneath-pictish-monsters-and-the-living-frame-tickets-1986892789820

#Scottish #Scotland #history #Pictish #archaeology #arthistory #earlymedieval #medieval #monsters #carvedstones

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187d

Cantie in seaside simmer on the dunes,
I fling awa my dowp of cigarette
whaur bairns hae biggit castles out of sand
and watch the reik rise frae the parapet…

—Robert Garioch Sutherland (1909–1987), “During a Music Festival”

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/from_the_line/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #warpoetry #WW2 #VEDay #Scots #Scotslanguage

During a Music Festival
Robert Garioch

Cantie in seaside simmer on the dunes,
I fling awa my dowp of cigarette
whaur bairns hae biggit castles out of sand
and watch the reik rise frae the parapet.

Suddenlike I am back in Libya;
yon’s the escarpment, and a bleizan plane,
the wee white speck that feeds the luift wi reik,
dirkins a horror-pictur on my brain.

And aye the reik bleeds frae the warld’s rim
as it has duin frae Babylon and Troy,
London, Bonn, Edinbro, time eftir time.
And great Beethoven sang a Hymn to Joy.

ALT

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187d

It is VE Night, Tobermory.
Cottages blaze and shimmer in the mirror of the bay.
Light is necklaced everywhere…

—Hugh McMillan, “Old Photograph”
published in AFTER THE STORM (Smith/Doorstop Books, 2005)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/old-photograph/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #warpoetry #WW2 #VEDay

Old Photograph
Hugh McMillan

It is VE Night, Tobermory.
Cottages blaze and shimmer in the mirror of the bay.
Light is necklaced everywhere,
on the cross-trees of destroyers,
on the hulls of every cockleshell and scalloper afloat,
even on the gutted snout of a U-Boat,
but there are shadows, to imagine
the black and frozen water
and the land, lonely of men,
from Sunart to Mers-El-Kebir.

Daisy chained by sailors, three WAAFs
pose for a photograph.
Her friends are grinning, wide-eyed,
but my mother’s smile is dying
and she’s turned away
to the sound of the waves,
as if she could sense my father,
whose war would never cease,
limping inexorably back to her
across the oil scarred sea.

ALT

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187d

“An officer – he must have been a new arrival, and a right clown – ran out in front of the company and shouted, with enthusiasm: ‘Men! The war in Europe is over!’”

—George MacDonald Fraser spent VE Day in 1945 waiting to attack a Japanese-held village in Burma – from his memoir QUARTERED SAFE OUT HERE:

#Scottish #literature #memoir #ww2 #Burma #warmemoir #VEDay

There was a long silence, while we digested this, and looked through the heat haze to the village where Jap might be waiting, and I’m not sure that the officer wasn't waving his hat and shouting hip, hooray. The silence continued, and then someone laughed, and it ran down the extended line in a great torrent of mirth, punctuated by cries of “Git the boogers oot ’ere!” and “Ev ye told Tojo, like?” and “Hey, son, is it awreet if we a’ gan yam?”

Footnote: “Gan yam” is Carlisle dialect for “Go home”; elsewhere in Cumberland it is “Ga yem”.

ALT

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187d

“Barrie was a wounded creature, from his earliest youth, and his probing of that wound is what makes PETER PAN so enduringly painful to read […] The tensions are bald and excruciating.”

A 🎂 🧵 for JM Barrie (1860–1937) – born #OTD, 9 May

1/10

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/11/22/lost-boys

#Scottish #literature #JMBarrie #kidlit #ChildrensLiterature #PeterPan