scottish

29d

Allan Ramsay (1684–1758) – poet, playwright, founder of modern Scots writing, & with a claim to be the father of Romanticism – was born #OTD, 15 Oct
A 🎂 🧵

1/6

🖼️ Allan Ramsay, 1684–1758, by William Aikman – Scottish National Portrait Gallery
(This portrait was owned by Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, who wrote on the back of the canvas: “Here painted on this canvas clout by Aikman’s hand is Ramsay’s snout”)

https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/3526

#Scottish #literature #drama #poetry #18thcentury #Romanticism

Portrait of Allan Ramsay (1684–1758), by William Aikman. Oil on canvas. Ramsay is clean-shaven, and looks out at the viewer with a half-smile. He wears a collarless dark green velvet coat, unbuttoned, and has an orange silk cloth wound about his head like an improvised turban.

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

52d

Yestreen I heard a birdie sing
Inbye a bonnie beech tree hedge
As if it didnae ken nor care
Autumn wis hidin in the sedge…

—Sheena Blackhall, “Autumn IX”
via the Sottish Poetry Library

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/autumn-ix/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #autumn

Autumn IX
by Sheena Blackhall

Yestreen I heard a birdie sing
Inbye a bonnie beech tree hedge
As if it didnae ken nor care
Autumn wis hidin in the sedge

The daith o leaves is roon the neuk
It peints them yalla, reid an broon
An doon they’ll drap like faain rain
In waesome Autumn’s dowie croon

Sic cheenges cam tae great an sma
First ae grey hair, a nippin knee
The stert o auld age: clawin cleuks
That herald yer mortality

Autumn draws near, like cat wi moose
It winna stop, nor else devaul
A jeelin in a body’s banes
A cheenge, the turn frae warm tae caul

Noo blawin in the win, dry leaves
Like Simmer’s ghaists, ethereal
This is the Sizzen o the scythe
The nichts draw in, a mournin pall

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

52d

Michael Pedersen and Peter Mackay in conversation with Gemma Cairney
28 September, Braemar. Tickets £10

Michael Pedersen and Peter Mackay in conversation with Gemma Cairney about their work, their love of language, and the inspiration they draw from Scotland’s landscapes, contemporary culture and ways of living.

https://www.tickettailor.com/events/thefifearms/1742592

#Scottish #literature #language #landscape #culture

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

29d

A Curious Episode at Balquhidder: Placenames in the North & the Nackens
28 October, Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh – free, ticketed

Dr Robert Fell on how the folklore of Nackens (Scottish Gypsy Travellers) can give insights into Scotland’s history & place names

https://sisf.online.red61.co.uk/event/913:6267/913:27696/

#Scottish #literature #minoritylanguage #travellers #Nacken #folklore #placenames #history #storytelling #folktale

Talks & Lectures
A Curious Episode at Balquhidder: Placenames in the North and the Nackens

Alan Bruford Memorial Lecture 2025

(Tue 28 Oct: 6pm)

Scottish place names and their origins are important. Join Dr Robert Fell to hear about the perspectives of Nackens (Scottish Gypsy Travellers) and how their folklore can give us unique insights into Scotland’s history and her place names. With special guest Shamus McPhee, who recounts a curious episode from Highland Perthshire that gave Balquhidder its name.

Presented in memory of Scottish scholar Alan Bruford, in partnership with the University of Edinburgh’s Department of Celtic and Scottish Studies.

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

49d

Andrew O’Hagan: On Friendship
16 October, Glasgow. Tickets £5–£15

From the bestselling author of MAYFLIES and CALEDONIAN ROAD, a celebration of what makes us great: our friends.

In these personal reflections, Andrew O’Hagan explores friendship through music and poetry, memory and history, illuminating the many ways and reasons that people come together, and how our lives are all the better because we do.

https://www.waterstones.com/events/andrew-ohagan-in-conversation-with-kirstin-innes/glasgow-sauchiehall-street

#Scottish #literature #friendship #AndrewOHagan

Edited 49d ago

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

51d

Leave, leave your well-loved nest,
Late swallow, and fly away.
Here is no rest
For hollowing heart and wearying wing…

—Edwin Muir, “The Late Swallow”
first published in One Foot in Eden (Faber, 1956)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/late-swallow/

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

The Late Swallow
by Edwin Muir

Leave, leave your well-loved nest,
Late swallow, and fly away.
Here is no rest
For hollowing heart and wearying wing.
Your comrades all have flown
To seek their southern paradise
Across the great earth’s downward sloping side,
And you are alone.
Why should you cling
Still to the swiftly ageing narrowing day?
Prepare;
Shake your pinions long untried
That now must bear you there where you would be
Through all the heavens of ice;
Till falling down the homing air
You light and perch upon the radiant tree.

