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Quote by Neil Munro

“That's richt. When we were campaignin' wi' Marlborough oor lads had mony time to sleep wi' the canon dirlin' aboot them. Ye get us'd to't, as Annalpa says aboot bein' a weedow woman. And if ye hae noticed it, Coont, there's nae people mair adapted for fechtin' under difeeculties than oor ane; that's what maks the Scots the finest sogers in the warld. It's the build o them, Lowlan' or Hielan', the breed o' them; the dour hard character o' their country and their mainner o' leevin'. We gied the English a fleg at the 'Forty-five,' didnae we? That was where the tartan cam' in: man, there's naethin' like us!”

Quote by Neil Munro

Book:Doom Castle
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Doom Castle

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Neil Munro

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“...the prose tradition had died two centuries before and the recreation of a full canon of all-purpose Scots was beyond even Scott's skill, nor did he attempt it, except, perhaps in the magnificent Wandering Willie's Tale. He took the only course open to him, of writing his narrative in English and using Scots only for those who, given their social class, would still be speaking it: daft Davie Gellatley in Waverley, the gypsies and Dandie Dinmont in Guy Mannering, the Headriggs in Old Mortality, Edie Ochiltree and the fisher-folk of Musselcrag in The Antiquary, Andrew Fairservice in Rob Roy, the Deanses in The Heart of Midlothian, Meg Dods in St. Ronan's Well, and so on. The procedure gave reality to the Scots characters whose ways and ethos it was Scott's main purpose to portray, and the author in his best English, which lumbered along rather badly at times, did little more than lay out the setting for the action and act as impressario for the characters as they played their roles... ...Scott's felicity in conveying character and action through their Scots speech inspired his imitators for the next hundred years - Susan Ferrier, Hogg, Macdonald, Stevenson, Barrie, Crockett, Alexander, George Douglas, and John Buchan. The tradition of narrative in standard English and dialogue in various degrees of dialect has been the usual procedure since.”

Scots LanguageWalter ScottScots LeidDavie GellatleyEdie Ochiltree
Book:Grampian Hairst: An Anthology of Northeast Prose
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“On the whole popular fiction in Victorian Scotland is not overwhelmingly backward-looking; it is not obsessed by rural themes; it does not shrink from urbanisation or its problems; it is not idyllic in its approach; it does not treat the common people as comic or quaint. The second half of the nineteenth century is not a period of creative trauma or linguistic decline; it is one of the richest and most vital episodes in the history of Scottish popular culture.”

Scots LanguageScots LeidKailyardScottish LiteratureScottish Fiction
Book:Popular Literature in Victorian Scotland: Language, Fiction and the Press
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“What we have at present in Scotland is a linguistic continuum between Scots-English - the cumulative result of the attempts of several generations of Scots to speak English - and what is left of our own language, now largely confined to those who have not been deracinated by the influwnce of educational policy. Nevertheless, the Scots language still survives, incipient and fragmented, in the speech of the people and in a substantial body of recorded literature, although what is left of spoken Scots is coming under increasing pressure from English as a result of the influence of British radio and television. The problem for those who are interested in the survival and further evolution of Scots, is not how best to doctor it so that is can masquerade as English, but how to distinguish it clearly from English in writing, as a language which has a character and rules of its own.”

Scots Language
Book:Thrawart Threipins
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“Historically, the language we call Scots was a development of the Anglian speech of the Northumbrians who established their kingdom of Bernicia as far north as the Firth of Forth in the seventh century. This northern Anglo-Saxon language flourished in Lowland Scotland and emerged into a distinct language on its own, capable of rich expansion by borrowing from Latin, French and other sources with its own grammatical forms and methods of borrowing. By the time of the Makars of the fifteenth century it was a highly sophisticated poetic language, based on the spoken speech of the people, but enriched by many kinds of expansion, invention and 'aureation'. Distinct from literary English, but having much in common with it, literary Scots took its place in the late Middle Ages as one of the great literary languages of Europe.”

Scots LanguageScots LeidScottish LiteratureBernicia
Book:Literature and Gentility in Scotland
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“THE PUDDOCK A puddock sat by the lochan's brim, An he thought there was never a puddock like him. he sat on his hurdies, he waggled his legs, An cockit his heid as he glowered through the seggs. The biggsy wee cratur was feelin that prood, He gapit his mou an he croakit oot lood: 'Gin ye'd a like tae see a richt puddock,' quo he, 'Ye'll never, I'll sweer, get a better nor me. I've femlies an wives an a weel-plenished hame, Wi drink for my thrapple an meat for my wame. The lasses aye thocht me a fine strappin chiel, An I ken I'm a rale bonny singer as weel. I'm nae gaun tae blaw, but th' truth I maun tell - I believe I'm the verra McPuddock himsel.'... A heron was hungry an needin tae sup, Sae he nabbit th' puddock an gollupt him up; Syne runkled his feathers: 'A peer thing,' quo he, 'But - puddocks is nae fat they eesed tae be.”

Scots LanguageFrogAberdeenshireHeronPuddock
Book:The Puddock
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