A Jessie Kesson Companion, Black and White, 2000, 204 p, including 13 p Commentary; plus ii p Contents and xii p Introduction.

This is a collection of Kesson’s shorter works, encompassing stories, poems and radio plays, though a lot of her work for radio has, it seems, been lost. While most pieces are in fairly standard English with some Scots phrases the second story here, Ferm Deen, is written fully in an uncompromising Scots – and all the better for it.

Editor Isobel Murray has chosen to emphasise Kesson’s troubled upbringing (born to a single mother who engaged in prostitution to try to make ends meet and found solace in drink; taken off to an orphanage for being “neglected”; denied the fuller education she desired and later literally farmed out to smallholders as a kitchen helper before spending a year in a mental hospital.)

This is not a perverse choice, Kesson’s work (especially her early work) reflects those childhood experiences, the loss she felt, the longing for what she had considered a loving home and the compensations she managed to find. But, despite her writing successes, she never lost regret for the life she could have had had she attended University.

All the pieces are well written and poignant with a sharp eye for character and ear for phraseology.

Pedant’s corner:- swop (swap.)

Cassell & Co Ltd, 1898, p, with nine illustrations by W Hole.

This is the third of Barrie’s Thrums trilogy, all narrated by the dominie (schoolmaster) in Glen Quharity, which lies four miles from Thrums. Unlike in the first two instalments, though, here the narrator is finally named as a Mr Ogilvy.

The meat of the story is in the early incumbency in Thrums of new Auld Licht Minister, Mr Dishart, young, keen, well regarded by his congregation, and a joy to his mother Margaret since he has fulfilled her wishes for him. Mr Ogilvy takes more than a normal interest in the little minister since he knew Margaret in his own youth. It is apparent from his remembrances that he has carried a torch for her ever since but he takes care not to let her know of his presence nearby since he feels she would not be happy to be reminded of him.

Plot kicks off when a detachment of soldiers is sent to the town to round up weavers who had taken part in a recent riot against changes in their conditions. Forewarning of the soldiers’ mission is brought to the town by a young woman they call the Egyptian (their name for a gipsy) whose intervention allows the suspects to evade capture. Dishart tries to stop any violence and in doing so encounters the woman. He cannot understand why her influence makes him do things he would not have otherwise; things such as not denounce her to the authorities or throwing a ‘divit’ at one of the soldiers. The word divit here is an example of many Scots usages sprinkled through the book, especially in dialogue. This very strong Scottish flavour may be a barrier for some. The Egyptian’s facility both with Scots and standard English is another source of confusion for Dishart as in many respects she behaves and sounds like a member of the monied class.

It is readily apparent that this will be a story of star-cross’d lovers whose circumstances present seemingly insurmountable difficulties to their relationship. Dishart’s parishioners will not countenance a union between their minister and a gipsy; the Egyptian (we later find she is named Babbie) is betrothed to the elderly Lord Rintoul, for whose benevolence towards her she feels an obligation, and the wedding is imminent.

That dour Scottish strain of Calvinism is illustrated by Ogilvy’s reflection that “A minister with a smile on his face would never have been called to the Auld Licht kirk, for life is a wrestle with the devil and only the frivolous think to throw him without taking off their coats.”

However, the dominie’s own outlook is somewhat brighter, “Love, it is said, is blind, but love is not blind. It is an extra eye, which shows us what is most worthy of regard. To see the best is to see most clearly, and it is the lover’s privilege,” if also nuanced, “Not to attempt a gallant deed for which one has the impulse may be braver than the doing of it.”

Pedant’s corner:- a missing comma before a piece of direct speech (x 2.) “A detachment of the soldiers were marching down the Roods from the north” (a detachment was marching,) a missing full stop.

Cassell, 1975, 589 p, including 2p Map of mediæval Northern France and the Low Countries.

This is the sixth and last of Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles, following on from The Ringed Castle. Each chapter is preceded by an epigraph in French and there are copious quotations/song lyrics in French throughout.

