> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to
> poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Robin Hamilton
> Sent: 18 May 2005 17:20
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Snap
> > > (It's revived under Robert Crawford and Bill Herbert, but that was
> > > much later.)
> > I think Crawford would be a little surprised to be fingered in this
context,
> Didn't Rob Crawford do work in Braid Scots, Peter? I'm
> beginning to wonder -- don't really know his work that well.
> (Though my father confirmed him.)
Aha, he kent yer faither? Anyway, maybe it's me who would be surprised, but
I don't think so.
> > but writers of his generation and younger are less bothered by the
> > pin-dancing issues and are correspondingly comfortable with whichever
> > variant attracts them as a craft resource.
> Well, it wasn't pin-dancing in the sixties (he said, smoke coming out his
> ears) when urban language poetry was under fire from *both*
> RSP and the Lallans crew, and the dictionary compilers at
> Edinburgh were scouring the coutryside for the last living
> speaker of some variant of the term "sparrow"
> in Wamfry, while studiously denying that urban Scots existed.
> Yesterday's wars, I suppose.
Ah, fowk were aye angry about _something_ during the 60s, eh?
> > The big shift happened in the mid 1990s when Scots was given an
'official'
> > standing by being brought into the schools curriculum. A lot of people
who'd
> > had their shoulders to the boulder for years found the boulder
> > suddenly gone. For people constitutionally built for oppositionalism,
> > this was quite a shock.
> But which Scots?
All of it -- that was one of the refreshing things. Well, I say 'all', no
doubt someone would pipe up and say something got left out, but Lallans,
urban Scots, Doric, Shetlandic, and so on all got a look in if I remember.
You maybe missed the Charter for the Arts in Scotland process that was going
on either late 80s or early 90s, but that fed into policy e.g. at SAC by the
mid 90s, preaching inclusivity in all things.
>
> The yahoo ScotsLanguage group (current membership 4) has just
> restarted after a two year hiatus, and *that* crew are even
> now antagonistic to urban speech. (I should know -- I was in
> the original group from about the
> start.)
Plus ça change -- they used to meet in a lift, didn't they?
> > Pin-dancing anecdote: George Philp holding forth on the orthography of
> > the oo/ou sound in Scots. Sheena Wellington intercedes: George, if I
> > giey'a cloot, I expectye to mop the flair. If I giey'a clout, I
> > expectye to be OAN the flair!
> Yeah, but pin-dancing again -- that would never have been
> transcribed that way at the height of the Language Wars. No
> one *ever* used an apostrophe, as it implied that Scots was a
> deformed version of English.
>
> Well, the Lallans crowd did, but them ...
Ay, I was conscious while listening to the sound and finding a way of
transcribing it. Actually, this very issue arose with a piece we had in
Edinburgh Review a few issues back. I'd routinely disposed of apostrophes
according to the Scots Style Sheet, and the author whimpered like a wounded
dog (think of those unfortunate dogs they experimented with in the quest for
fixing longitude by sympathetic magic). It didn't matter that every
reputable authority agreed with my POV, we ended up letting him have his way
for the sake of a peaceful life. That is very much the way now, but the
depth of emotion such an essentially trivial matter arouses is quite
extraordinary. It's dancing to a heavy metal beat.
If you didn't laugh, it would make you cry. Reminds me, there was a lovely
poem Lydia Robb wrote about a Tom Leonard performance:
We Kin Laffatit Noo
the lie brurry
that’s whurrit wiz
a poetry re
ding by
whitziz name
red uz
a six wurd poem
wi the
obligiturry
four letter word
thrownin
turdsanat
ken
right enuff
tellt uz
his languij
wiz disgraceful
red uz anither
that soondit like
a shoapin list
we dun
the wrang thing
snickert
shooda seeniz face
he sez
tipicil
thickiz shitn
a boatl
the lottya
ah gee up
kenma
heed duzny
buttn
up the back
if ye dinny unnerston
jiss fuckaff
gawn
ootma road
(Chapman 77)
P
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