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Lewis Grassic Gibbon Books

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Sunset Song

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“Braid Scots is still in most Scottish communities (in one or other Anglicised modification) the speech of bed and board and street and plough, the speech of emotional ecstasy and emotional stress. But it is not genteel. It is to the bourgeoisie of Scotland coarse and low and common and loutish, a matter for laughter, well enough for hinds and the like, but for the genteel to be quoted in vocal inverted commas... But for the truly Scots writer it remains a real and haunting thing, even while he tries his best to forget its existence and to write as a good Englishman.”

BourgeoisieScots LanguageGenteelScottish Writers
Book:Scottish Scene: or, The Intelligent Man's Guide to Albyn
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“Scots words to tell to your heart how they wrung it and held it, the toil of their days and unendingly their fight. And the next minute that passed from you, you were English, back to the English words so sharp and clean and true - for a while, till they slid so smooth from your throat you knew they could never say anything that was worth the saying at all.”

English LanguageScots Language
Book:A Scots Quair: Sunset Song, Cloud Howe, Grey Granite
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“Sr James George Frazer, a Scotsman by birth, is the author of the immense Golden Bough, a collection of anthropological studies. The author's methods of correlation have been as crude and unregulated as his industry and the cultivation of his erudition have been immense. The confusion of savage and primitive states of culture commenced by Tylor and his school has been carried to excess in the works of Sr J.G. Frazer. From the point of view of the social historian attempting to disentangle the story of man's coming and growth upon this planet he is one of the most calamatous phenomena in modern research: he has smashed in the ruin of pre-history with a coal hammer, collected every brick disclosed when the dust has settled on the debris, and then labelled the exhibits with the assiduous industry of a literary ant. His pleasing literary style in that labelling is in unorthodox English.”

EruditionSocial HistoryLiterary StylePre HistoryAnthropological MethodThe Golden BoughSir James Frazer
Book:Scottish Scene: or, The Intelligent Man's Guide to Albyn
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“I like the thought of a Scots Republic with Scots Border Guards in saffron kilts - the thought of those kilts can awake me to joy in the middle of the night. I like the thought of Miss Wendy Wood leading a Scots Expeditionary Force down to Westminster the reclaim the Scone Stone: I would certainly march with that expedition myself in spite of the risk of dying of laughter by the way. I like the thought of a Scots Catholic kingdom with Mr. Compton Mackenzie Prime Minister to some disinterred Jacobite royalty, and all the Scots intellectuals settled out on the land on thirty-acre crofts, or sent to St Kilda for the good of their souls and the nation (except the hundreds streaming over the border in panic flight at sight of the Scotland of their dreams).”

IntellectualsKiltsJacobitismLand ReformCompton MackenzieBorder GuardsCroftsWendy Wood
Book:Scottish Scene: or, The Intelligent Man's Guide to Albyn
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“So that was Chris and her reading and schooling, two Chrisses there were that fought for her heart and tormented her. You hated the land and the coarse speak of the folk and learning was brave and fine one day; and the next you'd waken with the peewits crying across the hills, deep and deep, crying in the heart of you and the smell of the earth in your face, almost you'd cry for that, the beauty of it and the sweetness of the Scottish land and skies.”

Scottish FictionChris Guthrie
Author:Lewis Grassic Gibbon
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