Among other incidental historical goings-on such as the French capture of Calais from the English, the French war against the Spanish (in both of which Lymond has a guiding role,) and the wedding of Mary Queen of Scots to the Dauphin, the main plot concerns the unravelling of Lymond’s seemingly uncertain parentage, an unravelling performed in the main by Philippa Somerville, whom Lymond married in The Ringed Castle to protect her honour, a union which remains unconsummated and from which Lymond is desirous of an annulment (as, to be fair, is Philippa.) The reasons for this desire are complicated and not entirely voluntary and obstacles continue to put in its way but both contract promises to future marriage, in Lymond’s case to Catherine d’Albon, daughter of the Maréchale de St André, in Philippa’s to Austin Grey.

Lymond is neither ashamed nor guarded about his past amours – he has a son, Kuzum, by the deceased Oonagh O’Dwyer; a former lover, Guzel, left behind in Russia, and in this book he beds the Maréchale (or, rather, she beds him) before the proposal to her daughter. When Catherine asks if she’s agreed to marry a libertine she gets the reply, “‘Everyone marries libertines,’ Lymond said. ‘But not everyone knows it beforehand.’”

A minor sub-episode reveals the young Scottish Queen, under the influence of her de Guise uncles and prospective father-in-law, King Henri II, secretly agreeing that if she died childless the throne of Scotland should pass to France. This does not go down well with delegation of Scottish nobles sent to witness Mary’s wedding, who are obliged to keep their knowledge of the pact secret but Lymond goes so far as to warn Mary that such an outcome would meet with all but universal opposition back home.

Also contributing to the proceedings, helpful in relieving Lymond of a burden of sickness as well as in the resolution of the parenting issue, is one Nostradamus.

While the level of research and historical detail are impressive and incident is never far away once again Dunnett’s writing and dialogue lacks clarity.

Pedant’s corner:- hiccoughing/hiccough (it’s not a cough; hiccuping/hiccup,) “Daedalus’ honeycomb” (Daedalus’s,) palinquin (palanquin.) “After Russia, campaigning in France, would be like” (that second comma is needless,) “the aesthetic figure one would have thought from his reputation” (‘ascetic’ makes more sense in context,) Luxembourg (sometimes here spelled Luxemburg, which may have been a rendering of the usage of the viewpoint character of the moment,) “the Vidame de Chartres’ voice” (the final ‘s’ in Chartres is not voiced so its possessive is certainly Chartres’s,) “like Crassus’ lamprey” (Crassus’s,) “staunch the bleeding” (stanch,) alambic (usually spelled ‘alembic’,) “his language than had not been moderate” (his language then had not,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech, “there had been nothing demanded of Philippa which needed intrude on this relationship” (which need intrude; or, which needed to intrude.) “The pavilion of the Duke de Guise and that of his brother d’Aumale were empty” (The pavilions,) “was tinging the cloth” (tingeing; tinging is something bells do.) “One of the Count of Egmont’s foraging parties had acquired half a dozen wagons of grain and were occupying the village”  (One … was occupying,) “tell the prayers” (they were musicians, not supplicants: ‘tell the players’,) “a Brazilian dancer” (I wondered if Brazil was known as such in 1558 but the term is apparently from around 1506,) a missing full stop.

Polygon, 2007, 276 p, plus 7 p Introduction by Alan Warner.

In an interpolated framing device we have here the story of an author trying to write a piece of fiction celebrating goodness, where the characters are happy because they deserve to be, surrounding that same story which he is writing to find out what becomes of them. The author’s wife tells him his desire is impossible since he has always been severe on his characters and she thinks he cannot change. Still less does she believe he can set such a story in Scotland because he thinks the Scots have lost faith in themselves. The novel he is writing is that story; or an attempt at it.

