Further research
Here you can read Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s A Scots Quair [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] trilogy.
Optional Activity
This is an activity in which you can explore Grassic Gibbon’s short story Smeddum. Although the text of Smeddum is currently unavailable online, it is available in many readily available publications, which you will be able to access through libraries or otherwise.
Read the Lewis Grassic Gibbon short story Smeddum and consider the following questions:
- Who demonstrates smeddum in the story and how?
- Is smeddum a redeeming quality or does it come with liabilities?
- What makes this story comic and what makes it profoundly serious?
- Aside from the narrative itself, the characters and unfolding of events, one of the key elements in this story is its use of Scots language words and phrases. How are they employed? Select a sample of them and discuss this question further.
Answer
This is a model answer. Your answer might be different.
The story centres on Meg Menzies and her family; and her role as the matriarch is the central example of a character with smeddum. By the end of the story, though, her daughter has proven that she has her own smeddum in different respects: a sustained self-determination of character, a commitment to trying things out and not settling for compromise, a reluctance to surrender her independence quickly or easily and a willingness to take risks and follow through the consequences.
Meg seems lacking in smeddum at first as she tolerates and fondly, if regretfully, indulges her man’s tendency to avoid work and enjoy alcohol but she demonstrates smeddum by working the farm after his death and as most of her children leave, each in turn with different promptings by Meg. It is a quality of strength but the story shows how it brings with it responsibilities: possession of smeddum means you’re better equipped to deal with such responsibilities but still they can be an unwelcome burden.
What makes the story so funny is the unexpected turns in the narrative and the merciless contempt Meg shows for conventional pieties. She opposes social hypocrisy not by talking about it but by living her life by her own priorities. The tragic and profoundly serious aspect of the story is that it is essentially about human potential wasted by social convention, priorities of class and a context of overwhelming conservatism.
Meg’s victory is worked into the structure of the story but there is no sense that anything has changed because of it – except for the lives of her daughter and her daughter’s man, who set off together with Meg’s blessing, as her other children watch in shock and, one might hope, in possible understanding that the rules they’ve lived by aren’t endorsed by their mother.
You can find a useful discussion and analysis of Benjamin’s essay in Angus’ blog Mostly About Stories in the entry from 4 March 2019, ‘The Storyteller by Walter Benjamin – Summary and Analysis’.
Read an article about Tessa Hadley, who found her own life story told in Grassic Gibbon’s A Scots Quair.
To find out more about Johnny Gibb, the main character in William Alexander’s novel and the use of Doric.
Read Hugh MacDiarmid’s essays on Scots as a literary language and political tool in his essays ‘A Theory of Scots Letters’ and ‘English Ascendancy in British Literature’. These essays may be found in Hugh MacDiarmid (1992) Selected Prose, edited by Alan Riach, Michigan, Carcanet.
Now go on to Unit 20: Standardisation of Scots.
19.5 What I have learned