Thinking in Scots, while Writing English by Billy Kay

It’s a privilege to be here to honour the legacy of a Scotsman of genius. I’d like to give you some impressions of the cultural milieu Smith inhabited and inherited. I would like to start by talking a little about Scotland’s trading and cultural links with Europe which predated the union with England by several hundred years.

One story, which I got from the historian TC Smout of St Andrews University, was of the friendship which developed between a Fife skipper and the family who ran a timber trading depot near Stavanger in Norway. The families visited each other across the North Sea. However, one day the Fifer arrived and asked his friends if they could load up the timber as quickly as possible, because his wife was expected to deliver their baby in the next week or so. The Norwegian wife prepared a big pot of healthy porridge full of dried fruit to send to her friend to help her recuperate after childbirth. The story goes that the pot was rowed in a

blanket, placed in the hold of the ship, which got a fair wind across the North Sea and the porridge was still warm when it arrived in Kirkcaldy! Fife also had extensive trading links with the Low Countries. From my series Will Ye Go Tae Flanders, I remember fondly the image of the Bishop of St Andrews 500 years ago leaving his residence at the top of the brae and walking down to the harbour where his ship was waiting to take him on a shopping trip to

Bruges. The Scottish Staple, which managed the country’s trade with the Low Countries, was established at the ports of Bruges, Middleburg and Veere over many centuries. Visiting Veere today, you can still see links with the Fife burghs of Culross and Dysart. We know that Adam Smith made disparaging remarks about the teaching at Oxford compared to Glasgow but coming from this part of the country, he would have known many who were more likely to go to the fellow Calvinist nation of the Netherlands for a year or two – especially to Leiden, Utrecht, and Groningen. Scholars today recognize that interchange as crucial in the origins of our own Scottish Enlightenment. For example, Smith’s friend, the geologist James Hutton, studied at Leiden. But probably the greatest debt the Scots owe the Dutch is in the development of Scots Law. The man known as the father of Scots law, James Dalrymple, Viscount Stair arrived as a political refugee in Holland in 1682 and remained at the University of Leiden until 1688, before taking his ideas back to Scotland.

Utrecht and Leiden also exerted a great influence on Scots medicine. Scots who studied under the great Herman Boerhaave, founded the Edinburgh medical school on the model supplied by Leiden. Leiden graduates, such as Archibald Pitcairne and Sir Robert Sibbald, were involved in the creation of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1681. They were the catalyst for the rapid improvement in the teaching of the subject in Scotland when Edinburgh replaced Leiden as the medical metropolis of the world. There is much more that I could say on this topic, but I would like to talk about how 18th Century Scotland was very much a trilingual country – in which Scots Gaelic and English were all used – where English was read and written but rarely spoken, so that the English of Scots authors was markedly different from English written by native speakers.

This Scotland was a country thrang with political tensions – the unpopularity of the Union itself, which had been delivered by an aristocratic parliament where many had been bribed, led to two Jacobite risings, the second while Adam Smith was a student in Oxford. There’s a great quote in my book Knee Deep in Claret about Jacobite songs being sung from one end of the High Street to another by staunch Hanoverians who simply loved the vigour of the Scots songs, in spite of the political message they conveyed. The same Jacobites and Hanoverians in their clubs and howffs – Adam Smith was a member of the Oyster Club – were happy to drink the French claret which had linked Scotland and France so closely that it was called the bloodstream of the auld alliance – even though they knew it was smuggled illegally against the wishes of the State. The playwright John Home, a relative of the great philosopher and historian, David Hume, summed up the Scottish national position perfectly in this rhyme:

Firm and erect, the Caledonian stood,

Old was his mutton and his claret good.

“Let them drink Port,” the English Statesman cried,

He drank the poison and his spirit died!

When Lord Mansfield, a Scots nobleman, who became Lord Chancellor of England, commented to the diarist Alexander Carlyle his feeling that he was not reading English in the historical works of Hume and William Robertson, Carlyle, often called the sage of Inveresk, gave this perceptive reply:

To every man bred in Scotland the English language was in some

respects a foreign tongue, the precise value and force of whose phrases he did not understand and therefore [he] was continually endeavouring to word his expressions by additional epithets or circumlocutions which made his writing appear both stiff and

redundant.

The Scots literati had mastered only the surface level of English, a detached register devoid of emotional resonance. They wrote English perfectly in the same way as for example a German intellectual who had similarly become fluent in the language and mastered its structure and surface would have done. Ironically thisforeignness of English written by Scots, with its painstaking, precise correctness and formality, made it the perfect medium for discussing science and philosophy in whose various branches the men of the Scottish Enlightenment excelled. In his autobiography which spans the years 1722 to 1805, Carlyle relates how he had been taught “a tolerable accent” of English by his aunt from London, “an

accomplishment which in those days was very rare”. His journal also detailed the life of the Scottish community in London, in particular their frequenting of the British Coffee House, the London Scots’ favourite rendezvous. English was desired by the Scots, but for many it remained an impenetrable, foreign jargon.