That novel features the Sempill family, already relatively comfortably off – the father was an architect – but at its beginning lately come into a large inheritance.  The Mama and Papa Sempill have five children, Diana, Jeanie, Effie, Rowena, Rebecca; all named after Walter Scott heroines. All but Diana are blonde, she is dark-haired and at their story’s beginning old enough to fancy herself guardian of them all, parents included. They are on holiday in Argyll when they come across an abandoned house whose proper name is Ardmore but is known to the locals as Poverty Castle. As a family they resolve to buy it and bring it back to its former glory. This involves irritating the Camptons, inhabitants of the “big” house, on an enclave of whose land Poverty Castle sits, but with access rights. An encounter with the children of the house exemplifies all that can be good or bad about aristocratic attitudes. Their sons Edwin and Nigel (Nigel; enough said) are opposites in their demeanours.

Mr Sempill is an easy-going soul, but his wife is racked by desire for a son though perhaps too old and lacking in vigour for the risk involved. The crisis of the tale is when she becomes pregnant again despite her husband’s stringent efforts to avoid that.

There are several time jumps in the narrative, Diana goes off to University, where she takes digs in a humble establishment, rooming with working class Peggy Gilchrist. Both the blurb and the Introduction describe Peggy as the Sempills’ nemesis but there is really nothing in the text which justifies that. What we do get is the middle- and upper-class perspective of Peggy being a member of “a class lacking culture, education, and money”. Her mother resents her not conforming to what she sees as her station in life (a job in a supermarket) but her father is keen for her to do as well as she can. Then again, as described, Peggy’s brain is her only asset.

The Sempills are, by and large, good, and happy enough, but, in novels as in life, there will always be something to disrupt contentment.

Pedant’s corner:- In the Introduction; Jenkins’ (several times; Jenkins’s.) Otherwise: crème de menthes (crèmes de menthe?) “Mary Queen of Scots’ effeminate secretary” (x 2, Mary Queen of Scots’s.) “Mr Chambers’ tone” (Chambers’s,) “a plebian habit” (plebeian,) plus marks for “the Misses Sempill”, “none of the other girls were keen to have” (none … was keen to have,) “Keats’ room”, “Keats’ country”, “Keats’ poetry” (Keats’s,) Inverary (Inveraray,) “Roslin Chapel” (original spelling of Rosslyn Chapel,) “Burns’ Highland Mary” (Burns’s,) “Cortes’ burning of his boats” (Cortes’s,) “cooker irradiating warmth” (irradiating [to shine light upon] is the opposite of what was meant; radiating.) “The Moon could be seen though it was not yet shining” (if you can see it is shining,) “a racket” (racquet, the reference was to badminton.)

Little, Brown, 2020, 442 p.

The sixth Karen Pirie book and again she is juggling two cases.

The first is when a skeleton is discovered in a campervan stored in a house’s garage for years. Suspicion falls on the deceased owner’s former lover, who abandoned her for a life as an artist. The second is a live case of a body hauled up along with a creel by a fishing boat off Elie. Since the dead man is one James Auld, whose brother Ian, a high-up civil servant in the Scottish Office, disappeared ten years before, and Karen had recently reviewed his case, she is given the remit.

James had fallen under suspicion of murdering his brother and to escape that had made a new life for himself by joining the Foreign Legion and then settling in France as one Paul Allard. Since the initial investigation was carried out in Fife DS Daisy Mortimer out of the Kirkcaldy Police office ends up seconded to Karen’s Historic Cases Unit. (This becomes semi-permanent when Karen’s assistant DC Jason Murray – aka the Mint – suffers a broken leg during the investigation.)

Connections in both cases are soon made – though not between them – but take time to tease out. In the meantime Karen is still grieving over the death of her former lover Phil Parhatka and worried about the direction her new relationship with Hamish, owner of a small chain of coffee shops in Edinburgh and a cottage up north. He does perform a useful function here though by identifying a mysterious male in a photograph of Ian Auld found in James’s French apartment. This is David Greig, once an enfant terrible artist, who committed suicide not long after Ian Auld’s disappearance. When Karen learns six well-known Scottish paintings were stolen from the Scottish Office and replaced by forgeries in the years immediately prior to the Toy/Lib Dem coalition government she begins to join the dots.