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

51d

You that through all the dying summer
Came every morning to our breakfast table,
A lonely bachelor mummer,
And fed on the marmalade
So deeply, all your strength was scarcely able
To prise you from the sweet pit you had made…

—Edwin Muir, “The Late Wasp”
from One Foot in Eden (Faber, 1956)

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

The Late Wasp
by Edwin Muir

You that through all the dying summer
Came every morning to our breakfast table,
A lonely bachelor mummer,
And fed on the marmalade
So deeply, all your strength was scarcely able
To prise you from the sweet pit you had made, –
You and the earth have now grown older,
And your blue thoroughfares have felt a change;
They have grown colder;
And it is strange
How the familiar avenues of the air
Crumble now, crumble; the good air will not hold,
All cracked and perished with the cold;
And down you dive through nothing and through despair.

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

51d

…and then katie who is very quiet most of the time
says no that wasn’t in the past because it’s happening
today it’s happening now she saw it on her phone
and that we’re all going to die tomorrow or the day after
and both rebeccas stand up waving their hands shouting
we’re not are we sir we’re not are we we’re not going to die
tomorrow are we sir…

—Mark Russell, “Drama”
in With Their Best Clothes On: New Writing Scotland 36

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws36/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #rapture

Mark Russell
Drama

so we’re doing the 1960s and leah who’s eleven
nearly twelve says what’s vietnam sir and scott
who has already turned twelve but looks about eight
says it’s in korea isn’t it sir and stephanie laughs
well sort of snorts and looks like she might pee herself
and i say no but it is in the far east like korea
and we look on the map i bought and tacked to the wall
and see why north vietnam was supported by china
but not quite why south vietnam was supported by the usa
and then rab whose name is robbie but he prefers rab
spots korea and says look there’s a north and a south
just like that vietnam hingy and thomas says
wasn’t there a war there too and aiden says shut up
twatface and I have to send him out to mrs lennon
and thomas says it again and we see that north korea
was supported by china and that the americans found
another way of fighting another war a long way from home
and then katie who is very quiet most of the time
says no that wasn’t in the past because it’s happening
today it’s happening now she saw it on her phone
and that we’re all going to die tomorrow or the day after
and both rebeccas stand up waving their hands shouting
we’re not are we sir we’re not are we we’re not going to die
tomorrow are we sir and I say no but what would we do if
we thought we were going to die tomorrow how would we feel
maybe we can make a play about it let’s get into groups

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

51d

NETTLES: A Launch & Showcase
16 Oct, Scottish Poetry Library, Edinburgh – free

Launching NETTLES, Nazaret Renea’s debut poetry collection, plus readings from four of the young poets taking part in Scotland’s Next Generation Young Makars scheme: Mattea Gernentz, Elissa Hunter-Dorans, Ben Mann & Caitlin Sherret.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/nettles-a-launch-and-showcase-with-scotlands-next-generation-young-makars-tickets-1734620258889

#Scottish #literature #poetry

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

48d

April, the last full fixture of the spring:
“Feet, Scottish, feet!” – they rucked the fear of God
Into Blackheath. Their club was everything…

—“London Scottish”, by Mick Imlah (1956–2009) – born #OTD, 26 September.
Published in THE LOST LEADER (Faber, 2008)

1/5

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/london-scottish/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #warpoetry #WW1 #rugby #LondonScottish

London Scottish
Mick Imlah

April, the last full fixture of the spring:
‘Feet, Scottish, feet!’ – they rucked the fear of God
Into Blackheath. Their club was everything:
And of the four sides playing that afternoon,
The stars, but also those from the back pitches,
All sixty volunteered for the touring squad,
And swapped their Richmond turf for Belgian ditches.
October: mad for a fight, they broke too soon
On the Ypres Salient, rushing the ridge between
‘Witshit’ and Messines. Three-quarters died.

Of that ill-balanced and fatigued fifteen
The ass selectors favoured to survive,
Just one, Brodie the prop, resumed his post.
The others sometimes drank to ‘The Forty-Five’:
Neither a humorous nor an idle toast.

