Lowland Scots Research Articles

The French Reception of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: A Belated Consecration

The French Reception of <i>Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</i>: A Belated Consecration

Central Scots Dialect in the East Lothian County: 2018 Morphosyntactic Dialectal Survey

The Scots language belongs to the Teutonic Germanic language family essentially spoken in the Lowland Scots area covering central and southern Scotland as well as the north-eastern part of the country. It is divided into four different groups of varieties, i.e. the Broad Scots dialectal group spoken in southern Scotland, the Doric dialect spoken in the north-eastern part of Scotland, the Insular Scots group spoken in the Shetland and Orkney Islands and the most spoken and written Scots dialectal group called Central Scots extending from the central western to the central eastern part of the country. The study carried out in the East Lothian county from 13 August to 21 August 2018 had the purpose to analyse the syntax and grammar of the local Lothian Scots and to determine if it still survives in the pervasive wave of Standard England English. A semi-structured type questionnaire was distributed to 17 people during this period revealing a radically different grammatical attitude from the other enquiries conducted in the Scottish Borders five years earlier.

The Scots Irish of Early Pennsylvania: A Varied People

The history of the Scots Irish (sometimes called the Ulster Scots or Scotch Irish) is important for an understanding of both Irish and early American history. Lowland Scots, who were Presbyterians, were encouraged to settle in northern Ireland as part of a plan to colonize Ulster with Protestants after the wars of the seventeenth century. By the early eighteenth century, the province may have included as many as two hundred thousand Scots Irish. Changing circumstances in Ireland reduced their economic opportunities and placed these dissenting Protestants on a social and political status not much different from that of dissenting Catholics. These conditions prompted several waves of migration in the eighteenth century to the North American colonies. Pennsylvania, as Judith Ridner shows, attracted the Scots Irish because Philadelphia was a major port, and, more importantly, because it had no established church and welcomed Presbyterians. These people settled both in Philadelphia and the Delaware River valley as merchants and professionals, and also in the frontier regions of western Pennsylvania as farmers. This has given rise to two traditions associated with the Scots Irish that Ridner points out: one of rapid assimilation, upward mobility, and economic and political success, on the one hand, and one of hardscrabble, Indian-fighting frontiersmen on the other. The incredible story of Andrew Jackson, she asserts, embodied both of these images.

Lowland pine forests in the northwestern Pannonian Basin: between natural vegetation and modern plantations

Lowland Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) forests cover extensive areas in Central Europe. Most of them are considered to be the results of relatively recent plantation-oriented forest management. We investigated the long-term history of lowland pine forests in the Zahorska Lowland region of aeolian sands in the northern margin of the Pannonian Basin. Pine monocultures were planted there already in the mid-seventeenth century and currently prevail in the land cover of the region. Our aim was to challenge the commonly accepted idea that the present pine-dominated forests lack connections to pre-plantation pine forests of the Early Holocene. Using multi-proxy data, we compared palaeoeocological data with archaeobotanical data, anthracological finds and evidence on past human settlement. Palaeoecological results suggested a distinct compositional linkage of recent pine-dominated forests with their Early Holocene predecessors. Moreover, no significant change was detected in tree dominants in at least the past two millennia. Contrary to palaeoecology, archeaeobotany suggested that broadleaved trees (mostly oak) dominated during the past 4000 years. However, this result is probably strongly biased by human preferences for wood for specific purposes. On the other hand, pine in palaeoecological data is doubtless overrepresented because of its abundant pollen production. We conclude that pine forests with a significant admixture of oak continuously covered the sandy substrates of the Zahorska Lowland throughout the Holocene. The present pine forests can therefore be considered fairly close to the original vegetation of the study region.

William (Bill) Calin (1936-2018)

