LL-L "Resources" 2002.02.20 (10) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Resources"

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Resources
>
> The value of the letters today is threefold:
>
> * They provide a linguistic example of the golden age of written Scots

While there is a lot of value in this sort of material, I have
to stick my neck out here and question in what sense this could
be said to be the "golden age" of written Scots.

I suspect that this sort of writing is somewhat artificial -
while the gentlemen of those days may not have seen anything
lower-class about using characteristically Scots words (as
people tend to do now), they are nevertheless taking pains
to distinguish their language from that of common speech. I
think this sort of thing is borne out by the existence of
contemporaneous writings where some are very like these letters,
while other writings (uaually less pretentions, eg Maggie Lauder
or The Wife o Auchtermuchty) are much more like Scots as it is
spoken now.

You may note that writing like this is much more like standard
English than anything in Scots since Ramsay, Fergusson and Burns.
I think these three writers (leading lights amongst many others)
deliberately wrote in the language as it was spoken, and _this_
is what established modern Scots as a literary language, without
which the more upper-class writings would have eventually merged
with modern standard English, leaving spoken Scots as a dialect
with no literature.

So for me, the golden age of written Scots started when this sort
of writing stopped!

However, there is some interesting linguistics in it, particularly
the use of verb concord where non-contact forms differ from contact
forms (the contact being with the personal pronoun, eg "I", "ye"):

"I _am_ presently in the town of Lyons, and teaching philosophy,
and _has_ fyve hundrit merks of wage, but I _am_ myndit to leave
my conditon."

"...the Laird of Logy-Dugluis' son whew I louff very weil for Walter
Curriour's sake - and has done unto him all the pleasure that I can..."

"...I heif quittit all worldly guids and geir, and lukis after no uther
untill the tym that it sall pleis God to call me..."

"I percieve ye heif defered, and has no will to trouble me in that
point for the present, but wishes to God that ye was near to me for
a little tyme, that we might confer together in matters of salvation"

Sandy
http://scotstext.org
A dinna dout him, for he says that he
On nae accoont wad ever tell a lee.
                          - C.W.Wade,
                    'The Adventures o McNab'

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