Pedant’s corner:- Plus points for “amn’t I?” “There were a handful” (there was a handful,)  “James’ message” (James’s.)

Collins, 1953, 318p, including 2p Note, 2p Contents and 2p list of characters.

This is the fourth in Barke’s Immortal Memory novel sequence on the life of Robert Burns. This instalment mainly concentrates on his taking the lease at Ellisland Farm, some miles north of Dumfries, a town which he does not care for, and his angling (the Scots word would be ettling) for a job with the Excise. There is though, a brief journey to Edinburgh where he finally settles accounts with his publisher William Creech and also with Jenny Clow, the mother of one of his many children, on whom he makes a settlement.

When we start, the house at Ellisland where he is to live with Jean Armour and his family, is in the course of being built and he has to live in a small, bare room nearby while Jean et al stay in Mauchline (still spelled Machlin by Barke.) Even when his new house is built, after many delays by the Dumfries builders, the walls are too damp with plaster drying out to be healthy.

The breaking in of Ellisland is an arduous task and Burns recognises it will not provide enough of a living hence his seeking of the Excise job. This is also arduous, involving many long miles on horseback in all weathers – and Burns was always prone to chills and fevers.

There is still time, though, for him to fall in with Anna Park, niece of the wife of a Dumfries innkeeper. She is portrayed as equally, if not more, willing than he is to consummate their passion and the inevitable occurs. (Reading these books it sometimes feels as if Burns only had to look at a woman to get her pregnant.) Her lying-in more or less coincides with that of Jean Armour’s latest and Jean selflessly agrees to treat Anna’s child as her own.

Within the text we are treated to a full rendering of Burns’s draft of Tam O’Shanter, a first reading of the poem given to his family assembled by the fire one night.

In an exchange with his strait-laced brother, Gilbert, Burns says, “the Scotland o’ saints and scholars and country squires is nothing but hypocrisy. Not one o’ them can square their beliefs with their practice,” adding that his reading of history and the Bible tells him “morality has ever been a snare and a delusion.”

Jean is well aware of Burns’s tendencies, earlier telling Rab’s sister Nancy that being jealous would do no good, and that she couldn’t deny him other women, so long as he loved them.

In an observation that reads a little too much like an authorial projection of future knowledge onto the past, Francis Grose, an author-antiquarian from London, tells Rab he admires the Scots peasantry, “the best educated in the world,” but not the gentry, with their aping of English foppery, yet considers the Scots nation as defeated, and “‘the English will beat and tame half the world before they’re done – especially the coloured races…… And dang me if they won’t get the Scotch to do all their dirty work for them and fight all their bloodiest battles.’”

Off-stage, the pre-Terror French Revolution rumbles away in the distance, with Burns privately expressing support, something an Exciseman could not do explicitly.

Apart from that performance of Tam O’Shanter none of the poetry makes it to the page this time, though Burns’s efforts in collecting and publishing Scots songs – without payment, a point which disquiets Jean – earn a few mentions.

The book’s title refers to the peak of Burns’s achievements, which Barke considers to have occurred around this time.

Pedant’s corner:- “‘You wrang to judge him’” (You’re wrang.) “It was the Burns’ fate she feared” (Burns’s,) “urgent breasts” (of Anna Park. Urgent?) “But it was a pity that necessity had compelled his to allow” (compelled him to allow.)

Polygon, 2007, 265 p, plus 5 p Introduction by Frederic Lindsay.

Sandy Ross has retired from his life as a sailor to live out his time on a croft on his ancestral soil. An intrusion into his settled world comes when local policeman Nicol Menzies arrives to tell him a murder – of Menzies’s brother, Robert – has taken place and he needs to search the croft. The perpetrator is Allan Innes, one of a group of youths who used to frequent the croft.

A discomfited Sandy, all too aware Menzies is fired with an uncompromising zeal, pretends to unlock his barn and doesn’t mention the resistance he felt when pushing the door open. His more or less unconscious decision to try to help Innes lays out the novel’s path. When Menzies leaves, Sandy provides Innes with enough food to last a day or so.

