Burns an' 'at

You can set your clock by it: this is the time of year when Robert Burns gets a wee night. All over the world, people with Scottish connections - and with none at all - organise a night of poetry and music to celebrate the life and work of one of Scotland's finest poets, who was also a great collector of Scottish songs and poetry. We owe a great debt to Burns (and to the Burns Federation which has kept his work alive since 1885). 

I've been to a few Burns Nights in my time. In Russia, Canada, the USA and all over Scotland. I've sat through brilliant presentations, especially by young people, and sadly a few clunkers too, like the version of the song Ca' the Yowes Tae the Knowes by a lassie with a lovely voice who had been taught - or allowed - to sing the song in English, starting off: Call the Yowes To The Knowes. Perfect diction, but unfortunately not even a nod to the Scots language. This was in Burns Country in front of foreign visitors. I only hope they didn't catch on. 


It's thanks to Burns that we have a history of the Scots language as spoken by the people rather than the academics. In his writing and his collections of old songs and poems, we can also see the connections between Scots and Irish and Ulster Scots. That we still have our ancient Scots songs, dances and a lot of stories is thanks to Burns - and his publishers. Burns has a respected place in world literature, even if for some reason a few folk still insist on calling him 'Rabbie' Burns.

So what am I bleating on about this time? 

Well, partly it's Scottish politicians. And partly it's the National newspaper. Specifically, it's their ignorance of Scottish culture - education, history, law - all the stuff that makes Scotland Scottish that's infuriating me right now.

First there was the Tory who thought - and said in Holyrood - that starting children off speaking Gaelic (in schools in an area where Gaelic is quite commonly spoken) would damage their life chances, when every bit of research into bilingualism in the last 60 years has shown the exact opposite.. 

Then there was the SNP MP who wrote in a well-meaning article in the National in defence of Gaelic but showed he knew little about Scotland's languages - and its education system - and couldn't wait toget back on to the safe ground of his personal background - English and German. 

And now we have the National advocating that young Scots should learn 'other languages.' As if it had come as a revelation to people in education in Scotland that there are other languages out there. 

So let me clarify for the National and any passing politicians:

There are 3 native languages in Scotland. 

There's English, enshrined in the 1872 Scottish Education Act as the language of national education. It's hardly an endangered language. In fact, it's hard to avoid English anywhere in the world. Some of our ignorance of Scots can be put down to how successful the Education Scotland Act of 1872 has been in driving out other languages.

Then there's Gaelic, which has been in a revival since about 1985 and is doing not too badly, thanks to a lot of hard work in communities all over Scotland, even if some Scots seem to regard it as alien and part of the 'cult of Nicola Sturgeon' which, it seems, aims to make everyone in Scotland speak Gaelic. Honestly, I've seen it described like that quite recently. If this is true (it's not) I stand amazed at the power of Nicola Sturgeon. If I'd known she had that kind of influence, I might have considered joining her cult - sorry, party.


And finally, there's the Scots language, the forgotten language of Scotland. No, it's not a debased version of English. It's a language in its own right. It even has its own place in the world map of languages; 

Right hand side. Same branch of world languages as English but a language in its own right. It is spoken by one and half million people in Scotland. To my surprise, the wikipedia entry describes this as 'only' 30% of the population. I can think of many countries that would be delighted to have that number of native speakers after their language had been effectively banned from public life for 150 years. 

What we Scots don't know about the Scots language could - and does - fill several books. I'd no sooner put hand to keyboard on Facebook on the subject of the Scots language last week than I got a mild rebuke from a friend telling me I had left out 'the Doric'. But the Doric is not a language. It's a branch of Scots, still spoken a lot in the north-east of Scotland and maybe showing the influence of Norn and maybe even Pictish  - just as Ayrshire Scots shows strong Celtic influences and the grammar and vocabulary of Glaswegian Scots has clear signs of the influence of Irish. (Hardly surprising when so many Irish people made their way to Scotland in search of work from the mid-19th century on). There's even some evidence that the Doric is a made-up language. 

To get an idea if the range and variety of Scots and how it has been a political toy of the Scottish Establishment (o yes, there is one!), you might want to watch a TED talk Michael Dempster gave in Inverness: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRnQ8lYcvFU

Why don't we know these things about the languages of Scotland? For the same reason we know so little about our history, our legal system and our education system.

We will, in my opinion, only be fit to be a nation again when we know about these things. We don't need to agree on them. No other country expects total agreement on big issues like this, but we need to know enough to be able to discuss them.