We celebrate Burns yearly, but what about his native language?

Published on Monday 9 February 2009 21:22

PAUL H SCOTT, Writer

IN THIS 250th anniversary year of the birth of Robert Burns, the Bard has been more widely and thoroughly celebrated than ever before. But can the same be said for his language, "plain, braid Lallans", as he called it?

Lallans, or Scots, has been under pressure from English since the Union.

James Boswell, in the 18th century, started to write a dictionary to help to save it.

In the 19th, Henry Cockburn proposed that it should be studied as a classical language, like Latin.

Towards the end of that century, RL Stevenson spoke Scots fluently and wrote it in many poems and the dialogue of his three best novels. Even so, he predicted that this "illustrious and malleable tongue" would soon be a "ghost of speech". That, of course, was even before the formidable onslaught of broadcasting that brought constant English speech into every house in Scotland.

Still, Scots is no deid yet for a' that, and the "audit" of its present state, arranged by the Scottish Government, published its report on 27 January. In its conclusion, it says it "discovered a healthy, vital and diverse community of passionate providers interacting with a Scots-speaking public who appeared to value the provision highly". It is generally encouraging in tone, but makes no fundamental proposal for a change of policy.

It does suggest that the Scottish Government "could consider how support and preservation for the Scots language may be better co-ordinated".

Scotland is fortunate enough to have another ancient language, Gaelic. Both Scots and Gaelic are important vehicles of the Scottish cultural tradition and both need active support by the government.

Of the two, Scots has a stronger case because it is understood and spoken by more people and has an even richer literature. Scots should therefore have at least as much government support as Gaelic.

Paradoxically, governments since the days of Thatcher have given substantial support to Gaelic, but very little to Scots.

Even in Ulster, the Scots language has more government financial support than it has in Scotland. There is a suspicion that this has been because Conservative and Labour governments were afraid that stimulation of the Scots language in Scotland might give the Scottish people more self-confidence and raise their expectations, and who knows where that might lead?

Scots is one of the pleasures of living in Scotland, with its rich vocabulary, its smeddum and virr. The schools should lead its revival, not as a dreich responsibility but as a pleasure. Their corridors should ring with the delights of the rich range of bairns' rhymes to the poetry of Dunbar and Henryson, to Ferguson and Burns and to Sydney Goodsir Smith and Robert Garioch.

BBC Scotland, in both radio and television, should respond as well with many programmes of all kinds from sports reports to news, discussion and drama in Scots. The television channel BBC Alba could greatly increase its audiences if it was devoted to both Scots and Gaelic, instead of Gaelic alone.

Our National Theatre was established in response to a long campaign for a company that would build up a repertoire of the great Scottish plays from the distant and recent past, most of which are in Scots. So far it has failed to do this, although Black Watch was a move in the right direction.

A new and adequately funded Scottish Government agency should be established to direct these activities, headed by people enthusiastic and expert in Scots, such as Billy Kay, James Robertson, Derrick McClure, Matthew Fitt, Maggie Scott and Chris Robinson.

In both Gaelic and Scots we have rich resources lying almost dormant. They have the capacity to stimulate our literature and enhance the sheer pleasure of living in Scotland.

&#149 Paul H Scott has served on councils of the Scots Language Society and the Scottish Poetry Library.