William (Bill) Calin (1936-2018) F. Regina Psaki William Compaine Calin died on May 20, 2018 at Lake City Medical Center in Gainesville, Florida at the age of 82. Bill Calin was born on April 4, 1936, in Newington, Connecticut, only child of Isadore ("Jack") Calin and Nettie Compaine, originally from Romania and Russia. Bill often described his parents as committed communists; their son, as some apples do, rolled as far from the tree as possible. Bill loved talking politics; he relished disagreement and debate, and never saw any reason for such conversations to become aggressive or divisive. He deplored the factionalism that has riven American politics and the disappearance of the concept of "loyal opposition." If Bill could have bottled his gift for lively yet friendly—even affectionate—political wrangling, he'd have made a fortune, and the entire polity would have been the better for it. Click for larger view View full resolution Bill in 1963 (Guggenheim archives) Click for larger view View full resolution Bill in May, 2017 (photo by Kathryn Klingebiel) Bill studied in Paris during his junior year in college. There he fell in love with French Romanesque and Gothic architecture, which led him to his research and teaching specialities of medieval French and Occitan literature and culture—as well as to middle English and, later, to modern Occitan, Breton, and lowland Scots. His published obituary noted that "While he published more in one lifetime than many could do in five, his creative and analytical energies would have taken five lifetimes to exhaust." This is no exaggeration, and no short tribute can do justice to the variety and copia of his publications. Fully 25% of [End Page 224] his published articles are dedicated to Occitan; this tribute will highlight some of his Occitan professional activities. Bill took his undergraduate degree at Yale College (1957) and his Ph.D. from Yale University (1960). From then on, in his teaching and writing alike, he communicated both his knowledge and his love of the rich contributions that France has made to world culture. He taught at Dartmouth, Stanford, the University of Oregon, and, since 1988, the University of Florida, as Graduate Research Professor in French Literature. He was a visiting professor at academic institutions in North America and Europe and delivered 230 conference papers and invited lectures. A quintessential teacher and researcher, Bill won eleven major grants from national and/or international scholarly organizations, including the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Program, and the American Council of Learned Societies. He was an International Vice President of the Association Internationale d'Études Occitanes (1993-2002). He was on the editorial board of numerous journals, including Tenso, and served in many international organizations, such as the Centre international de l'écrit en occitan (1996 until his death) and the MLA Division of Provençal and Catalan. He was proud to have been elected a Sòci dóu Felibrige in 1993. Bill published twelve books covering a broad range of French literature, from the earliest epics of France, through the lyric production of poets such as Guillaume de Machaut, to modernity and medievalism. His expertise also included the so-called 'minority' languages and literatures of the British Isles and France, on the one hand, and the ways in which the modern world imagines, studies, and understands the Middle Ages, on the other. His later books include The French Tradition and the Literature of Medieval England; Minority Literatures and Modernism: Scots, Breton, and Occitan, 1920-1990; The Twentieth-Century Humanist Critics: From Spitzer to Frye; and The Lily and the Thistle: The French Tradition and the Older Literature of Scotland; Essays in Criticism. In addition, Bill published over 120 articles and book chapters on many topics (see below for those on Occitan) and reviewed [End Page 225] 27 books in learned journals. His last Occitan essay appeared in Spring 2018 in this journal, a fitting conclusion to his career as an occitaniste. Bill was twice married and remained dear friends with his former wives. Though he had no children or siblings, he is survived by many whom he called "academic daughters and sons," whom he mentored...

Storytelling among Lowland Scots since 1800: An All-Female, Upper-Middle-Class Family Oral Tradition in the Context of Written Tale Collections

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Storytelling among Lowland Scots since 1800: An All-Female, Upper-Middle-Class Family Oral Tradition in the Context of Written Tale Collections

Storytelling among Lowland Scots since 1800: An All-Female, Upper-Middle-Class Family Oral Tradition in the Context of Written Tale Collections

Thinking Other People's Thoughts: Brian Holton's Translations from Classical Chinese into Lowland Scots

Brian Holton (b. 1949), the only currently working translator of classical Chinese poetry into Scots, is here approached biographically, through his personal history and his career in translating and publishing. Holton's collection of his own translation materials, including drafts, proofs, scores, translations, notes, lectures, correspondence, and journalistic writings, has been made available to the author. As a voice of history, Holton's life and work constitute a subjective narrative that enters into debate, discussion, and interpretation with larger narratives, spheres of diffusion, and power relations. Hence the discussion touches on such matters as as language policy in education and national literatures, and issues of centre and periphery, foreignization and domestication.

A regional survey of the relationship between vowel and consonant duration in Shetland Scots

AbstractThe local dialect spoken in the Shetland Isles constitutes a form of Lowland Scots. It has been suggested that stressed syllables in Shetland Scots tend to contain either a long vowel followed by a short consonant (V:C) or a short vowel followed by a long consonant (VC:), and furthermore that this pattern constitutes a trace of complementary quantity in Norn, a Nordic language spoken in Shetland approximately until the end of the eighteenth century. The existence of such a pattern has also been supported by acoustic measurements. Following a summary and overview of Norn’s demise in the Shetland Isles, this paper presents a regional survey of the relationship between vowel and consonant duration in stressed syllables in Shetland Scots. Based on acoustic data from 43 speakers, representing ten separate regions across the Shetland Isles, the inverse correlation between vowel and consonant duration is assessed. The results reveal that the inverse correlation is strongest in the northern part of Shetland and weakest in the south, and displays a general north-to-south decline across Shetland. The results are thus generally consistent with predictions that follow from regional variation concerning Norn’s death; evidence suggests that it survived the longest in the northern parts of Shetland.

