YESTERDAY'S extracts from Hugh MacDiarmid's Gairmscoile extolled the Scots language.
Today's light-hearted piece shows how easily the language adapts to informal wit and humour. Ken Sutherland's mountaineer's manual is included in The Smeddum Test, twenty-first-century poems in Scots from the McCash Anthology 2003-2012 (Kennedy and Boyd). This year's McCash Competition has prize money of £3500.
TINTO HILL WITHOOT OXYGEN
Thon's ma ain flag
Snappin awa brawly
On tap o' Tinto Hill
Whaur Messner himsel
(The grand exemplar)
Hasna set his fuit.
Ahm a great believer
In aye pushin masel
Tae ma verra leemit,
That's why ahm here
This six month, i Zermatt
Ablow the Eiger
Puttin in ma trainin
Fur the north face
O' Largo Law.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article