In one incident in 1758, Carlyle asked fellow Scot, Dr Charles Congalton, what he thought of the English now he had been among them for a few months. Congalton replied that he was unable to reply honestly as he had not really made acquaintance with any of them, “I never enter into conversation with the John Bulls, for, to tell you the truth, I don’t yet well understand what they say.” Like Smith, Carlyle was a member of the Select Society, whose members included the leading men of the Enlightenment. Of his fellow church minister, William Robertson, who became a celebrated historian and Principal of Edinburgh University, Carlyle recalled that he, “spoke broad Scotch in point of pronunciation and accent or tone ... his was the language of literature and taste, and of an

enlightened and liberal mind.” The same was true of the great geologist James Hutton, Smith’s friend, and executor, as well as public figures, such as the great novelist and antiquary, Sir Walter Scott, long after the 18th century fashion for Augustan elegance had died out. The balancing act which the Scots of the 18th century made between Scottish

and English culture in their society and within the individual, produced an almost schizophrenic state of mind among people whose loyalties were constantly stretched in different airts.

Allan Ramsay was one of the great poets who revived Scots as a literary language, yet he was very much a man of his time and sometimes found it difficult to resolve the dichotomy which pulled him in different directions. It was his son and namesake, Allan Ramsay the painter, who helped to found the Select Society in 1754. From its ranks sprang the Society for the English Language whose initial aim was to promote the correct use of English, and to that effect engaged a Mr Leigh,”a person well qualified to teach the pronunciation of the English tongue with propriety and grace.” Whereas in the previous century the terms to describe the language of the Lowlands alternated between English and Scots, as it had done interchangeably since the 16th century, there was now a conscious distinction made between the vernaculars of England and Scotland. As late as the first few decades of the 18th century, schools referred to the class teaching the vernacular as the Scots class

or the English class without any difference of emphasis in language teaching. By the middle of the 18th century, schools started to refer to teaching English “by the new method”, which usually implied that an attempt would be made to teach southern pronunciation. Heriot’s school in the 17th century claimed it would “teach the bairns to read and write Scots distinctly”, but by the time Edinburgh Academy was founded in the early 19th century, “a proper English articulation and accent” was insisted upon “in order to remedy a defect in the education of boys in Edinburgh who are suffered to neglect the cultivation of their native tongue and literature during the whole time they attend the grammar schools”.

Numerous books were published in Scotland which attempted to show by multifarious orthographic devices, how English was pronounced in England. Among the books published for the help of our forefathers in this their hour of need were: The Edinburgh New Method of Teaching English by Godskirk and Hume in 1750, Linguae Brittanicae Vera Pronunciato by James Buchanan in 1757, The Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language by John Burns in 1777, and William Scott’s A General View of English Pronunciation published in Edinburgh. One teacher, William Noble, intent on exploiting upper class sensibilities

advertised himself as:

taking all imaginable care of the quantity, accent and manner of

expression, by which he hopes that the barbarisms, so often and so

justly complained of here, will be properly guarded against.

About a Mr Telfer, “lately arrived from London” it was claimed:

Having studied and taught the English language chiefly for

several years past, he hopes he shall be able to teach his pupils

that pronunciation and accent which are used by the most polite

speakers and great care will be taken that no Scotch be spoken in

time of school.

One can only smile today when one thinks of men of the stature of Hume and Adam Smith being fashed with trivialities such as the following examples from

one of those ‘self-help’ books:

SCOTS ENGLISH

a bit bread a bit of bread

the better of a sleep the better for a sleep

on the morn on the morrow

a sore head a headache

to my bed to bed

he has got the cold he has got a cold

where do you stay? where do you lodge, live, or dwell?

A glance at the two lists shows that the Scottish options are still in use in Scottish English today, proof of the survival of Scots even among those who don’t consider they speak it. The Anglicisers were perhaps more successful in the long term with the words that were unique to Scots. The philosopher and poet, James Beattie never regarded them as much of a problem: “With respect to broad Scotch words, I do not think any caution requisite, as they are easily known and the necessity of avoiding them is obvious.” Yet Hume was so embarrassed with what he considered to be his inability to speak or write perfect English, that when he died he is said to have confessed, not his sins, but his Scotticisms! With Hume it appeared to be an idée fixe to out‑English the English. He is said to have sent his manuscripts to such diverse experts as a linen‑draper in Bristol and a cobbler in Norwich, to have any trace of Scotticisms weeded out of the text before exposing it to the scrutiny of polite society. This from a man who was proudly Scottish and whose sceptical view of religion enraged large sections of that society. There was economic pressure to anglicise too – Scots writers wanted sales in London. But London was where power lay and so there were

many Scots who went there, who were anxious to adapt and conform. James Boswell was a typical 18th‑century Scots aristocrat who did everything he could to ingratiate himself with the London literati and nobility. Dr Johnson was a good example of an elitist Englishman, resentful of the Scots’ inordinate influence in every sphere of city life - disdainful of their culture and their attempts to acquire his. Boswell’s description of their first meeting encapsulates the ambience.