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

50d

Samuel Rutherford (S.R.) Crockett (1859–1914) was born #OTD, 24 Sep. A bestselling author in his lifetime of 60+ novels, he fell from fashion after WW1, and his books were dismissed as “kailyard”. But Tolkien cites Crockett as an inspiration, & in VIDA, or THE IRON LORD (1907) he possibly wrote the first car chase in fiction…

1/4

https://1890s.ca/crockett_bio/

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #20thcentury #Victorian #Edwardian #Tolkien

Samuel Rutherford Crockett. Photograph by Elliott & Fry. The Critic, September 1905. P. 200. Wikimedia Commons. Crockett is bearded, and wears a jacket buttoned all the way up to his neck. His left hand rests in his jacket pocket and he is holding a book, casually, in his right. The photograph is in black and white.

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

50d

Captain Smollett might be played by a felt frog, but Muppet Treasure Island is the truest movie adaptation because “it embraces the adventure and the spirit of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel whole-heartedly”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) was born #OTD, 24 September.

https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/muppet-treasure-island-anniversary-best-adaptation

#Scottish #literature #film #movies #adaptation #RobertLouisStevenson #TreasureIsland #Muppets #JimHenson

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

28d

Today, 16 October is World Food Day, & THE BOTTLE IMP invites you to an all-you-can-eat literary feast of Scottish literature – from medieval health food to vegetarianism in contemporary fiction, via gender, folklore, oysters, cocktails & more!

May contain nuts.

1/6

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2024/11/cooking-the-books/

#Scottish #literature #cooking #food #WorldFoodDay

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

49d

From the Caribbean to Caledonia: Two National Bards in Conversation

In this special edition of the Scottish Poetry Library podcast, Scotland’s current Makar, Peter Mackay, & the former Poet Laureate of Jamaica, Lorna Goodison, discuss Robert Burns, Bob Marley, Dante’s Inferno, the Gaelic & Jamaican tongues, & much more

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/podcast/from-the-caribbean-to-caledonia-two-national-bards-in-conversation/

#Scottish #Jamaican #literature #Scotland #Jamaica #poetry #podcast #RobertBurns #BobMarley #Dante #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #language #minoritylanguages

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

1y

Lord Byron – “half a Scot by birth, and bred / a whole one” – died 200 years ago #OTD, 19 April 1824

This poem was written in a letter to Thomas Moore from Venice in 1817, when Byron was feeling particularly shagged out after Carnevale…

#Byron #LordByron #Scottish #literature #poetry #18thcentury #19thcentury #romanticism

1/4
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43845/so-well-go-no-more-a-roving

So We'll Go No More a Roving
BY Lord Byron (George Gordon)

So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

49d

Glasgow, late September and the city I spoke of
in another country (its fierce sandstone
burning, its bombast of finials built on the heads of slaves
the monumental tower blocks of a later order
catching fire from the west as a plane comes in)…

—Gerrie Fellows, “Dream Cities”
published in The Body in Space (Shearsman, 2014)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/dream-cities/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry

Dream Cities
Gerrie Fellows

I
Glasgow, late September and the city I spoke of
in another country (its fierce sandstone
burning, its bombast of finials built on the heads of slaves
the monumental tower blocks of a later order
catching fire from the west as a plane comes in)
has become in two months
a dream a nostalgia

For it is litter not grandeur
a muddied disturbance in a dirty river
a sullen reflection sliced by concrete
(the monumental pillars
and glorious boulevards of a later order)

Against the vivifying light
of the south the suburban avenues
of a world of space it is rain
rain and old world pallor

and beyond it
on the high points of Aonach Mor and Ben Nevis
(so early a door closing and opening)
the first snows of the winter

II
Early November and the city I parted from
in two months has become a dream technicolour
not quite Auckland or Christchurch
but a dream place of skyscrapers and heady blossom
stern waxy magnolia silk of almond and crab apple
A dream place but Christchurch as it was then
in mid-September Jane driving me to the airport
past gardens reeking with nectar

for there Spring has continued without me

And here I wake no longer at home

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

49d

From breakfast on through all the day
At home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod…

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Land of Nod” – from A Child’s Garden of Verses

Image: illustration by Charles Robinson (1870–1937) to “The Land of Nod”

Today, 25 September, is #WorldDreamDay

1/3

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47431/the-land-of-nod

#Scottish #literature #kidlit #poetry #19thcentury #RobertLouisStevenson #dream #dreams #dreaming

The Land of Nod
by Robert Louis Stevenson

From breakfast on through all the day
At home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod.

