THIS year’s McCash Scots language poetry competition has been judged. It is organised by the department of Scottish Literature at Glasgow University and by The National’s sister newspaper The Herald.
The winners were announced by The Herald but the poems deserve a wider readership and readers of The National will no doubt want to know about the current state of poetry in the Scots language.
The competition is the premier Scots poetry prize. This year, awards totalling £800 from the university’s McCash fund went to Liz Niven of Dumfries; Jim Carruth of Bridge of Weir; Ann Mackinnon of Balloch; Finola Scott of Kirkintilloch; David Bleiman of Edinburgh; Deborah Leslie of Inverurie; and Donald Adamson of Finland.
Instead of suggesting a specific theme, the judges on this occasion decided to invite poets to write on a subject and in the form of their own choice, the only proviso being that any submission must be in the Scots language.
All forms of Scots were considered, from urban city Scots to the voices of the Shetland or Orcadian archipelagos, from “synthetic” or “literary” Scots to speech-based “native” Scots; from the patter of patois to the artifice of the learned and scholarly.
As well as Lesley Duncan, poetry editor at The Herald, and myself, the third judge this year was Rab Wilson, poet, makar, champion of the Scots language, preses o the Scots Leid Associe and recipient of the Saltire Society’s Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun award.
Wilson wrote: “A byordnar collection o braw entries wir submittit tae this year’s Glasgow University/The Herald McCash Poetry Competition, ane o Scotland’s premier competitions fir poetry scrievit in the Scots leid.
“Fir decades, the McCash hus bin the main conduit fir makars wha conteenue tae embrace an write in Scots, an the verra healthy nummers o poems entered this year kythes that Scotland is still verra much a nation o poets!
“The staundart, content an variety o the poems entered alsae reveals a luve fir oor ain leid that in its pouer, versatility an range captures, lik lichtnin in a boattle, the essence o Scotland itself. Thair wis a verra timely entry that celebrated an handseled the introduction o the Scots Language Bill in Scotland, somethin that gies – gin it wis needit! – the stamp o government assent tae offeeshully heize up the ‘dear auld lallans’!
“Scots humour, wi its unique souch that hus aye bin a walcum feature o the McCash – nane o yer ‘po-faced literati’ in oor competition! – wis evident; a poem anent a kenspeckle song bi the Bay City Rollers, lent hilarity tae a warkin cless marital brekdoon as seen throu the een o a wee lassie. This wis skeelie, clevir, brilliantly observed poetry.
“A michty debate wis hud bi the judging panel tae decide the winners frae the hauntle o poems that eftir great deliberation made it throu tae this year’s short leet. It wisnae until this final pairt o the process that ah alloued masel tae see wha this year’s authors wir. Up tae that pynt the poems wir judged anonymously.
The reveal o this year’s poets’ identities wis an added joy tae us aa.
“Runner-up Jim Carruth’s fine poem Backs Tae The Dance wis a subtly wrocht observation o the existential struggles o Scotland’s fairmin communities, a subject close tae Jim’s hairt. It touched the heid, an the hairt!
“This year’s winnin poem, Shuin, bi the Dumfries makar Liz Niven, is a verra pouerfu polemic anent the devastating affects o war, tho handled verra tenderly in this fine makar’s haunds. Shuin is a poem that is at aince national, international, timeless an universal, as aa great poems shuid be! No an easy thing tae achieve.
“Congratulations tae oor winners, an aabody wha entered the competition. Scotland’s makars conteenue tae punch wa abune their weicht in the global poetry stakes!”
Duncan commented: “Letting our poets choose their own themes allowed everything from flights of fancy to serious reflections on our troubled world.
“This latter is the sombre background to Liz Niven’s winning poem Shuin, which deals with man’s inhumanity to man, especially, the innocent child victims of war. A moving and deeply disturbing humanitarian cry.”
Winner Niven said: “I’m delighted to have been successful in the McCash competition on a few occasions in the past. It’s a public celebration of Scots and lets it be seen on the page. So many Scots speakers are not confident about writing in their language so hopefully, it’s encouraging to see it in print.”
On her entry, Niven added: “I wrote this poem after one of the pro-Palestine Dumfries vigils. We had been commemorating the deaths of children in war by bringing a child’s shoe to represent each dead child.
A very poignant visual metaphor.
“I would like to think Scotland and Dumfries are humanitarian places which welcome people who have been devastated by turmoil in their homeland. If they manage to reach our country, we call them New Scots and welcome them into our safe and supportive world.
“I would hope that, if any of our family or friends found themselves displaced by war, they would be welcomed into a safe haven too.
“I often write in Scots as I like the rhythms and rhymes but also because it locates our poetry in Scotland. A language uniquely Scottish, spoken by no other country.”
Shuin
At the vigil, awbodie brung a shuin, a shuin tae staun fir ilka deid wean.
So, here is a shuin, a wean’s shuin, dug fae the mud and rubble o her faimilie hame.
Glaur-coatit, ruint, like her lan, her warld aroon.
Stappit wi the mud o conflick, its sole compactit wi soils o waur.
Severed fae the wean; severed fae mither, faither, mibbe life itsel.
Fae the fit faws an prints o historie, we maun speir wirsels, each ither, hou did ye tread, callous or compassionate.
An if the shuin fits, we hae tae wear it.
Niven supplied a “fitnote” as well: “Screivit efter a pro-Palestine vigil fir the deid weans.”
PERHAPS it’s only through a poem like this, which slows you down, and insists that you take your time to really gauge the depth of the atrocity that is happening, that you can begin to truly appreciate the human significance of what the 24/7 mass media barrage of “news” doesn’t give you time to understand.
This is the virtue of poetry, and perhaps, as Niven says, seeing the Scots language in print, on paper, on the page, like this, makes a difference to how we feel about what is being referred to.