William Keith Cowan

William Keith Cowan (“Bill”) was born in Liverpool, but his forbears were Lowland Scots. Initially attracted to internal medicine and registrar to Sir Cyril Clarke, Bill later turned to histopathology,...

Ulster-Scots Psalmody: A Consideration

The Scottish Metrical Psalter of 1650 commands an iconic cultural significance within the Ulster-Scots tradition, and it has been treasured with intense religious affection for hundreds of years. This is particularly true for the rural Presbyterian heartlands of Antrim and Down that had been settled by Lowland Scots in the early 1600s (and which today remain the “core” Ulster-Scots speaking regions). Paradoxically, the 1650 Scottish Psalter used traditionally by this community is in English (as is the equally-treasured 1611 King James Version of the Bible). The provision of a translation of the metrical psalms into Ulster-Scots is considered in three contexts: the historical, religious and cultural significance of the Scottish Psalter to the Ulster-Scots speaking community; the modern Ulster-Scots language development programme which seeks to promote its everyday use in extended contexts; and the parallel (and parent) Ulster-Scots Bible translation project.

‘Insular isles, insular speech’? Language change in the Shetland Islands

&#x0D; The Shetland Isles, a group of islands settled in the North Sea approximately halfway between Norway and Scotland, are perhaps popularly best known for ponies, sheep dogs, and knitwear. Considerably less well known is the fact that the isles are also home to a highly distinct local dialect. The Shetland dialect constitutes a form of Lowland Scots but also displays a significant Scandinavian component. This is attributable to Shetland's history: the isles were settled by Vikings around 800AD and a Nordic language - first Old Norse and later Norn - was spoken there up until about the 18th century. As for many local speech forms, however, there are strong signs that the Shetland dialect is undergoing drastic change; arguably, it is even in rapid decline. The aim of this essay is to provide an accessible introduction to the Shetland Isles, their settlement and linguistic history, and the complex local language situation. Furthermore, some of the discourse surrounding current language change, involving both local and non-local contributors, is reviewed. Recent empirical research, which provides important clues to the future of the Shetland dialect, is also discussed, as well as its various implications.&#x0D;

Witch-Hunting in Celtic Societies

In 1981, as part of her pioneering work into the early modern Scottish witch trials, Christina Larner published a map of their geographical density.1 It showed a marked decrease from south-east to north-west, with most occurring in Fife, the Lothians and the Eastern Borders. The Northern and Western Highlands and the Hebrides — a huge area, covering almost a third of the country — were blank, and the key to them bore the confirmatory note ‘no cases’. Across this empty area of territory was an additional inscription: ‘Gaelic Speaking’. Over the intervening decades, historians of the witch trials have sometimes noted in passing their apparent absence in the Gaelic region of Scotland, the ‘Gàidhealtachd’. In 1996 another significant map was published by Robin Briggs in his survey of European witchcraft beliefs, which plotted the incidence of trials across the whole continent.2 It characterized Larner’s blank area of Scotland, together with Wales and Ireland, as areas of ‘light or no persecution’. Six years later, I suggested — as a passing comment in an essay — that the Gaelic regions of Scotland and Ireland needed to be studied together, as similar societies in which the fear of witchcraft was less acute than in areas settled by the English and Lowland Scots. I proposed that this might be because other agencies were more often blamed for uncanny human misfortune, such as fairies.3

&lt;i&gt;Haunted English: The Celtic Fringe, the British Empire, and De-Angelicization&lt;/i&gt; (review)