All by myself I have to go,
With none to tell me what to do —
All alone beside the streams
And up the mountain-sides of dreams.

The strangest things are there for me,
Both things to eat and things to see,
And many frightening sights abroad
Till morning in the land of Nod.

Try as I like to find the way,
I never can get back by day,
Nor can remember plain and clear
The curious music that I hear.

Pen and ink illustration by Charles Robinson to Stevenson’s poem "The Land of Nod". The image is tall and thin; the right side is dominated by a black crag (or possibly a strange tree-trunk), in front of which, in the bottom right-hand corner, stand two fantastical bird-like creatures with scruffy feathers and outsized, beaked heads. Although not overtly threatening or frightening, they are unsettling in their appearance. Behind them, a small child, head bowed, toils up-slope with the aid of a staff. Strange, cloudy outcrops and buildings are in the background. In the top left-hand corner, a giant, long-nosed face peers over the top of the cliff.

Caption: "Up the mountain sides of dreams"

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

47d

“Spark thrived in institutions. This is because, like Miss Brodie, she was a conservative anarchist. Her anarchism was part of the Edinburgh Character and her conservatism rooted in respect for order, authority and ritual.”

Behind the Fame (and Inspirations) of Muriel Spark: Frances Wilson on the similarities between Spark’s favourite teacher and her most famous protagonist

https://lithub.com/behind-the-fame-and-inspirations-of-muriel-spark/

#Scottish #literature #MurielSpark #20thcentury #womenwriters

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

28d

“Very good. And after you had repeated the order, and again he refused, you charged him, and he became abusive?”
“Yessir.”
“What did he say?”
Baxter hesitated. “He called me a shilpit wee nyaff, sir.”
The president stirred. “He called you what?”
Baxter coloured slightly. “A shilpit wee nyaff, sir.”
The president looked at Prosecution. “Perhaps you can translate?”

—from “McAuslan’s Court-Martial”, by George MacDonald Fraser

#Scottish #literature #Scots #Scotslanguage #Scotstober #nyaff

Prosecution, hand it to him, didn’t even blink. He selected a paper from his table, held it up at arm’s length, & said gravely:
“Shilpit, I am informed, sir, signifies stunted, undergrown. As to ‘wee’, that is, of course, current in English as well as in …” he paused for a second “… the Northern dialects. Nyaff, an insignificant person, a pip-squeak.”
“Remarkable,” said the president. “Nyaff. Ny-ahff.” He tried it round his tongue. “Expressive. Synonymous with the Norse ‘niddering’.”
“Sir?” said Prosecution.
“Niddering,” said the president. “A worthless person, a non-entity. Possibly a connection there. So many of these Norse pejoratives begin with ‘n’.”
Einstein coughed slightly. “Hebrew too, sir. ‘Nebbish’ means much the same thing.”
“Indeed?” The president brightened. “I’m obliged to you. Nyaff,” he repeated with satisfaction. “Remarkable. Do go on.”
Prosecution, looking slightly rattled, turned again to Baxter.
“And after he had called you … these names?”
“He called me a glaikit sumph.”
You could see Prosecution wishing he hadn’t asked. The president was looking hopeful. “Sumph,” said the president with relish. “That’s strong.” He looked inquiring, & Prosecution sighed.
“Sumph, a dullard, an uninspired person, a stick-in-the-mud. Glaikit, loose-jointed, awkward, ill-formed.” He put down his paper with resignation. “There is more, sir, in the dialect & in ordinary speech, but I question whether …”

3 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

45d

nuair a tha mi fhìn nam sheasamh
aig ceann Loch an Dala
’s mi a’ coimhead thar cuain geur
a’ deàrrsadh ’s a’ deàlradh
fo ghrian na sìorraidheachd
chan fhaic mi sgath dhen ghlasadh cheilteach…

—Iain S. Mac a’ Phearsain, “ceann Loch an Dala”
in Friends & Kangaroos: New Writing Scotland 17 (ASL, 1999)

