Rev Dr Joyce Philips Collie

n Rev Dr Joyce Philips Collie MA PhD. Born: 29 July, 1929, in Aberdeen. Died: July 31, 2011, at Alford, Aberdeenshire, aged 82.

The Rev Dr Joyce Collie combined her considerable talents in lexicography and theology to engage in three careers – as a Congregational minister, dictionary editor and Kirk minister.

Her natural interest in words, their uses, functions and etymologies, saw Dr Collie playing a key role from 1954 in the work of the Scottish National Dictionary project, centred at the School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh.

She had an academic background. Her first degree drew largely on the Scots language, and she based the theme of her doctoral thesis on life and language of the North-east, emphasising the literary traditions of the area.

Her background was welcomed by her boss David Murison, editor of the dictionary project; and her fellow assistant editor, Sandy Fenton (now Professor Alexander Fenton CBE). Given the roots of the trio – Joyce from Aberdeen, Mr Murison from Fraserburgh, and Mr Fenton hailing from Auchterless – the trio were well named the “Aberdeenshire Mafia”.

Dr Collie identified completely with the Scots tongue. She grew up in an Aberdeen household where Doric was the first language of herself and parents Bruce and Ethel. Her use of Scots and her rich voice provided her with enviable identity in missions far from her native city.

She soaked up learning, as well she might: from both her parents, as well as her maternal grandfather James Philip, first rector of Inverurie Academy. The schoolgirl Joyce demonstrated her inheritance by taking five Highers to gain first place in the 1947 bursary competition for Aberdeen University.

Dr Collie came from a Kirk family but became attracted to Congregationalism through Rev Willie Russell, Congregational minister at Woodside, Aberdeen. Demonstrating a life-long ability to engage a higher gear, she doubled up her dictionary duties with a divinity course – and she is remembered at the School of Scottish Studies for studying Hebrew during lunch times.

Her classes developed into a full degree at the Scottish Congregational Church in Edinburgh, and she graduated in 1966, taking as her first charge Hope Park Congregational Church in Edinburgh before moving in 1973 to “the Peedie kirk”, the Congregational Church in Kirkwall. Affectionately welcomed as a “ferrylouper”, Dr Collie used her time away from the pulpit to collect words and phrases of the various Orcadian dialects.

She entered what was effectively a third career when, on return to her beloved Aberdeenshire in 1980, she transferred to the Church of Scotland, becoming minister at charges in west Aberdeenshire.

Blessed with an innate sense of ceremony, she took charge in 1991 of what proved to be the major spectacle of the presentation of new colours to the Lonach Highland and Friendly Society. She was minister in Strathdon, west Aberdeenshire, at the time, and successfully undertook the drumhead service for the blessing of the new colours in the centre of the ground without any rehearsal whatsoever.

With 9,000 spectators attending the Lonach Gathering, she addressed the largest congregation of her life in Scots, with the Gaelic blessing provided by the Rev Roddy Macdonald from Insch, a one-time Mod Bard (and father of MSP Lewis Macdonald).

That her parochial crown could ever slip, lay in her occasional lapses in mastering the discipline of an appointments diary. The kirk in Strathdon is one of the very few in Scotland still holding an annual service for Masons, and one year, she failed to show at the appointed hour.

The many gathered from as far away as the north of England hastily conferred, with agreement that a senior member of the brethren would give a reading, lead a hymn and offer a prayer. In the last, his supplication included the plea: “O Father God, please help Dr Collie to remember where she should be.” Prayers were answered when minutes later, she appeared, flourishing the diary with a misplaced entry, to lead the service.

Completely non-materialistic, Dr Collie cared deeply for animals, particularly dogs – which she bred and showed – and after retirement in 1994, became active in shows and meetings.

Her substantial literary output includes a hymn in Scots, as well as translations into her native tongue of the Gospel of St John, Chapter 1; The Lord’s Prayer; and the 23rd Psalm. In 1995, she collaborated in the trilingual poetry Sangs in Three Tongues, with Roddy Macdonald providing the original Gaelic, and English translation; and Collie and Derrick McClure the Scots versions.

Her own Scots translation of 1st Corinthians, Chapter 13, was used at her funeral service in Strathdon on Monday, 8 August. At her wish, her coffin bore a single white rose, with her colleague and friend Rev John Mack, from Premnay, concluding the service by quoting Hugh MacDiarmid’s lines: The rose of all the world is not for me; I want for my part; Only the little white rose of Scotland; That smells sharp and sweet – and breaks the heart.

GORDON CASELY