Love to know what mum's think of the Scottish Baby Box poem

[toomuchpink]

Love to know what mum's - especially those in Scotland - think of this poem. It is going into the Scottish Government's new baby box of freebies for parents of newborns.

Tempted to ask for alternative suggestions which truly capture the experience of having a baby. But perhaps for some people this is what it is like?

Jackie Kay
Welcome Wee One

O ma darlin wee one
At last you are here in the wurld
And wi’ aa your wisdom
Your een bricht as the stars,
You've filled this hoose with licht,
Yer trusty wee haun, your globe o' a heid,
My cherished yin, my hert's ain!

O my darlin wee one
The hale wurld welcomes ye:
The mune glowes; the hearth wairms.
Let your life hae luck, health, charm,
Ye are my bonny blessed bairn,
My small miraculous gift.
I never kent luve like this.

"The existence of a few poems and a small amount of literature does not change the fact that for the most part Scots has been a spoken language."

Seriously? You do know that about half of this country's legislation is written in Scots, and the Scots language mediaeval canon is widely regarded as a very significant contribution to world literature?

"If a book claimed to be written in West Country dialect I'd criticise it for containing geordie phrases."

This is why Scots is traditionally written non-geographically and pandialectically, and why a bunch of digraphs exist to enable folk to pronounce a word like guid or muin in whichever dialect they feel most comfortable using, and why this has been the case probably since John Barbour in the 1370s, yeah?

The poem is ok, not great. Doesn't really chime with me but I suppose they have to go broad to encompass a range of birth experiences. It's a bit sentimental though, and maybe puts pressure on people to be all glowing with love when you're probably just knackered with sore bits. I'm not familiar with her work but presume she was in the frame for it being Makar, rather than anything else.

*Why comment about it?
*
I thought that was the point of the thread.

The poem is awful (in my opinion) but it's nothing to do with the language, it would be a crap poem in any language.

I do like that Gill Lambert one a lot. The Jackie Kay one - not so much. It doesn't move me at all. I'm not Scottish so I have to guess at some of the words but it doesn't seem particularly anything other than particularly in Scots.

"Not just the SNP approved ways."

What does that even mean? You were moaning about something being written down in Scots per se (a language of 1.6million Scots: that a guid wheen o thaim'll no support the SNP naither).

" I'm not familiar with her work but presume she was in the frame for it being Makar, rather than anything else."

Ay, I think that's about the dead strength of it. They'll just have asked The Makar to write a positive wee ditty about birth and babies. This subcultural chatter that Sturgeon's pure radge plan was to foist a poem (dun dun dun!) on the nation to SNP-ify the wee-est bairnies (or whitever...) really does not seem to understand how governments actually work.

no one who says weans would say loons and quines well i hate to prove you wrong but I use all three, as well as bairn. Anyway loons and quines just means boys and girls, not specifically children whereas weans is more equivalent of bairns so im not sure why you think people wouldnt use loons and quines if they also used weans?

Given that most Glaswegians can't actually understand Doric why mix the two and pretend it's all one language? It's great to produce a written language that no one actually uses or understands all of. But hey, we can teach it to kids in school and retrofit it to the population. Awesome.

May as well chuck some scouse, geordie and cockney together and pretend it's just pandialectucal colloquial English. It's all the bloody same, isn't it? In fact, let's whack in some New York and New Orleans too. It's all just English.

I keep wanting to kid myself that Scotland in 2017 is somehow way better than brexit England. And then I actually hear about the shit that's going on in Scotland (and the vitriol aimed at anyone who doesn't wholeheartedly agree with it) and despair entirely.

"I keep wanting to kid myself that Scotland in 2017 is somehow way better than brexit England. And then I actually hear about the shit that's going on in Scotland (and the vitriol aimed at anyone who doesn't wholeheartedly agree with it) and despair entirely."

This is very hard to parse.

I am a massive Europhile and very much in favour of greater EU integration and despair of nativism, xenophobia and chauvinism. I would tend to see the classic Unionist cold warrior attitude to Scotland's culture as part of that same Brexit-y chauvinism. It feels like all that whitey empires rhetoric all over again. But you (conversely) seem to see overt Scottishness as a threat to liberalism and tolerance?