Mr Davies mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me

to him. I was much agitated; and recollecting his prejudice against the Scotch, of which I had heard much, I said to Davies, “Don’t tell him where I come from.” ‑‑ “From Scotland,” cried Davies roguishly. “Mr Johnson,” said I, “I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot

help it.” I am willing to flatter myself that I meant this as a light pleasantry to soothe and conciliate him, and not as an humiliating abasement at the expense of my country. But however that might be, this speech was somewhat unlucky; for he seized the expression

“come from Scotland,” which I used in the sense of being of that country; and retorted, “That, Sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help.” This stroke stunned me a good deal; and when we had sat down, I felt myself not a little embarrassed,

and apprehensive of what might come next.

What came next was that Boswell got the name of being Johnson’s “Scotch cur”, becoming the classic sook. His father Lord Auchinleck, like many of the Law lords, continued speaking Scots, which he used to good effect when he heard of his son’s attachment to Johnson:

Jamie has gaen clean gyte...whae’s tail dae ye think he has preened himsel tae noo? A dominie man!‑‑‑ an auld dominie, wha keepit a schule an caaed it an Acaademy!

Boswell’s wife was so put out at the sight of her husband grovelling before the

Englishman, she remonstrated that she “had often seen a bear lead by a man, but never till now had she seen a man lead by a bear!” But there were those who resisted creeping Anglicisation. One anecdote concerning John Clerk of Penicuik, later Lord Eldin, relates how the Scot was arguing a Scottish appeal case before the House of Lords. Pleading his client’s

use of a burn by prescriptive right, Clerk’s rich Scots rang out referring to “... the watter haein rin that wey for mair nor forty year.” The Lord Chancellor, bemused by Clerk’s pronunciation interrupted his oration and inquired in a rather condescending tone: “Mr. Clerk, do you spell water in Scotland with two t’s?” Clerk, astonished by the man’s rudeness, still managed to give better than he got. “Na, na, my lord” he replied, “We dinna spell watter wi twa ‘t’s, but we spell mainners wi twa ‘n’s!”

For some of the judges their use of Scots was a reaction against the fashion

for precious gentility particularly prevalent in Edinburgh during the fashion for the cult of Sensibility, when grown men would weep in public at sentimental, sententious works such as Henry MacKenzie’s The Man of Feeling. The sensibility of such as the hanging judge, Lord Braxfield was of a quite different order. During the sedition trials of 1794, the Englishman Margarot claimed that he and his fellow radicals stood in a long line of noble men who were reformers as well ‑ Jesus Christ himself being one of them. “Muckle he made o that”, Braxfield

replied, “He was hangit!”

Another great Enlightenment figure Lord Kames - a friend and early patron of Adam Smith - in his final address to the Court of Session when he retired from that august institution in his eighties, was memorably concise and terse: “Fare‑ye‑aa weel, ye bitches”. Alongside the desire to conform and write in English was a stronger desire among writers and artists to maintain the culture and make it thrive, Smith would have been a Scots speaker immersed in that culture. He worked during the brilliant Vernacular revival led by Ramsay, Fergusson, and Burns which counterbalanced the Anglicisation sweeping Scotland. Fortunately, Burns was enough of his own man to ignore the advice of the literary elite to write solely in English – the ostentatiously sentimental novelist, Henry McKenzie asserted that:

One bar indeed, his birth and education have opposed to his fame,

the language in which most of his poems are written.

If he had followed that advice, he would have been just another obscure, stilted

versifier, like his contemporaries, Thomas Blacklock and James Beattie, instead of one of the world’s genuinely popular yet great poets.

Robert Burns had read Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments as a young man, and greatly admired it. There are several places where we can see Burns using ideas which reflect Smith’s philosophy, perhaps most notably the famous lines at the start of the last verse of the otherwise comic poem To a Louse:

O wad some Power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as ithers see us!

It may even be that Smith, a pre-publication subscriber to Burns’ Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, recognised the young poet’s use of his ideas. It was only when the Vernacular poets, Ramsay, Fergusson, and Burns reverted to their natural Scots tongue that the balance tilted from precious gentility towards greatness ‑ proof, if any is required, that Scots still held the heart if not the mind – and not just of the poets, but also of the intelligentsia of the period.

Billy Kay is a writer and broadcaster. He is a passionate

advocate of the Scots language and author of the classic work

Scots: The Mither Tongue. He is also author of The Scottish

World which explores the global influence of the Scottish

diaspora. His company Odyssey Productions produces

documentaries on Scottish cultural history for BBC Radio

Scotland, winning five international awards. He is a graduate of

the University of Edinburgh and has an honorary doctorate from

the University of the West of Scotland.