By contrast, TV news, the constant assault of media, permits no pause for comprehension. We become immured to the horror we are witnessing. Media becomes a mechanism for developing callousness, cynicism, indifference.
A poem can bring you a human sense of compassion in ways that media news cannot. Perhaps that seems counter-intuitive. Perhaps the immediacy of news reporting ought to generate a greater sympathy and depth of compassion, but it doesn’t seem to work that way.
Here’s a different kind of poem, trading on its own counter-intuitive prioritisation of winter. Finola Scott’s entry has a universal resonance. It’s a dark, sinister, frightening work in praise of midwinter severity, the sense of austere levelling that grips the entire country when summer or even spring seem so far away.
Here the Scots language is at its most extreme, rebarbative, challenging density. And yet, it is an appeal to the reader to look at the worst, to not be afraid of the ravages of the hard season. “Do not fear me,” it says: “I am the Old Woman, or the Moon in the night sky, or the wolf (as in the poem’s title), howling in the darkness, filling the nocturnal world with angry, growling cries. Listen to me! This is serious!”
We should hope for dark nights, because it’s only the darkness that keeps the stars bright pinpoints in the sky. Those bright “Auroras” are like silky scarves trailing in the firmament, but their attractive, light-scattered wondrousness depends entirely upon the dark surrounding them. Our context, the world in which brightness can exist, is always surrounded by the dark.
Remember this, when the fields are all bare stubble and the flowers’ buds are nipped by the frost, and the lochs are frozen over. This is a time to take what must seem a perverse delight in the icy, freezing cold, a measure of the tenacity of life, to survive in this country’s bleakest midwinter season.
That’s an easy paraphrase of the poem, but I urge you to try it out loud, in your own voice, to savour the hard, refractive intensity of the language, its unremitting tightness and clutch.
A Wowf appends Winter’s cleek
Dinna feart frae me, the Cailleach, or the Muin, ma fere, whase houls brangle the derk. We’re here tae beet.
Hark tae ma staff clour, lui tae its earnest sang.
We aw howp and fleetch fir murky nichts tae kep the starns tumblin. Lat us hailse the silk Auroras that lowe brent and gallus in oor jaupit heivins.
Faggit stibble fields long tae lowse intae thaimsels tae find the runch o winter’s white, as frost nips buds.
Siller lochs wiss fir jeel tae freeze fairce simmer’s leep.
In this derk time, we maun gust the laund that is restin.
Lat us turn awa frae the bricht, delight in the snell o cauld.
Trou me to haud ye sauf. Like the etern kintr, I am siccar.
David Bleiman’s poem is of a very different order: light-hearted in some respects, a catalogue of almost proverbial Scots phrases which might seem to verge upon cliché, but then correct themselves with an irony that also depends upon the colloquial authority of the vernacular, the Scots language itself, to carry the good humour that sustains it.
Sair Fecht Club
The first rule of Sair Fecht Club is ye maun girn aboot it.
Ah’m scunnered wi it, so Ah am.
See me, see ma man, see ma weans – Ah cann see thaim far enough, the hale clamjamfry!
Ah’m wabbit as a deid dug chasin a baa in the pairk.
See ma hair, it’s like straw hingin oot a midden.
An see this wather, Ah’m meltin awa tae a greasy spot.
Anither clean shirt an that’ll be me.
It’s a sair fecht.
Och, ye’re a pair sowl, so ye are, wi yer heid aneath yer oxter!
It’s a sair fecht, richt eneuch.
Is that the time? Ah canna stop the noo, Ah’ve the messages to dae an the toon’s hoachin.
Ay, it’s a sair fecht, so it is.
Mind, dinna fash yersel – we never died a winter yet.
Noo, whaur did Ah plank ma bunnet?
If Ah dinna see you through the week
Ah’ll see you through the windae.
The joyful affirmation of that ending encompasses the irony of the references. This is a poem about acceptance, appetite, a willingness to take on whatever life throws at you, while at the same time, keeping a keen sense of what it all costs, what is its worth, what is the value of the domestic, the daily round, as measured in the Scots language.
And it’s this which underpins
Ann MacKinnon’s poem,whose title, November Thirtieth 2025, refers to the date upon which the Scots Languages Act was approved, and Scots itself was finally recognised as an official language of Scotland, alongside Gaelic, by government decree.
Such recognition is important, because without official recognition the nay-sayers, the deniers of the validity and value of Scots have their own prejudice confirmed.
On the other hand, of course, official recognition by any government can seem absurd in the face of the fact that millions of Scots speak this language.
It’s the language we grew up speaking, and continue to speak, even in the face of sneering disdain, “superior” prejudice, class bias and the ugly condescension of benighted Anglophones who really ought to know better by now.
The prejudice has been a social and educational blight in the history of Scotland’s languages and it’s crazy that it’s taken so long before such official recognition has come to pass.
MacKinnon’s poem celebrates its enactment but it also counts the cost of that history, all that time now past, and all those people gone, previous generations, bonny fighters for the Scots leid, no longer alive to see it come to this.
November Thirtieth 2025
It’s official – Scots is ain o the leids o oor ain kintra.
Fur me it’s aye been like gawn hame, slippin intae yer shiftin claes an auld baffies.
But noo it’s mair like pittin oan a braw necklace that glints wi bricht stanes, showin it aff, nae hidden awa.
Ye kin roose the brawness o yir hame grund yaisin wirds we daipth that rauch oot tae awbody.
I’m only ferfochen that mony o the braw fechters fur oor ain tongue didnae live tae see this day.
Next week we’ll sample the other prizewinning poems from the McCash competition, extending the diversity of works and continuing the demonstration of how versatile and various the Scots language can be.