"May as well chuck some scouse, geordie and cockney together and pretend it's just pandialectucal colloquial English."

A doot ye soud tak thon tae avizandum and apprise it in a mair jonick and evendoon mainner. The ir nocht - atweel, naething ava - that gars it be necessitate that Scots - i the exposition, nor nae ither gate - is colloquial.

I'm a homesick Scot now living in England.

Two things:

That poem made me a wee but teary-eyed. I know that wouldn't be the case if I were still in NE Scotland but there ya go.

To all those slamming the money spent on the baby box...you don't know how lucky you are. Services in Scotland piss all over their counterparts in England, certainly here in the SE.

Well done in managing to shoe horn Brexit, nativism and xenophobia into the one paragraph in a chat about baby boxes. A rare talent indeed.

so that people all over scotland, not just one part, might relate to the poem?

Why cant we just have a Scottish poem, even if it draws from several parts of Scottish language?

Away to don my kilt and saltire and go and do some shit aimed at anyone who doesnt agree with me. Uhm can you tell me what that is exactly?

What a pile of shite. It assumes that we all speak the same dialect and whilst I may now live in the central belt it does get rather tiresome that this version of scots is repeatedly cast as the only version.

Furthermore how is one box going to level the playing field in the misplaced belief that this is so. The money could go to better pregnancy care to the poorest so that they can have a better diet. It could also go on funding more hcp to better aid and assist the vulnerable once they have had their babies to help ensure the gap doesn't widen to such an extent that by the time their children get to school their chances of ever being remotely close to a level playing field are next to zero as a fucking box is not going to do any of that.

I love the poem and the boxes.

The poem on page 2 ( gill lambert) made me a bit teary as it is so close to labour with DC2.

I have no issue with Scots. It is how people talk but I hear more and more snobbery from anti-snp voters about the use of it.

Ah the classic manoeuvre of pretending that anyone who doesn't think like you must be against liberalism.

Because resenting the reduction of Scottishness to some kind of oor wullie cartoon is clearly like being a mini-Farage. Writing in Scots doesn't not make one more Scottish than people who don't. Nor does objecting to having your child taught to spell 'wurld' in school make you less Scottish.

It is very dangerous indeed to imply that there's something wrong with questioning the agenda behind the current promotion of Scots (of which the poem this thread is about is s prime example - why not write it in the language that the vast majority of Scots speak, because 1.6 million
Scots is still a minority?).

If 1.6 million Scots speak Scots, then c. 3.4 million do not. It therefore does not maximise anything. All it says is that the non-Scots speakers are somehow lesser Scots.

lol that he language used by a poet is the most controversial part of this

TheLegendofBeans i dont live in England but I assume that without SG Scotland would be in same boat regarding services etc. Are things that bad in England? According to most anti-SNP voices ive had to listen to England are much more advanced than Scotland and is what we should be aiming for by voting for the parties that are in power in England.

shite, why not do it in a language that all Scot's use ?

Well no one seems to want to defend the fucking awful imagery.

Globe o a heid indeed.

Didnt realise this would kick off such strong feelings. I don't mind the language aspect of the poem - I just find it excessively sentimental and felt that was potentially unhelpful given the varied experiences people have of childbirth. Might have been an opportunity to write something that would help people ride the ups and downs of those early weeks, I thought, rather than something which might make you really miserable on a bad day.

My first went into an incubator for 24 hours after birth and the second time I had twins, so the poem would not have been very suitable for either of my experiences though.

Any more thoughts?

It's okay, but Notveryhappyvalley's poem is gorgeous.

I thought the boxes were to reduce the chances of SIDS - is that not right?

No no Miss Stein, no.

And trust me, I'm no SNP voter well I can't now anyway

The reality of childbirth must not be allowed to get in the way of a good big dollop of mawkish Scots OP.

Leaving aside the monumental wastes of money that this box is whilst doing FA to address the increasing levels of inequalities in health in Scotland, the poyem is a bag o' shortbreed and tartan shite.