Innes avoids the search for him by hiding on the Crannock (a crannog) in Loch Deoch, swimming across and back to keep in touch with Sandy, who plans to provide him with money and disguising clothing.

Fate intervenes when Sandy takes his cow to be served by the local bull. In her eagerness the cow pulls Sandy over and breaks his ribs, rendering him bed-bound. His everyday needs are looked after by the widow Macleay, a neighbour, who calls in the doctor and a redoubtable local nurse is also arranged. The widow Macleay is looked upon as a suitable husband for Sandy but he is wary of such a prospect.

A more surprising carer is Liz Murison, the woman over whom Innes and Robert Menzies had quarrelled, who turns up on Sandy’s doorstep saying she’d heard he needed help. In her pregnant state she has left the orbit of her father’s ire and his religious strictures.

The local minister drops in to try to persuade Sandy to return the girl to her family home. The minister – fond of a secret dram – says to him, “‘But if man does not take a stand on the great moral issues, woman never will. It’s not in her nature. There are times when a woman has no more moral sense than a fly on a windowpane.’”

Sandy isn’t swayed, Liz has no desire to go back and he sees no reason to ignore her wishes.

Things go on the way to their conclusion as the determined Nicol doggedly pursues his quarry to the bitter end.

Each of the characters (except perhaps for Nicol) is portrayed sympathetically. Sandy’s humanity in particular shines through.

Pedant’s corner:- In the Introduction; “Nicol Menzies’ brother” (Menzies’s,) “Allan Innes’ sweetheart” (Innes’s.) Otherwise: a missing comma at the end of a piece of direct speech, one missing before a piece of direct speech (x 2.) “It’s door was ajar” (Its door,) “finger prints” and, later, “finger-prints” (nowadays one word; ‘fingerprints’,) “fo’c’stle” (fo’c’sle – or fo’c’s’le.) “The pain, like the bruises, were on his left side” (The pain, …, was on his left side,) “tried to ease his shoulder out if its bandaging” (out of its bandaging,) a missing opening quotation mark before a piece of direct speech. “‘May be so’” (Maybe so.)

Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1923?, 378 p. First published 1920.

Set in the fictional Tweedside town of Priorsford (whose model it is not difficult to infer given the author’s background) this is the story of the kind-hearted – to excess? – Jean Jardine, aged 23 and guardian to her two younger brothers David and Jock, but also to Gervase (nicknamed Mhor,) the son of Mr Jardine’s second wife and also left alone when both his mother and Mr Jardine died. The Jardines are poor and live in a quaint cottage called The Rigs, owned by an absentee landlord. Jean worries over the cost when David is to go to University in Cambridge, and how he will fit in.

The well-to-do Pamela Reston, sister to Lord Bidborough, was brought up in Priorsford, and returns there to visit her childhood haunts. She takes a room in the house next door to The Rigs run by the no-nonsense Bella Bathgate but soon takes a shine to Jean and her family.

Travelling on the same train north as Pamela was successful businessman Peter Reid, the Jardines’ landlord, told to take things easy by his doctor. He comes to The Riggs incognito and is charmed by Jean’s unquestioning acceptance of him as a stranger.

The Great Expectations and will they won’t they get together plot are almost superfluous though. Douglas’s focus is on domesticity, with lavish descriptions of interiors and meals, and Jean’s feelings for her fellow humans. Her depiction of middle-class life in the immediate aftermath of the Great War is also a kind of historical record.

For modern readers, though, it may be jarring to read a sentence like, “He was no Jew, and took small pleasure in the outward cleansing of the cup and platter.” (Are/were Jews more notable than others for cleanliness?) Then an old colonial warns Jock the Indian Civil Service was “hardly fit now for a white man” and a child is quoted as saying of the thought of being a minister, “No, it’s not a white man’s job.”

