Hello, my friends and the occasional relative!

I have recently experienced an epiphany. I’ve always written fantasy. Soon # 3 will be out, (my proof of a printed version is complete, and many benefits to the text have been obtained by that tactile appraisal of the text) and again, like the first two I have shared with the world, it will interrogate what freedom means as one of its significant themes.

I have many ideas for other stories. Fantasy has a long tradition of the unlikely hero or small band of friends managing to change the world against the odds. In the World Belt books I have set up that scenario, and have spent three books showing how hard achieving meaningful change would be, in fact how hard living any kind of good life free of the constraints of the powerful, sometimes overt, often invisible is for any of my lead characters. Born free but everywhere in chains—sometimes the chains are like Marley’s—self made, but more often they are imposed, the wearing of them a necessary bargain accepted in return for a home, a job, a community to join.

My epiphany has been that I hadn’t found the right vehicle for my voice. My obsession with freedom, compromised imprisonment of the will and attempts to break people’s spirit is unlikely to change, but find a new form. I still want to write a cleaner, more mythic triumph of good over evil in three parts, but I am currently in danger of making it rather more involved than it was at first conception.

It will be colored by my epiphany, but may not be a perfect vehicle for the new passion in me I want to express, that I feel vibrating in my throat, looking for the right words to shape it.

I am from Scotland. I recently read a book (that I highly recommend) that made me realize that the language of Scotland, Scots, has been discriminated against and crushed for over three hundred years, since the union of Parliaments in 1707. It is not formally taught to Scottish children. I grew up looking down on it, to my shame, as something “teuchters” spoke. Funny, I looked up the word in the two Scots dictionaries I now own, and both mention it being a country or rural person, in truth more it meant country bumpkin, which was what I always meant by it (and somehow didn’t think I was being derogatory—how does that mental sleight of hand work? One dictionary even goes so far as to say it is not openly derogatory, which to my mind is a hell of a stretch, because their examples seem to lean heavily into the derogatory territory I grew up assuming it to mean), but historically it was reserved for Highlanders, a form of discrimination in Scots against other Scots. Turtles all the way down, my friends. Anyway, even if I had not the full understanding of the word, I had been brainwashed into a position that allowed me to vilify my own people and their culture, one that is being left to slowly wither on the vine. I will attempt never to do that again.

I bought two dictionaries of Scots recently, and a Scots grammar. Looking at them I realize I have absorbed a lot of the language over the years, but not enough to speak it with any confidence, and nowhere near the vocabulary to fluently write in it—but the bones are there. I intend to learn and write in the speech of Scotland that is not even recognized by its own devolved parliament, unlike Gaelic, which has been protected and promoted by law. Scots, which still has far more speakers than Gaelic, is not so protected.

For my 50^th birthday I bought myself the unabridged Oxford dictionary of the English language. It is comprised of 20 large volumes plus three smaller hardback appendices. The main volumes are 12” x 9.5”, with a 2” spine, on average. The smaller appendices are 9.5” x 6.375 with a 1” spine. A universe of words that together take up over 45 inches of shelf space in my office.  

The Scottish dictionaries, after over three centuries of deliberate neglect and overt discrimination are both 6” x 4”, with a 0.5” and a 0.625” spine. 1.25 inches that I can easily hold in one hand. No sniggering at the back. Hopefully I can find something more substantial in future, but the points stands, the Scots language as an expression of Scots culture, has been whittled down to a nub.

I will shortly come into possession of many books regarding Scottish folklore. I wasn’t brought up with it. Just like I wasn’t taught Scottish history in Scottish schools: unless it was about our defeats and disasters, (Flodden, Darien). Somehow our teachers managed to fit those events into the curriculum. That and Robert the Bruce was basically French, and only won at Bannockburn because of an incompetent weak English King (of French descent, but that wasn’t mentioned). Nothing unreservedly positive, unlike the glorification of much of English and Imperial UK history we were taught.

So I have decided to read and write in Scots, read Scottish folklore and see if it inspires new stories in me. I have already written a story about Selkies, (my first recent exposure to them was through reading a novel by Nell Zink, which set me to thinking) and will be interested to see how what I wrote stacks up against the folk tales. This tells me that for quite some time I have been yearning to go in this direction, but had not articulated the desire, even to myself. Will I ever write as well as a native speaker would? I suspect not. Will I write in the wrong accent for any particular regional variations of Scots? Almost certainly—but that is no reason not to try and do something to preserve and promote the language. If my offerings are so terrible that others more competent are inspired to demonstrate better versions of the language in action, I will be perfectly happy.

I’m still going to write books for publication in English, because, you know, there’s a bigger audience there, but I plan to write some things for Scots speakers, and for my own pleasure. This was my epiphany: I want to give voice to the Scots language, and celebrate the culture it defined for centuries, and which has been neglected for centuries, even as we celebrate Burns once a year. Without that night who knows how much of the language would remain. I expect that my discussions of freedom and imprisonment, to change the world when it seems all its powers are set against you, will find useful expression in Scots.

And I’m still learning Latin and Italian, along with Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric. Better late than never. And I believe all of it will make me a better writer.

My friends: if you have a passion, even if strange and niche, explore it, so you can know through the exploration if it truly will set your heart afire, or was just a deluded distraction. Either way, once explored you can either use it, or move on, having learned something valuable about yourself.

Until next week, farewell.