Reviewed by: Haunted English: The Celtic Fringe, the British Empire, and De-Angelicization Paul Shanks Haunted English: The Celtic Fringe, the British Empire, and De-Angelicization. By Laura O’Connor. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. xx + 264 pp. $49.95. The emergence of Irish-Scottish Studies as a field of academic study has made possible new areas of critical debate in historical, literary, and cultural studies: these have included studies of the Irish and Scottish Diasporas, the shared Gaelic tradition of both countries as well as the overlaps that can be identified in literature from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Ray Ryan, in Ireland and Scotland (2002), for instance, charts some of the familiar ways in which the two countries have been compared to one another as a pretext for his own wish to illustrate how “the terms—space, state, society, and nation—overlap” (137). Liam McIlvanney and Ryan’s edited collection of essays (Ireland and Scotland: Culture and Society, 1700–2000), the numerous conference proceedings published through ISAI (Irish and Scottish Academic Initiative) and Crosscurrents, and the recent publication of a journal exclusively devoted to these connections (Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies) all serve to illustrate the wide-ranging and solid scholarship that can be discovered in this burgeoning discipline. Laura O’Connor’s Haunted English—a study which focuses on Celticism as a hybrid discourse that deterritorializes the English language—forms a cogent contribution to these debates. Haunted English considers some of the ways in which Gaelic and English culture has co-existed from the sixteenth century onwards in Ireland and Scotland. O’Connor extends the concept of “the territorial Pale of early modern Ireland” (1), which historically separated English speakers from Gaelic speakers, in order to comprehend the borderlines that serve to “haunt” English, Irish, and Scottish writing. Indeed, this is a study of borderlines according to the colonialist rhetoric of translation and counter-translation. The “Celtic Fringe” is used to describe those writers who sought to translate indigenous Gaelic texts according to the conditions of the dominant culture. The term is also used to comprehend the hybridization that ensues when two different language traditions come into contact with one another. O’Connor uses these concepts in order to consider not only the poetics of [End Page 409] W. B. Yeats, Hugh MacDiarmid, and Marianne Moore but also a broad range of texts that engage with the idea of Celticism and Celtic identity. O’Connor begins with a close reading of Edmund Spenser’s A View of the Present State of Ireland (1596) in which it is famously argued that the best way to create sovereign English subjects in Ireland is programmatically to supplant the language and culture of the populace. Spenser’s View is described in neo-colonial terms and is seen to demonstrate the way in which “a radical Englishing of Ireland” became ideologically paramount (3). There are some rather abrupt leaps in this preliminary discussion, from the historical and cultural specificity of Spenser’s pamphlet to later historical events (such as The Highland Clearances). O’Connor goes on to consider the discourse of Celticism as it was developed by antiquarians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, locating a divide between indigenous Gaelic culture and its translation by “specialists.” This part of the discussion encompasses James Macpherson’s influential Ossian cycle (a sequence of alleged translations from Gaelic source texts that were later proved to be forgeries) and translations of Jacobite aisling poems. Lowland Scots becomes a rather problematic intermediary in this instance in that it denotes a rather different language tradition with its own history (although, like Gaelic, Scots was subject to increasing stigmatisation both within Scotland and externally from the eighteenth century onwards). O’Connor goes on to consider two texts that, like Spenser’s View, have accrued notoriety in Irish Studies. These are Ernest Renan’s La poésie des races Celtiques (1854) and Mathew Arnold’s “On the Study of Celtic Literature” (1865). O’Connor argues, in a manner that recalls similar assertions by Declan Kiberd, that both texts denote an attempt to frame Celtic identity in such a way that it is seen as subordinate, yet necessary to...

Feminist Anglo-Saxonism?

ABSTRACTThe starting point for this discussion is the representation of Scotswomen in English women's periodicals in the 1870s and 1880s. In the Women's Suffrage Journal and the Women's Penny Paper Scotswomen feature as partners in a British women's movement. The greatest acknowledgement of cultural or ethnic differences is recognition of distinct Scottish and English legal systems, and of the campaigns for the parliamentary reform of these systems. Contemporary notions about Lowland Scots' Teutonic heritage in addition to the networks which linked Edinburgh to London helped to minimize discussion of Scotswomen's ‘otherness'. In this way, the representation of ‘Scotch’ women emphasized a shared ‘British’ women's struggle rather than potential ethno-national differences.

Ethnography in FictionDisorienting Fiction: The Autoethnographic Work of Nineteenth‐Century British Novels. By James Buzard. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 320 pp.Before Cultures: The Ethnographic Imagination in American Literature, 1865–1920. By Brad Evans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. 244 pp.

Ethnography in Fiction<i>Disorienting Fiction: The Autoethnographic Work of Nineteenth‐Century British Novels</i>. By James Buzard. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 320 pp.<i>Before Cultures: The Ethnographic Imagination in American Literature, 1865–1920</i>. By Brad Evans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. 244 pp.

