SCOTTISH LITERATURE

Literature in any of the languages of Scotland: Scottish Gaelic, Lowland Scots, or Standard English. This article deals with poetry and prose in Scots and in English, written in Scotland or by Scottish-born authors living abroad but dealing primarily with Scottish themes and settings. For information on the Scottish Gaelic literary tradition, see Gaelic Literature. See also English Literature.

Early Works.

The earliest literature in the northern dialect of English known as Scottish or Lowland Scots is a fragment of an anonymous 13th-century poem on the condition of Scotland after the death of King Alexander III. One of the first major Scottish poets was John Barbour, archdeacon of Aberdeen, who wrote The Brus (1375); its 14,000 lines tell the story of the heroic Scottish king Robert Bruce.

The Makars.

Some of the most notable Scottish poetry was the work of the medieval makars (literally makers), professional poets generally attached to the court. The tradition is considered to have begun with King James I, the probable author of The Kingis Quair (The King's Book, c. 1423), a dream allegory in the courtly love tradition of Le roman de la rose. Because of their supposed imitations of the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer, the makars have often been referred to as Scottish Chaucerians. The term is inaccurate; the similarity stems from their use of the same French models that inspired Chaucer.

The next great makar was Robert Henryson (c. 1420–c. 1490), a cleric of Dunfermline, whose masterpiece was The Testament of Cresseid. Henryson's version forms a sequel to Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and tells of Cressida's punishment for violating the courtly love code. William Dunbar, a Franciscan prelate attached to the court of King James IV, is Henryson's rival to the title of greatest of these 15th-century poets. Dunbar was essentially a lyric poet, however, notable for his versatility and craftsmanship. His most famous poem is the Lament for the Makaris. Apart from its value as a roster of names of Scottish poets, his predecessors and contemporaries, the Lament is a poignant expression of his own fear of death. In contrast are The Twa Maryit Wemen and the Wedo, a rollicking satirical debate on various forms of love, and his stately hymn on the resurrection of Christ.

The fourth of the makars, Gawin Douglas, member of a noble family and bishop of Dunkeld, made the first translation in Britain of Vergil's Aeneid. His version, not superseded until the translations of the English poets John Dryden and Alexander Pope, is valuable also for its role in developing the Scots vocabulary. Each book of Douglas's Aeneid is prefaced by an original prologue; the seventh prologue is particularly notable for its realistic description of a Scottish winter scene.

The Reformation.

Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis (c. 1535) by Sir David Lindsay is a long allegorical poem in the tradition of the medieval morality plays. It constitutes an attack on the church and the monarchy and an apologia for the Reformation. As such, it remained the most popular work in Scotland until the time of Robert Burns.

With the Reformation, the tradition of the makars died; they were succeeded by a number of minor lyric poets. With the union of the Scottish and English crowns in 1603, the court poetry tradition disappeared, and the vernacular was relegated mainly to the body of popular lyrics and ballads, generally of anonymous authorship. The most widely read prose work of this period was the English Bible; because of its enormous influence, the Scottish language ceased to be used for formal prose, and until the end of the 19th century it was reserved, in fiction, only for dialogue, to give a genre effect. Drama, negligible in Scotland before the Reformation, has never had a strong native tradition.

18th Century.

Three 18th-century poets used the Scots vernacular and restored a true national literary tradition. Allan Ramsay, a poet in his own right, through his anthologies The Tea-Table Miscellany (4 vol., 1724–37) and The Ever Green (2 vol., 1724), made the work of the makars and later Scottish poetry known to his contemporaries. Robert Fergusson (1750–74) was one of a line of Scottish poets that continues to the present day, devoted to sympathetic but realistic evocations of Glasgow and Edinburgh. “Auld Reekie” is one of his many lively descriptions of Edinburgh streets and citizens. Robert Burns, the most beloved of all Scottish poets, refused to turn to English for his poetry; the bulk of his work is therefore squarely in the Scottish tradition, in language, forms—based to a large extent on folk poetry—and content.

The Prose Tradition.

Up to the time of Sir Walter Scott, one of the most popular and prolific of all novelists, prose writing in Scotland (in Scots or in English) served mainly didactic purposes, as with the work of the religious reformer John Knox. A fiction tradition emerged with Scott's Waverley novels (1814–19), enlarged by such writers as Susan Ferrier (1782–1854) and John Galt. Ferrier wrote three novels, the first of which, Marriage (1818), is also the first social novel in Scotland; it is remarkable for its sharply witty descriptions contrasting life in the Highlands with that in London. Galt's novels include The Annals of the Parish (1821), a realistic account of the daily life of a rural minister, and The Entail (1842), a study of obsession, notable for its picture of 18th-century Glasgow.

Certain novelists and poets of the later 19th century, because of their idyllic re-creations of couthie (comfortable) Scottish rural life, have been dubbed the “kailyard” (cabbage patch) school by 20th-century critics. The antithesis of this is found in The House with the Green Shutters (1901), the only novel of George Douglas (pseudonym of George Douglas Brown, 1869–1902), which is a mordant exposé of small-town life and family tragedy. Another honest treatment of Scottish life is the trilogy A Scots Quair (1932–34) by Lewis Grassic Gibbon (pseudonym of James Leslie Mitchell, 1901–35). This often lyrical story of a Scottish woman's transition from farm to city life is told in her own voice; syntax and vocabulary re-create the Fifeshire dialect. The first part of the trilogy, Sunset Song (1932), was dramatized for television.

Later writers of fiction include Neil M. Gunn (1891–1973), who portrayed life in the fishing villages of his native Caithness, as in Morning Tide (1931) and The Silver Darlings (1941); Robin Jenkins (1912– ), whose several novels include Happy for the Child (1953) and Fergus Lamont (1969), the story of a Scot's search for identity; and Alasdair Gray (1934– ), author of the wildly inventive novels Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981) and Janine, 1982 (1984), in the form of a long interior monologue, which manages to connect a man's fantasies with real events in his life. Gray's Unlikely Stories, Mostly (1984) continues his playful, allegorical approach.

20th-Century.

As in the past, the bulk of significant modern Scottish literature continues to be poetry. The two most distinguished Scottish poets of the earlier part of the century were Edwin Muir, whose poetry was inspired by memories of his Orkney childhood and by allegory, and Hugh MacDiarmid (pseudonym of C. M. Grieve), whose work was an expression of impassioned nationalism and socialist political views. MacDiarmid, leader of the so-called Scottish renaissance, attempted to revive a true Scottish poetry and the use of a Scots vocabulary. Their followers, writing both in Scots and in English, include Robert Garioch (1909–81) and Norman MacCaig (1910–96), city poets in the Fergusson vein; Sydney Goodsir Smith (1915–75); and George Mackay Brown (1921–96), whose verse and prose, as in An Orkney Tapestry (1969), drew on his native landscape and on legend. Douglas Dunn's (1942– ) several volumes of verse include Terry Street (1969) and Elegies (1985). His short stories, some of which have been published in The New Yorker, have been collected in Secret Villages (1985); they subtly indicate the adjustments of modern Scots to their changing social conditions. A scholar and critic as well, Dunn has edited The Poetry of Scotland (1980).