Articles categorised as 20th Century

Kidnapped Translated

It won't be the first time that Kidnapped has been translated but it surely is the first time the Stevenson novel has been rendered in Scots and as a graphic novel too. Kidnappit is the latest...

Songs and Rhymes from Childhood

Ewan McVicar has written the first comprehensive book regarding the lore, songs and rhymes of Scottish children, collected form the street and playground during the last 150 years. People are sure...

Sally on Sunday discuss Scots New Testament

Sally Magnusson discusses the Scots New Testament with Priscilla Lorimer http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/scotland_aod.shtml?scotland/religion1_sun

Chorin Stanes...

Hello aw, howp ye hae aw been fine this hinmaist week. I'm nippin out in a bit, sae jist time fer a wee blog this week I hae been feil thrang, I can tell ye that. Syne I'll be daein Scottish...

Hugh MacDiarmid- A Portrait by Margaret Tait (1964)

'An original kind of tribute' is what George Mackay Brown called Tait's 1964 documentary about one of Scotland's greatest poets; Hugh MacDiarmid. "A study of the poet, who was seventy-one at...

Margaret Tait

Margaret Tait was one of Britain's most individual artist filmmakers. Over the course of 46 years she produced over 30 films including one feature, Blue Black Permanent (1992) and published five...

The Watergaw

Listen to Hugh MacDiarmid talk about and read his masterpiece, the Watergaw. http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=1557

A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle

Listen to Hugh MacDiarmid read, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/MacDiarmid.html

The Hugh MacDiarmid memorial Langholm

Hugh MacDiarmid Links

Scottish Poetry Library biography http://www.spl.org.uk/poets_a-z/macdiarm.html BBC Scottish Writers

Tam O Shanter Overture

Tam O Shanter has inspired artists from across Europe. Here the Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg under the direction of Scott Lawton perform Malcolm Arnold’s Tam O Shanter overture at the...

Dookin for aipples

“Dookin for aipples” is one of the most popular Hallowe’en traditions in Scotland. In this film from 1961 youngsters in Edinburgh show how it's done.http://ssa.nls.uk/Dookin for aipples image from...

Freedom Come All Ye

Freedom Come All Ye is Scotland’s international anthem. Listen to Irish traditional music legend Luke Kelly’s version of the song on youtube Read more about Luke Kelly on wikipedia

John C L Gibson

John C L Gibson's plan to translate the Old Testament into Scots was hampered by age and infirmity. In this obituary in the Scotsman, Graeme Auld describes Gibson's life long interest in...

Scots Human Rights in Audio Format - Listen Here

To mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Amnesty International has presented First Minister, Alex Salmond, with a poster copy of the Scots translation. In...

Prize honours North East writer

A prize of £500 is to be awarded to the winner of a short story competition set up to commemorate the work of the North-East writer David Toulmin and to encourage further creative activity. A...

ASLS Conference 2009

The Association for Scottish Literary Studies will be holding its annual conference for 2009 at the Iris Murdoch Building, University of Stirling. The theme this year is entitled "Scottish and...

Scots Dictionaries on the move

Scottish Language Dictionaries have moved from the School of Celtic and Scottish Studies, the home of Scots language lexicography for a good half century. SLD are now in new premises at 25...

Going into Space

The history of man going into space started in the 1950’s with the first successful space flights of artifical satellites, and then living beings. It was the Soviet Union that launched the first...

The Final Frontier

The moon had always been a symbol of the impossible but, in 1969, the moon landing represented man overcoming this final frontier. The word moon appears in Anglo-Saxon in the form ‘mōna’ and is...

Debased or Evolved?

From the end of the 19th century onwards the speech of Glasgow came increasingly under attack by the authorities. The Scots language was generally being discouraged and punished, initially through...

Stanley Robertson

Stanley Roberston (1940-2009) was well known as one of the country’s most accomplished storytellers. He was a singer, a writer and a campaigner for the traveller community. Stanley’s life and...