The morphology and syntax of Ulster Scots

Ulster differs from the other three historical provinces of Ireland in the presence of Ulster Scots, an off-shoot of Lowland Scots brought principally from the Western and Central Lowlands of Scotland in the 17th century through a plantation established by King James I and through periodic migrations, especially in times of economic duress in Scotland. Since that time Ulster Scots has been spoken in rural parts of Counties Antrim, Donegal, Down, and Londonderry/Derry, where it was mapped by Robert Gregg in the 1960s mainly on the basis of phonological features. The present article, based on eight years of fieldwork with native speakers in Antrim, analyzes a range of pronominal, verbal, and syntactic features, seeking to identify general patterns as well as variation within Ulster Scots. When possible, comparisons are made to Lowland Scots and Irish English in order to situate structural features of Ulster Scots within the larger linguistic landscape of the British Isles.

The lost history of the Lowland Scottish pipes: Pete Stewart, The day it daws: the Lowland Scots bagpipe and its music, 1400-1715 (Ashby: White House Tune Books, 2005), 17.50

One has to admire Pete Stewart's courage in attempting this history of the Lowland pipes (Border pipes, Scottish smallpipes) from the late Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. This family of closely related instruments is at present in a rather odd position. During the last 30 years it has been revived, and it now has manufacturers, emerging virtuoso players, an enthusiastic society for its promotion, nascent festivals … but no notated repertory dating any further back than 1980. Its earlier tradition dwindled and died in the 19th century, all its previous players having been illiterate—or, if literate, having concealed their manuscripts so well that none has yet come to light. Two important modern books have reconstructed the instrument's 18th-century repertory: Gordon Mooney's Collection of the choicest Scots tunes for the Lowland or Border bagpipe (Edinburgh, 1990), and Matt Seattle's Border bagpipe book (Newbiggin, 1993). Both these collections are eminently practical for performers. Seattle's is the better of the two, as he found a reconstructive short cut: the English Northumbrian pipes are a relative of the Lowland instrument, with an unbroken tradition and a repertory that has been notated fairly fully since 1800. Seattle contends that the 18th-century bagpipe repertory was much the same on both sides of the Border. His book played fair as to where he had got his versions of tunes, and which bits of variation sets he had composed himself.

SARAH M. DUNNIGAN, C. MARIE HARKER and EVELYN S. NEWLYN (eds), Woman and the Feminine in Medieval and Early Modern Scottish Writing. Pp. xxx +238. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 47.50. (ISBN 1 4039 1181 9) * MANFRED GoRLACH, A Textual History of Scots. Pp. xiv +324. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 2004. 27.00 (ISBN 3 8253 1073 6)

WOMEN AND THE FEMININE is a volume of considerable value with significance beyond the burgeoning field of research into early women's literature to which it most obviously belongs. It is an ambitious undertaking, bringing together fifteen essays on gender in Scottish literature from c.1380 to 1750. The collection responds to the linguistic richness of Scotland during this period, covering texts written in English, Lowland Scots, and Gaelic, as well as in Latin and French. It also charts original archival research and testifies to the sophistication of Scots literary culture, which, as one of the volume's editors observes, is often overlooked in mainstream studies of the Renaissance in the British Isles. Given its depth of enquiry and historical sweep the collection perhaps risks losing coherence. However, Dunnigan's introduction strenuously and justifiably defends its unity and importance. She describes the focus of the volume as ‘medieval and early modern Scottish women as the subjects of writing’ (xiv), ‘subject’ here including the feminine as a metaphor or theme. However, ‘subject’ also includes women as creative literary consciousnesses, as writers, but as Dunnigan's own essay on Anna Hume's translation of Petrach's first three Trionfi shows, also as bold and imaginative readers of authoritative texts.

Archaeological Explorations of Cultural Identity and Rural Economy in the North of Ireland: Goodland, County Antrim

Renewed examination of an enigmatic settlement site perched atop a cliff above Murlough Bay in Goodland Townland, County Antrim, Northern Ireland calls into question long held ideas about Gaelic rural economy on the eve of the Ulster Plantation by reintroducing the complex cultural and political relationships between the north of Ireland and the Scottish isles. Long interpreted as temporary post-medieval booley huts associated with seasonal transhumance, recent re-evaluation of the site suggests instead that Goodland represents a permanent seventeenth-century Highland Scottish village. Although the medieval linkages between the north of Ireland and the Scottish isles have long been acknowledged, twentieth-century sectarianism has subjugated awareness of the Highland (Roman Catholic) Scots focusing upon the legacy of the in-migration of Protestant Lowland Scots during the Ulster Plantation. Material evidence at Goodland re-introduces the Highland Scot to the contested landscape of contemporary Ulster identity, while also facilitating analysis of continuity, change, and cultural complexity in the rural economy of early modern Ireland.