Remind me what's good about living in Scotland?

[CoralPaperweight]

I moved to Scotland 25 years ago (central belt) and I've had a great life here but over the last year or so I've got increasingly itchy feet. May be a post-Covid or age thing but I'm not sure I want to stay in Scotland forever - it just doesn't seem to be as appealing to me, and even the cities seem a bit flat at the moment. Realistically, I can't disrupt DS education at the moment, he's very settled and happy so please remind me of everything that is fantastic about life in Scotland. I'm forever reading threads about people who are desperate to move to Scotland and I'm not really seeing why at the moment.

me too. It varies wildly across the country. 'ken' is common in lots of parts of Scotland but if you say that anywhere near the west coast you get this piss ripped out of you.

Scots is spoken. My children speak it in class, naturally. My parents do also.

Some of the words in Burns's work are no longer in use. That's normal and the same as other pieces from the past.

I e never heard anyone talking like these poems, burns or the modern ones. I use a lot of Scots words, I’ve heard a lot of different accents, but not speaking like this day to day

Time to write them, then, WouldBeGood?

What about a bit of Tom Leonard?

GOOD STYLE

helluva hard tay read theez init
stull
if yi canny unnirston thim jiss clear aff then
gawn
get tay fuck ootma road

ahmaz goodiz thi lota yiz so ah um
ah no whit ahm dayn
tellnyi
jiss try enny a yir fly patir wi me
stick thi bootnyi good style
so ah wull

www.tomleonard.co.uk/online-poetry-and-prose.html

@Scottishskifun every year the kids have to do Scots language / poetry stuff tied in with Burns night. Wasn't so bad P1-3 - they tended to be group efforts, Scots songs or on a voluntary basis. P4 was hideous - kids were told they had to stand up at the front of the class and recite a poem and they couldn't read from a bit of paper. They were expected to learn the verses and some of them were long poems. There was a lot of trauma in our household that couple of weeks.

That made me laugh @MagnoliaTaint

Sheena Blackhall, Aiberdeen?

View o Aiberdeen

Inspired by: View of Aberdeen – William Mosman

Nae multistoreys, traffic jams in sicht!
An age o brandy, shelts, sedans, an tea
Quary-toon, green kintra lapin roon her sides
An skies that kent nae ither wings bit birds.
A pygmy placie, weety-cauld an stinch,
win-cairdit bi the soochin o the sea.
Braid brush strokes smeeth the watter flat’s a bap.
Twa Jacobite rebellions didna mar
This peinter’s idyll, nur the orra trade
In human flesh, the slavers’ currency.
Onchancy times – yet aa’s as smeeth as glaiss
Staun still, breath deep, ye near can smell the girse
Cam wachtin fae the pictur in a yoam.
Weel-seen the artist learned his darg in Rome.
The centuries hae grown…sae has the toon
Twa univiersities noo weir the goun
O academe. Nae whalin noo, bit ile.
Langsyne the Tolbooth nocht anither jyle.
In maisonette, bedsit, wee ustairs flat
Tenement, hostel, hospital or Hame,
In Tilly, Seaton, Cults or Desswid Place
The view o this braif toon, is’t aa the same?
A full glaiss, or a teem? Throwe ithers’ een
In mosque, kirk, howf, fit view o Aiberdeen?

I love Shetlandic:

Brekken Beach, Nort Yell

Christine De Luca

A mile aff we catch a glisk
o Brekken beach: webbed
atween headlands, a glansin arc
o ancient shalls
sun sillered.

Waves aff Arctic floes
bank in; dey shade fae cobalt
tae a glacial green; swall
an brack, rim on rim
o lipperin froad.

We rin owre dunes
crumplin smora,
fling aff wir shön
birze sand trowe taes
dell an bigg it;
shaste da doon draa
o da waves, loup
der hidmost gasps.

Abune wis, solan plane an plummet
an on da cliff, a tystie
triggit up in black and white
gawps at wir foally.

Da sun draps doon ahint his keep
an we man leave
an Eden aert
ta him.

William Soutar is one of my favourites:

Day is Düne

Lully, lully, my ain wee dearie:
Lully, lully, my ain wee doo:
Sae far awa and peerieweerie
Is the hurlie o’ the world noo.

