Pros: range of poems (ballads, epics, love poems) representative of the entire history of Scottish poetry
Cons: poems in Scots only minimally glossed in English
The Bottom Line: Anthology of poems of wide-ranging themes and styles reflecting the multi-lingual heritage of Scotland. Some rather obscure, but many will appeal to any lover of good poetry.
jc_hall's Full Review: The New Penguin Book of Scottish Verse
Editors Robert Crawford and Mick Imlah took on an ambitious project when they planned The New Penguin Book of Scottish Verse. Their aim was ‘to present a generous selection of the best poems written by those born or settled in Scotland, or, in the case of earlier work, coming out of the territory now known as Scotland.’
The very concept is astounding, and the scope, surely, is unprecedented—we’re talking a goodly number of the best poems representing the entire history of Scottish poetry. Poems spanning the sixth to the 20th century—fourteen centuries (over a thousand years) of poetry.
When one considers the multi-lingual heritage of Scotland, with Gaelic spoken in the Highlands and the Western Isles, Scots in the Lowlands, not to mention the ancient languages of Latin, old English, old Norse, old French and even Welsh, the range is not just overwhelming but mind-boggling.
And when the casual reader flips through the pages to see the original Gaelic, old English, old Norse, old French, Welsh and Latin on facing pages with the English verse translations, she has to wonder if this anthology is meant for more erudite readers who dwell in the rarefied atmosphere of academia.
But poetry is not, or ought not to be, a recondite subject, beyond the reach of the average person. If anything, the oldest poems were sung by travelling bards to the populace, ballads passed down through the centuries for the enjoyment of everyman and everywoman.
Through the ages, Scottish poetry has been shaped by political circumstances and preoccupation with religious matters. The turbulent history of Scotland, with heroes like Robert the Bruce and William Wallace fighting off the English between the 13th and 14th centuries, was rife for patriotic epics. A brief respite—a ‘Golden Age’ in Scottish poetry, allowed poets like William Dunbar (c. 1460-c. 1520) to demonstrate his range and talent. But a series of calamitous events, notably the Battle of Flodden (1513) where the core of Scottish nobility was slain by the English along with an estimated 10,000 men, the Reformation, and the Union of the Crowns (when King James VI became James I of England in 1603 and moved his court to London) forced the use of Scots as a literary language into a steep decline.
James, the ‘poet-king’, and his band of poets wrote their verse in English. His mother, Mary Queen of Scots, wrote verse in French and Latin. In the century that followed, Scots was used mainly in folk songs and ballads—a body of work that is now considered a treasure trove of Scottish literary heritage.
To give the editors of The New Penguin Book of Scottish Verse their due, the more obscure poems are more than balanced out by popular ballads, and the works of late, great anonymous poets are featured as well as those of well-known poets such as Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), Lord Byron (1788-1824), Robert Burns (1759-1796), and Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894). There are also fine selections of poems from more contemporary poets, including Marion Angus, Rachel Annand Taylor, Edwin Muir, Hugh MacDiarmid, Carol Ann Duffy, and many more.
All in all, over a hundred poets are represented, from court poets (William Dunbar) to nobles (Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron) to royals (James I, Mary Queen of Scots), from anonymous balladeers to the three great ‘makars’ (Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, Gavin Douglas) to the divine (St. Columba).
My favourites include the following:
-- the anonymous ballad Sir Patrick Spens(‘I saw the new moon late yestreen,/Wi the auld moon in her arm;/And if we gang to sea, master,/I fear we’ll come to harm.’)
-- the very sad anonymous ballad Clerk Saunders(‘Is there ony room at your head, Saunders?/Is there ony room at your feet?/Or ony room at your side, Saunders,/Where fain, fain, I wad sleep?’)
-- Sir Walter Scott’s swashbuckling Lochinvar(‘So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,/There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.’/// ‘I long wooed your daughter, my suit you denied;/Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like the tide’)
-- Robert Burns’ Tam O’Shanter: A Tale (‘But pleasures are like poppies spread,/You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed:/Or like the snow falls in the river,/A moment white—then melts forever;/Or like the borealis race,/That flit ere you can point the place;/Or like the rainbow’s lovely form/Evanishing amid the storm.—/Nae man can tether time nor tide;/The Hour approaches Tam maun ride’
-- Three Things Come Without Seeking, translated beautifully from the Gaelic by Iain Crichton Smith (‘Three things come without seeking,/jealousy, terror and love./Nor is it shame to be counted/among those whom such agonies grieve,/since so many great ladies/have suffered the crime that I have/being exiled by passion./They gave but they did not receive.’)
-- a hauntingly beautiful piece by James MacPherson from Fragments of Ancient Poetry, collected in the Highlands of Scotland and Translated from the Gaelic or Erse Language(‘Alone I am, O Shilric! alone in the winter-house. With grief for thee I expired. Shilric, I am pale in the tomb./She fleets, she sails away; as grey mist before the wind—and wilt thou not stay, my love? Stay and behold my tears…By the mossy fountain I will sit; on the top of the hill of winds. When mid-day is silent around, converse, O my love, with me!’)
-- Marion Angus’ insightful Alas! Poor Queen(‘Consider the way she had to go./Think of the hungry snare,/The net she herself had woven,/Aware or unaware’)
-- Rachel Annand Taylor’s elegant The Princess of Scotland (‘Wherefore the mask of silken lace/Tied with a golden band?’/Poverty walks with wanton grace/In my land.// ‘Why do you softly, richly speak/Rhythm so sweetly-scanned?’/Poverty hath the Gaelic and the Greek/In my land.)
-- William Soutar’s sensual The Tryst (A’ thru the nicht we spak nae word/Nor sinder’d bane frae bane:/A’ thru’ the nicht I heard her hert/Gang soundin wi’ my ain.)
-- Carol Anne Duffy’s Words, Wide Night(…See? I close my eyes and imagine/the dark hills I would have to cross/to reach you. For I am in love with you and this//is what it is like or what it is like in words.)
So there you have it, The New Penguin Book of Scottish Verse is a compendium of the best of Scottish poetry of all time, with patriotic epics, the sacred (religious poems) and the profane (bawdy humour), passionate love poems and haunting lamentations, swashbuckling adventure, myths and fables, dream allegories and meditations, both ancient and contemporary. It's a veritable treasure trove--poetry lovers of all persuasions will find something to love and cherish (and perhaps send to delight and/or torment a distant lover by e-mail).
My only quarrel with the anthology is a minor one—the minimal way in which the poems in Scots are glossed in English. A first-time reader will have quite some difficulty making sense of the strange spelling. For example, here’s how one stanza of Jean Elliot’s The Flowers of the Forest is glossed:
At buchts, in the morning, nae blithe lads are scorning; (sheepfolds; teasing)
The lasses are lonely, and dowie, and wae: (dismal)
Nae daffin’, nae gabbin’, but sighing and sabbing: (fooling)
Ilk ane lifts her leglen, and hies her away. (milk pail)
Having said that, you do get used to the spelling once you’ve read a bunch of the Scots poems. And there are lots of poems beautifully and lovingly translated into English as well as original English poems for those who may have difficulty with the Scots tongue.
At the back of the book is a section on Biographical Notes, arranged chronologically, following which is an Index of Poets and then an Index of First Lines.
Robert Crawford is Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of St Andrews. Mick Imlah is poetry editor at The Times Literary Supplement.
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