Starting Thursday – Sheena Blackhall reads Minnie on SLC site

From September the Scots Language Centre will be delivering more audio and video based features to its ever growing online audience. Sheena Blackhall’s novella, Minnie, will be podcast on the...

David Toulmin - A Chiel Amang Them

Author and farm labourer, David Toulmin began his life as John Reid. Hugely popular in North East Scotland in the sixties and seventies his books frequently sold out in the region and borrowing...

Brownsbank open to public

The farm labourer's cottage at Brownsbank, Candy Mill in South Lanarkshire, where Hugh MacDiarmid and his family lived from 1951 to 1978, will be open to the public on Saturday 12 and Sunday 13...

Remembering William Soutar

William Soutar (1898-1943) Scots language poet, writer and diarist, died in October 1943 and this month, upon that anniversary, the Scots Language Centre visits the Soutar Hoose in Perth and...

Tribute to Stanley Robertson

The life of storyteller and writer, Stanley Robertson, will be celebrated at an event to be held on Saturday 28 November at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh. Reek roon the Campfire...

Scots monologues now online

Traditional musician, Nigel Gatherer, has collected a number of Scots monologues on his web site. The Monologue was a popular comic form in the 19th and early 20th century. Many were recorded and...

Janet Paisley on Hugh MacDiarmid

Poet Janet Paisley follows in the footsteps of Hugh MacDiarmid in episode 5 of BBC Scotland's radio series In the Footsteps. Paisley tries to make sense of MacDiarmid's reputation. Who was the...

School of Scottish Studies and Centre to co-operate on dialect archive

The School of Scottish Studies at Edinburgh University is home to a large archive of audio recordings, many in Scots. In the next few months selections from the archive will begin to appear on the...

Gie's back oor place names

The following article appeared in Lallans and is reproduced here with the kind permission of David Purves. There is no English version of this article.  Seeminlie, at ae tyme the war a lassie in...

Scots language fowk pey tribute tae John Law

John Law, ane o the best kent Scots language steerers o raicent times, deed aa a sudden on Seturday. Cllr Law wis ane o the bodies that set up the Scots Language Resource Centre in 1993  - SLRC...

Sign up for the Barras story

A project using film and oral history to uncover the social and cultural history of the Barras - Glasgow's famous market - is being developed by Diversity Films. To find out more and to sign up...

Tom Fleming - voice of the Scots Gospels

Tom Fleming began acting in 1945, co-founded the Edinburgh Gateway Company in 1953, and from 1962-4 was a leading member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He founded and directed the Royal Lyceum...

Jist Yarnin - writing from Margaret Tong

Margaret Tong's articles from her "Jist Yarnin" series were written for the Buckie & District Fishing Heritage Centre's quarterly newslatter. We owe thanks, firstly to Margaret for allowing us to...

New historical recordings resource

The Kist o Riches project aims to digitise, catalogue and disseminate Gaelic and Scots sound recordings. A new website for the project was this week launched in Edinburgh. This website contains...

Lorimer’s translation, 'a complete vindication of Scots'.

In this article, first published in the Leopard, Derrick McCure discusses W L Lorimer's Scots translation of the New Testament.  We are grateful to Derrick McClure and Lindy Cheyne of the Leopard...

Sauchs, Scaurs and Signage

I want them back, the written-over names that gentrifying fashion anglicised, that bland or blind tuition vandalised. I want the stories that the map disclaims. the Brig o Allan, Corntoun, Chuckie...

Scots place names online

This article first appeared in Lallans Nummer 79 and is republished here with the kind permission of the author. Scotland, wi its mony-leedit history, haes a fouth o place an topographic names...

Royal Albert

Ma tong talks about her Royal Albert tea set

Representing Ayrshire

The Ayrshire Federation of Historical Societies and The Association For Scottish Literary Studies are holding a conference called 'Representing Ayrshire: John Galt and His successors' beginning at...