IGNORANCE of our language goes a long way to derision of the Scots idiom.

In the past, it took such esteemed English writers as Cowper and Wordsworth to highlight that there existed in Britain a bard the equal of, or better than England's best poets. However, in the same breath, William Cowper claimed that the uncouth dialect of Robert Burns spoiled his achievements. There was little acknowledgement of Burns outside English literary circles until world-wide fame arrived, due in no small part to Henry Mackenzie, author of The Man Of Feeling, when he described the Kyle poet as a "Heaven-taught ploughman"'. The genius of Burns thrust him from poverty and gruelling manual effort to the pinnacle of success. However, the exhaustion and suffering the bard endured during his formative years finally led to an early death. Burns, when he sent his Kilmarnock Edition of poems for publication, was aware that even kinsmen would not completely understand work compiled in Scotland's native tongue; for this reason he included a glossary. Even then, the dwindling coterie of Scottish poets failed to expand upon Burns's success, or add to what had become a fractured vocabulary in our homeland's literary tradition.

So what has this to do with independence?

Our copious linguistic inheritance suffered greatly during the Scottish Reformation, when many Scots opted to write in English rather than use our naturally developing spoken language: there was also a time when northern writers were referred to as "the Scottish Chaucerians", implying mimicry of that great writer.

Eventually, and fortunately, Hugh MacDiarmid's understanding that language shapes the reasoning of its speakers and that special discrimin­ations were partly responsible for a continuing contraction in the written use of Scots, halted the further decline of our literature occasioned by the death of Burns. He was also very much aware that greater shades of meaning can be derived from Scots words than can be attributed to words used in the dominant English tongue.

Nowadays, Scottish poetry, adding to the legacy left by Burns, MacDiarmid, and many others, is thriving. Through sheer grit and vitality, Lallans (our lowland tongue) refuses to die.

By building on these facts, surely succeeding generations, as far as our language is concerned, will not be reading obituary notices. However, were we to ignore the possibility of linguistic and physical freedom as well as further expansion of vibrant literary traditions, the vital force of Lallans would be threatened.

If Scotland is to exist merely in a geographical sense then we will not only fail the fundamental rights of all Scottish poets but also those who have gone before us and our ancient tongue will become, like Latin, a dead language. Scotland will then lose her soul. She has already lost much of her very special vernacular identity.

Sam Gilliland,

3 Dounan Road, Dunragit, Stranraer.

ALAN Taylor's excellent piece on Scottish theatre ("A thorn in theatre through the ages", The Herald, August 6) on David Hayman's challenges in the face of "difficult cooncils" is timely in its urgency.

The cultural ground is moving There is a fresh contemporary democratic cultural current in Scotland that requires under­standing and support. It is one calling for a fresh dynamic radical contemporary alternative in the face of neo-conservative British cultural hegemony.

This struggle for a legitimate alternative is vital in the face of the sheer accumulated power of cultural officialdom that often prevents attempts at creating an alternative theatre experience (see Hayman). He suffers under this cultural system that tends to marginalise the (troublesome) staged voice of theatre into a gutter of neglect or exodus (with the exception of the Traverse, while the case for the new National Theatre of Scotland regime is awaiting judgment).

Scottish theatre has been and might remain a minority discourse through the process (and injustice) of persistent bureaucratic discrimination that seeks to make illegitimate and/or ignores radical native cultural talent.

Finally with someone like David Hayman as a director of an alternative bolder theatre we can strive to create a theatre language and form that offers a sense of our creative capacity with material, myths and magic that we can proudly share with the world. The making of a real Scottish theatre is either an inescapable act of cultural self-determination or it is a mere illusory affectation - a devolved drama with a soft, safe, Saltire mask to cover its blushes. After all any political sovereignty must first be imagined and then enacted.

TM Cross,

18 Needle Green, Carluke.