Scotsoun, 1997, 200 p, including 26 p glossary of Scots words.
The author information tells us Graham was a “Founder Member, Preses and Hon vice-Preses of The Scots Language Society.” He was editor of the Scots Word Book and The Concise Scots-English Dictionary has a dedication to him, “whose generous gift of manuscript material made this dictionary possible.” An award in his name is given every year for the best piece in Scots published in Lallans, the magazine of the Scots Language Society.
Scorn, My Inheritance is that rare thing, a novel written almost entirely in Scots. The very few exceptions are those parts where certain characters, due to their position or inclination, speak or write in English. The 26 page glossary may be necessary for those with little knowledge of Scots – and even for those with a greater acquaintance – but with some background the general gist can be got merely from the context. Even so some of the Scots words employed do not appear in the glossary.
Tommy Proudfuit lives with his Uncle Ben on a smallholding of four greenhouses growing tomatoes and chrysanthemums. For two or so years his life has been complicated by the presence in the house of Uncle Ben’s bidey-in Big Katie. The novel starts with Tommy discovering a piece of graffiti on the school lavatory wall which reads “Tommy Proodfit is a basturt.” The subsequent fight with the perpetrator leads to a belting from the headmaster Mr Fairservice (the book is set in the 1950s when such chastisement with a leather strap was an everyday – every hour – occurrence in Scottish schools) and a conversation where Fairservice says Tommy is wasting his potential by not sticking in at his schoolwork and arranges to visit Tommy’s home to discuss his shortcomings.
To avoid this meeting Tommy takes himself off to the cave up the hill where Neddy Bain, sometime assistant at the smallholding, is sheltering. It is here that the novel lurches into something beyond what the scenario up to then might lead us to expect. Tommy witnesses a confrontation between Neddy and Jake Carson where he finds the pair helped carry out a jewel robbery in Glasgow for which they have both been in prison and are seeking the loot which the third member of the gang – now dead, perhaps at Neddy’s hand – is supposed to have stashed in the area after he was released first. This is not a gratuitous scene. The connections between these gangsters and Tommy’s peculiar domestic circumstances are unravelled in the rest of the book.
Despite setting the book in the Clyde Valley Graham uses (among others) the words loun and quine which are North East coast specific and simply don’t appear in discourse in the Central Lowlands. I was well over thirty and working alongside a North-Easterner before I heard the word quine (as quinie) in everyday speech. This is the drawback of trying to impose a universal “Scots” language. To my mind (and ear) the Doric of the north-east is distinct in vocabulary from Lowland Scots. To mix the two injures verisimilitude.
The various set pieces in the novel, the confrontation between Neddy Bain and Jake Carson, the ongauns between Ben and Katie, the wild storm which damages the greenhouses show well enough that Scots can be an effective literary vehicle. The characterisations are agreeably complex. And the novel works as a novel even if the conclusion does seem somewhat rushed.
The introduction by George Philp is at pains to point out that he as editor has made great efforts to ensure that the spelling system used is consistent, uncontrived and eye-friendly – in order, he says, to help learners. To that end the “oo” sound is rendered as “ou” throughout (to avoid “dour” reading as if it were an entrance/exit) and the “ih” sound is given as “ui.” This is encapsulated in the spelling of Tommy’s surname as Proudfuit (hence pronounced Proodfit and not the “English” Proudfoot.) The trouble with this is that any learners are liable to read our, out, about and house and indeed the first syllable of Proudfuit in the same way as they do in “standard” English. And the “ih” sound in guid, wuid, shuin (and the second syllable of Proudfuit) they may still read as “oo.” Indeed many Scots speakers and readers pronounce the Scots word for shoes as “shoon” not “shin.” Also – against Philp’s stated spelling preference – we have “hure” not “whour” as the Scots for whore. As in English, such attempts to impose order may only serve to create more problems than they solve. It is relatively easy to spell stour as stoor, keep oor, oot, aboot, hoose as Scots spellings and still recognise dour as sounding the same. (In this regard I would submit it would simply not be credible to spell the cartoon character as Our Wullie rather than Oor Wullie.) Guid has a long provenance and is easily recognisable, wuid and shuin perhaps less so. And since this is a novel in Scots why is “Tommy” not “Tam?”
Reading Scorn, My Inheritance was an interesting and rewarding exercise nonetheless. But perhaps not really one for learners.