And a’ the noddin pows are weary;
And a’ the fitterin feet come in:
Lully, lully, my ain wee dearie,
The darg is owre and the day is düne.

Apologies for poem-spam, I'll stop now.

OP, I'm sorry your daughter didn't enjoy performing the poem. If it helps, learning by heart, and reciting poems has been shown to have enormous benefits for literacy. I think it also needs explanation and context, but:

'Significant cognitive benefits can be gained from learning by rote. It can improve information retention at any age, improve neuroplasticity in the elderly and stave off typical cognitive decline by seven to fourteen years. Learning by heart benefits the hippocampal foundation, the ‘memory’ area of the brain.'

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5vBSkrtKGkPJCj86Nh1hC4w/learning-by-heart

I’m of Hebridean stock, born in Tayside, lived fife, Edinburgh, Dumfries and Galloway and now Lanarkshire, but no idea on the Shetlandic 🤣

And Edwin Morgan is my favourite poet

you've inspired me MagnoliaTaint - just ordered a collection of Tom Leonard poems off amazon - that made my night reading that Good Style😅Thank-you!

I love it!!! Loads of Nordic loan words/influence, unsurprisngly. As you'll have in the Hebrides, too, of course.

Fantastic, hope you enjoy! I love what he does with text translating Glaswegian onto the page.

I love the phonetics of the Tom Leonard poem

yes, part Viking here 😃

Yes! And I love Morgan, too, though I don't know all that much of his work. Where would you recommend starting?

My favourite poem of all time is When You Go, which is in his New Selected Poems published by Carcanet.

I’m a bit of a literature geek. Not usually poetry, but sometimes it says it all

Not nearly as descriptive and loses meaning in English:

Brekken Beach, North Yell

Christine De Luca

A mile away we catch a glimpse
Of Brekken beach: webbed
Between headlands, a glancing arc
Of ancient skulls
Sun-silvered

Waves of Artic floes
come in; they range in colour from cobalt
to a glacial green; swell
and break, crest (of wave) on crest
of fretful big bubbles of froth

We run over dunes
Flattening grass
Throwing off our shoes
Sand squeezing through toes
Dig and build it
chase the down draw
of the waves, jump
the last gasps (of the waves)

Above us, gannets soar and plummet
and on the cliff, an Artic tern
dressed up in black and white
stares at our folly

The sun drops doon behind his place
and we must leave
an Eden earth
to him

Thanks, I have that one! Will crack it open.

And yes, Achat, the English translation really loses a lot, I feel.

o lipperin froad/of fretful big bubbles of froth

In Shetland, theres actually a different word for smaller frothy bubbles, thats how descriptive it is. People in cities have less time to observe the different types of waves clearly.

I might have it wrong in places. What I find interesting is that my knowledge of it is stuck in one era - my grandparent's pronunciation and dialect. But even since then its moved on. So they would have said "skum" or "skurm" instead of "froad" and something like "skawn" for "headland". And "tirze" not "birze". I think I've got that right.

Will it vary between islands, too? Also enjoyed Roseanne Watt's Moder Dy, a younger poet.

That's traumatising!
Thanks for the heads up we are a way off from that but given dyslexia runs in my family I will be having words with the school and if they still insist will be having a day out each burns recital day!

All for inclusion of literature, not for forcing children to remember off by heart to say out loud for the sake of a dead poet day!

@Scottishskifun
I tried to raise issues with school but didn't get very far. It was part of Scottish week and the Scots language element was compulsory. I'm afraid I don't get it.

@CoralPaperweight Our kids school also has Scottish Week, with loads of activities and poetry recital. But, the kids do loads of learning the poetry in class, those that want (no compulsion) can do the competition where they are firstly judged in class then there is a grand final with each class winner doing there poem. Your school situation sounds bonkers.

I love Scots and use a lot of Scot's words and language because my parents did. I hope my kids will continue to use it. I think it's important for kids to learn about the country they live in, it's history, it's cultures, and languages. But compulsory poetry recital, eh naw.

Everyone at both my kids’ schools has had to recite poems throughout the week so it’s not one day