Douglas is easy to read and does have insight – albeit in a narrow sense – into the human condition. There is no high adventure here, no strong conflict, just quiet lives lived out quietly. Virtue rewarded, though, may have been a novelistic staple of those times but it’s less obviously apparent in the twenty-first century.

Pedant’s corner:- “the Miss Watsons” (several times, ‘the Misses Watson’.)

Hodder, 2023, 249 p.

Godley, who died in 2024, was better known as a comedian and had a viral success with her voice-overs of Nicola Sturgeon’s press briefings during the Covid lockdowns. (“Frank, get the door!”)

This, though, is a reasonably standard novel which appears to draw on aspects of Godley’s early life for its inspiration.

When Sharon learns her mother Senga has been taken into hospital about to die she comes back from Bristol (where her marriage has broken down) to Glasgow. There she finds her mother is anxious for her to read a sort of memoir of her experiences in the 1970s. Senga’s marriage too was a mistake and her husband had left the family home. Sharon had been a practical, studious and dependable daughter, able to hold the ring as an additional support to her younger brother. The memoir is mostly concerned with Senga’s friends, most of whom have also made unsuitable marriages but Sandra’s husband is particularly controlling and prone to violence. As a result Senga becomes increasingly worried about her welfare, encouraging her to leave. But in the 1970s that was not so easy.

The book’s structure is rather unconvincing, alternating as it does between Sharon’s present and the extracts from her mother’s diary. Godley does provide a rationale for this in Sharon’s expressed reluctance to rush reading her mother’s story but surely this is psychologically unlikely. Wouldn’t most people faced with this situation read through the diary as quickly as possible?

The depiction of female friendship rings true, though, and the spirit of Glasgow shines through, while the nostalgic mentions of 1970s staples evoke the era admirably.

The story itself, however, while not inconsequential, is a little thin.

Pedant’s corner:- “The Farrow and Ball grey frontage …. were like every other café” “The Farrow and Ball grey frontage …. was like.) “Clyde was stood over the table” Clyde was standing over.) “Stuart was stood in the hall” (Stuart was standing in the hall.)  “‘Mr Blue Skies by ELO’” (Mr Blue Sky.)

Hodder and Stoughton, 1891, 218 p plus iii p Contents.

Again, as in Auld Licht Idylls, our narrator is the local dominie in Thrums, who has a lodging at the home of the McQumpha family; father Hendry, mother Jess, daughter Leeby and son Jamie, who now lives in London. Jess, who is an invalid, has never got over the loss of her other son, Joey, is a fine embroiderer and sits at the window of their house at the top of the brae leading out of Thrums, looking out at the world and hoping to see Jamie coming up the road. Leeby, when younger, was excessively devoted to Jamie and that devotion has spilled over into her caring for Jess which leaves her little time for her own life. Hendry, thoug hard working and honest is more of a background figure.

Along the way Barrie gives us, through the minister, snippets of life in Thrums and of the various characters who lived there. The man who tried to get out of his engagement to one woman because he had taken fancy to another, the older man who came back to the village with a much younger wife and was shunned by his hitherto prospective heirs, the exploits of the town comic.

On Jamie’s last visit Jess is much disturbed by the fact that he has a handkerchief secreted in his clothing. This she takes as a sign that he has a woman friend in London and like many a mother of sons is displeased that another woman could replace her in his affections.

Incidents in the book have parallels with Barrie’s upbringing in Kirriemuir and are reflective of the small town Scots life of his youth which at time of writing would have all but disappeared.

Most of the dialogue is in very broad Scots. Occasionally a Scots word was followed in brackets by its (nearest) equivalent in English. This has the effect of breaking up the narrative. I agree that to readers in England – or elsewhere – these might be required but a glossary would surely suffice for any who are troubled by it. However, the practice did not occur with every Scots word, some of which I therefore had to look up for myself, my Scots vocabulary not being extensive.

Pedant’s corner:- mantlepiece (mantelpiece,) largess (largesse,) youre (you’re,) “therenever was in Thrums” (there never was.)