13.4 From Leonard to Bissett

The Music Halls and the burgeoning Variety Theatres were at their peak in the early 20^th century, and Variety survived the setback of Word War to influence early film and subsequently television entertainment. In addition, one form of Variety Theatre, Pantomime, was to emerge as the most enduring and successful form of live theatre in Scotland throughout the century.

However, the trajectory of Scots language was different, as a new literature-led Scots language renaissance began in the 1920s, gathering momentum in the 1930s. Richer Scots, with varying relationships to diverse forms of spoken Scots, was heard on small and then larger stages featuring in new, more realistic dramas.

As regards popular entertainment, the key factor was that many performers using Scots language moved between drama productions, Variety, Pantomime, and subsequently television. Versatile actors such as Duncan Macrae, Rikki Fulton, and Stanley Baxter, for example, survived and thrived by combining these different arenas and in the process they deployed a sophisticated understanding of spoken Scots in different social registers and contexts.

Some of this story belongs to theatre in its own right, but it is important to remember that Duncan Macrae could play the lead in Robert McLellan’s ‘Jamie the Saxt’ (1971) and perform ‘The Wee Cock Sparra’ at Hogmanay. Rikki Fulton formed a comic twosome with Jack Milroy as the hilarious Glasgwegians ‘Francie and Josie’, but he was also a master of stage Scots in Molière adaptations such as Robert Kemp’s ‘The Laird o’ Grippy’ (1987).

Stanley Baxter revelled in Scots linguistic diversity in his ‘Parliamo Glasgow’ broadcasts while also excelling as a pantomime dame and a straight actor.

It is interesting to see popular artists like Macrae anticipating some of the linguistic experiments that were carried forward by Tom Leonard and James Kelman in written literature. Their point was that contemporary Scots was not a parochial dialect to be looked down upon but a language in its own right, deserving of respect and expression, humorous and serious.

Tom Leonard articulates that point ironically in a poem ‘Parokial’ that employs his favoured monologue form – like the actors and comedians you came across before in this unit.

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This is an image depicting a large painting of Billy Connolly. The image is painted on the side of a building.

By the 1970s these streams of change were coming together in a confident and diverse use of spoken Scots across the arts and the broadcast media. The era of Billy Connolly, Dorothy Paul, Gregor Fisher, and Elaine C Smith had begun. Billy Connolly is especially significant in these developments because his career, like those of Will Fyffe and Harry Lauder, was to bridge any divide between his home following and international audiences.

Here is a video of one of Billy Connolly’s set-pieces, ‘The Crucifixion’. Listen carefully not just to the story but to the language in which it is expressed. The opening is low key and in standard English though spoken in a Scots accent.

However, as soon as Connolly voices one of the characters in direct speech the language is contemporary urban Scots: “Gie us anither gless o wine……You telt me the Big Yin wis comin in…..Ah’m knackered..…Hope he gies us wan o thae stories….Big Yin, he’s steamin,” and so on. Even more striking however, is that Jesus also speaks in demotic Scots: “See you, Judas, you’re getting ontae ma tits……..Wan o yous’s goin shop me.” (our transcript of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WgXPBDrd8s)

Then well into the piece, Billy Connolly starts narrating not in the third person (“he did…she did”) but in the first person as Jesus himself. In this way, the Scots voices become the defining reality markers of the whole narrative. This is agile storytelling because the unobtrusive shift of focus lends authority to the first person experience, in Scots, while also making that voice the expression of the external authority figure of Christianity - Jesus Christ.

In this way, Billy Connolly challenges the conventional norms of the community in which he was brought up, though in actuality the end effect may be more to humanise than denigrate the crucifixion story. The misprint in that canonical record, the Christian Bible, has concealed more than a question of locality - in the end it is about meaning, and of course the language which conveys meaning.

Very similar issues feature in a more recent Billy Connolly piece, in which he reacts to the Terrorist attack on Glasgow Airport in March 2011, which was thwarted by the actions of staff and public – most notably John Smeaton, the baggage handler. Connolly’s account preferences the speech and attitude of Smeaton in contrast to the metropolitan media, who are puzzled by the local response, and baffled by his answers to their questions. Clearly it is the local Glasgow perspective that has made the vital difference, and Connolly is proud to articulate that to his international audience. For this moment his own hometown is in the limelight, in a way that affirms its values and perspectives.

Another contemporary writer and performer who builds on these approaches is Alan Bissett. His work is interesting because it is rooted in his native Falkirk in the East of Scotland, showing with his work that Glasgow is part of a wider urban Scots context.

Here is the opening of The Moira Monologues which were produced in 2009, with (More) Moira Monologues following in 2017.

Alan Bissett again brings together the popular comic and the literary stage through Scots, while he himself thrives as both a writer and a performer. Storytelling, Comedy and Popular Culture is a continuing story for Scotland, with the Scots language continuing to be centre stage. Certainly, Moira Bell’s ‘tung’ is no longer bitted in a scold’s bridle.