#Scottish #literature #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #poem #poetry #Islay #emigration

ceann Loch an Dala
Iain S. Mac a’ Phearsain

nuair a tha mi fhìn nam sheasamh
aig ceann Loch an Dala
’s mi a’ coimhead thar cuain geur
a’ deàrrsadh ’s a’ deàlradh
fo ghrian na sìorraidheachd
chan fhaic mi sgath dhen ghlasadh cheilteach
a’ ciaradh Ile
na eilean shìthichean faoin
ach soitheach mo shinnsearan
a’ triall dhan iar
Gilleasbaig is Eòghann
a’ cur cùl ri Cill’ Nèimh
an aghaidh leis a’ ghaoith
’s an làmhan air a’ chliathaich
blàth ’s cha mhòr air chrith.

head of Loch Indaal
John Scott MacPherson

personally, when I stand
at the head of Loch Indaal
and look out
over a razor-sharp sea
shining and radiating
under an everlasting sun
I see none of the Celtic twilight
reducing Islay
to an island of vacant faeries
but my ancestors’ ship
heading for the west
Archibald and Hugh
turning backs on Kilnave
facing downwind
their hands on the gunwhales
warm and almost shaking.

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

45d

“I first met Edna O’Brien on a mild spring evening in 2009. There had been a party to celebrate the 70th birthday of Seamus Heaney and I was running late, so I put up my hand for a taxi and a rumbling black cab drew to a halt. The door swung open and Edna stepped on to the pavement like Ophelia out of the weedy brook. She was a vision in black velvet and volumised hair.”

—an extract from ON FRIENDSHIP by Andrew O’Hagan

@bookstodon

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/sep/27/there-was-comedy-at-all-times-andrew-ohagan-on-15-years-of-funny-frank-and-champagne-fuelled-friendship-with-edna-obrien

#Scottish #literature #friendship

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

45d

As your lover on waking recounts her dreams,
unruly, striking, unfathomable as herself,
your attention wanders
to her moving lips, throat, those slim shoulders
draped in a shawl of light…

—Andrew Greig, “A Long Shot”
published in This Life, This Life (Bloodaxe, 2007)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/long-shot/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #golf #RyderCup

A Long Shot
by Andrew Greig

As your lover on waking recounts her dreams,
unruly, striking, unfathomable as herself,
your attention wanders
to her moving lips, throat, those slim shoulders
draped in a shawl of light, and what’s being christened here
is not what is said but who is saying it,
the overwhelming fact
she lives and breathes beside you another day.

Other folks’ golf shots being even less interesting
than their dreams, I’ll be brief:
as she spoke I thought of a putt yesterday at the 4th,
as many feet from the pin as I am years from my birth,
several more than I am from my death –
one stiff clip, it birled across the green,
curved up the rise, swung down the dip
like a miniature planet heading home,

and the strangest thing is not what’s going to happen
but your dazed, incredulous knowing it will,
long before the ball reaches the cup then drops,
that it’s turned out right after all,
like waking one morning to find yourself
unerringly in love with your wife.

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

46d

Back here, the iron line crosses future, past:
Then my father will surely be seen

Trekking the sodden, lonely land,
Weekenders, together –

—Jackie Kay, “Rannoch Loop”
published in BANTAM (Picador, 2017)

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/jackie-kay/bantam/9781509887927

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #walking #hiking

Rannoch Loop
by Jackie Kay

Back here, the iron line crosses future, past:
Then my father will surely be seen

Trekking the sodden, lonely land,
Weekenders, together –

Or trudging through the ancient pine woods,
The musk smell of red deer,

My father, here on the moor,
Years and years after he’s gone,

Held by the land’s callused hands.
Och – big hikes across time, lochs, bogs,

September weekend or Easter, far flung,
Doon by Loch Ericht, on the west side

To the old crofter’s burnt-out croft,
Still a magnificent doss, and he’ll doss there,

(Twelve men to the wee hoose)
And rest, rest, till finally refreshed.

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

45d

Take Four Books: William Boyd

Available on BBC Sounds. William Boyd speaks to Take Four Books about his new spy novel, The Predicament, & together with presenter James Crawford & crime writer Louise Welsh they explore its connections to three other literary works.

@bookstodon

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002k3g6

#Scottish #literature #spythriller #thriller

Edited 45d ago

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

46d

On BBC Sounds: Jackie Kay talks to John Wilson about her childhood in Glasgow as the mixed-race, adopted daughter of a loving couple.

Jackie first introduction to performance & theatre were the parties her parents hosted to raise money for the Communist Party.

Growing up in Glasgow in the 60s & 70s, Jackie had very few Black role models & took inspiration from the works of Audre Lorde & Angela Davis.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002jttv

#Scottish #literature #identity #poetry #JackieKay #Glasgow

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

Previous Page Next Page