Now that this year’s McCash Scots Poetry Prize has been announced, here are three little poems in Scots that show the language’s eloquence and versatility. In the first, Hugh MacDiarmid is sky-gazing; next, William Soutar suffers the heartbreak of impossible love; Douglas Young ends the trio with a sardonic moral.

LESLEY DUNCAN

 

THE BONNIE BROUKIT BAIRN

Mars is braw in crammasy,

Venus in a green silk goun,

The auld mune shak’s her gowden feathers,

Their starry talk’s a wheen o’ blethers,

Nane for thee a thochtie sparin’,

Earth, thou bonnie broukit bairn!

But greet, an’ in your tears ye’ll droun

The haill clanjamfrie!

 

THE TRYST

O luely, luely cam she in

And luely she laid doun:

I kent her by her caller lips

And her breists sae sma’ and roun’.

A’ thru’ the nicht we spak nae word

Nor sindered bane frae bane:

A thru’ the nicht I heard her hert

Gang soundin’ wi’ my ain.

It was about the waukrife hour

When cocks begin to craw

That she smool’d saftly thru the mirk

Before the day would daw.

Sae luely, luely, cam she in

Sae luely was she gaen;

And wi’ her a’ my simmer days

Like they had never been.

 

LAST LAUCH

The Minister said it wald dee,

the cypress buss I plantit.

But the buss grew til a tree,

naething dauntit.

It’s growan stark and heich,

derk and straucht and sinister,

kirkyairdie-like and dreich.

But whaur’s the Minister?