Seeking oot the latest authors

Last updated 21:53, Wednesday, 21 May 2008

HOW I wish I’d been studying English at school today instead of almost 60 years ago.

When I read the SQA English exam paper last week, I realised what a wide and interesting choice of authors was given to pupils to study in today’s Scottish schools. I was so envious.

The old chestnuts were still there – Chaucer, Donne, Dickens, Shakespeare, Beckett and Chekov – but alongside them were Scots writers MacDiarmid, Burns, Hogg and Edwin Muir as well as contemporary Scottish writers Janice Galloway, Alasdair Gray and Liz Lochhead.

The MacDiarmid questions in the Advanced Higher paper were on his use of the symbolism of the thistle in A Drunk Man looks at the Thistle or a discussion on ‘how his early poems constitute perfectly-crafted examples of the capacity of the short lyric to address themes of profound significance’ – much more interesting to me than the type of question I had to discuss all these years ago such as an appreciation of Wordsworth’s poem composed upon Westminster Bridge.

There was a question on the Irish poet Seamus Heaney who gave a Langholm audience its first MacDiarmid lecture six years ago.

A novel I’ve just finished reading by one of my favourite authors, Canadian-born Margaret Atwood who now lives in Edinburgh, was another piece of literature to be discussed.

The language study section of this English paper had a question on the use of English or Scots language in a particular geographical area (imagine being given the chance to write about the Scots used in Langholm).

We are now seeing evidence of the Scottish parliament’s support for the teaching of the Scots language in our schools.

The current generation of schoolchildren will leave school with a far better grasp of their Scottish linguistic inheritance than my generation did.

The only Scots authors I remember studying at school were Scott, Stevenson and Burns.

But in my day MacDiarmid was still in the throes of making a name for himself in the field of literature, while Alasdair Gray, Liz Lochhead and Janice Galloway hadn’t even been born.

Could the Burns’ enthusiasts among us have passed on the question on his poetry? It was ‘discuss the techniques of satire employed by Burns in both The Twa Dogs and The Holy Fair’.

It must be difficult for youngsters nowadays to read literature written in the Scots language when they don’t hear the old words spoken in everyday conversation.

I must admit I had recourse to my Scots dictionary as I read this poem written by James Robertson. It’s called A Manifesto for MSPs and was one of the pieces for discussion in last week’s Advanced Higher English paper.

It has a wonderful ring to it:

Dinna be glaikit, dinna be ower smert,

dinna craw croose, dinna be unco blate,

dinna breenge in, dinna be ayewis late,

dinna steek yer lugs, dinna steek yer hert.

Dinna be sleekit, dinna be a sook,

dinna creesh nae loof for future favour,

dinna swick nor swither, hash nor haiver,

dinna be soor o face, and dinna jouk.

Open yer airms and minds tae folk in need,

hain frae fylin and skaith the land and sea,

tak tent o justice and the commonweal,