Scottish literature is the poetry, prose, and drama of Scotland. Scottish literature has been produced in three major languages: Gaelic, Scots, and English.
Before the 1100’s, many people in Scotland spoke Gaelic, an ancient Celtic language. Then the number of Gaelic speakers began to decline. Until the 1600’s, few Gaelic poets wrote down their work. Clan chiefs hired poet-singers called bards, who celebrated the chiefs’ successes in hunting or on the battlefield. Many later poets wrote of exile and farewell. See Gaelic languages and Gaelic literature.
Scots is a language more closely related to English than to Gaelic. For hundreds of years, Scots was widely spoken in Scotland. But the number of Scots speakers declined sharply after 1560. In that year, John Knox, the leader of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland, authorized the issue in Scotland of an English version of the Bible. As a result, English became the language that ordinary people associated with religious authority.
The status and authority of the Scots language was further weakened by the union of the Scottish and English crowns in 1603 and the union of the Scottish and English parliaments in 1707. Many writers from the 1700’s to the 1900’s have stimulated Scots literary revivals. However, since the early 1600’s, English has been the dominant language of Scottish literature.
Early literature
The first Scots poets whose works have survived in identifiable form celebrated the skill and bravery of their leaders in epic poems. John Barbour wrote The Bruce (completed about 1375), a poem of 13,500 lines that chronicles the exploits of the famous Scottish king Robert Bruce and his follower James Douglas.
Andrew of Wyntoun’s Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland (written about 1424) is a long verse history of Scotland from the beginning of the world to the reign of King James I of Scotland in the early 1400’s. The poem provides much information on ancient national history for which there is little other documentary evidence.
Blind Harry, also called Henry the Minstrel, is credited as the author of The Wallace (about 1460). This poem of about 12,000 lines describes the military deeds of the Scottish hero William Wallace, who was executed by the English in 1305.
Scottish literature of the 1400’s was influenced by the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. King James I, who spent 18 years as an English prisoner, was familiar with the works of Chaucer. James wrote “The Kingis Quair” (“The King’s Book,” about 1424), a poem in which he described his courtship of an English woman whom he later married and the philosophical comforts he found in captivity. James was influenced by Chaucer and by the ancient Roman philosopher Boethius. He also introduced closely observed descriptions of nature, which have remained prominent in Scottish literature.
The 1500’s and 1600’s
The reigns of James IV (1488-1513) and James V (1513-1542) became a golden age for poetry in Scotland. The poets of the time came to be known in England as the Scottish Chaucerians, but in Scotland they were known as the Scottish makaris or makars (poets).
Among the most important makars was Robert Henryson, a schoolmaster from Dunfermline who died about 1506. In his “Moral Fables,” based on Aesop’s fables, he depicted human weaknesses through stories about animals. Henryson showed that he was a master of a wide range of emotional and literary effects in his pastoral (rural) poem “Robert and Makyne” and his continuation of Chaucer’s story of Troilus and Criseyde in “The Testament of Cresseid.”
William Dunbar wrote with passion, fierce mental energy, and brilliant technique. Dunbar’s most important work is probably “The Thistle and the Rose” (1503), a political allegory (story with both a literal and a symbolic meaning). He expressed religious exultation in “On the Resurrection of Christ,” sharp comic savagery in “The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie,” and somber reflection on life in “Lament for the Makaris.” Dunbar wrote all these poems between about 1503 and 1508.
Bishop Gavin Douglas of Dunkeld translated the Roman writer Virgil’s epic poem the Aeneid into Scots. He added original prologues containing fine pieces of nature description and reflections upon the art of poetry. Dunbar completed the translation in 1513, but it was not published until 1553, after his death.
Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount continued the tradition of the earlier poets in his poetry and drama. He was a satirist who attacked the vices that he saw among the Scottish clergy through a morality play called Ane Pleasant Satire of the Thrie Estatis (1540, 1552). The poem also provides a vivid picture of Scottish life of his day.
William Drummond of Hawthornden was an important Scottish poet and prose writer of the 1600’s. He wrote in English rather than in Scots. Royal patronage of Scots poetry had disappeared after the Scottish king James VI moved to England in 1603 to become James I of England.
Much of the good Scots prose of the period is contained in official documents. The earliest important literary prose work was the anonymous The Complaint of Scotland (1549). John Knox’s History of the Reformation in Scotland, published in the 1580’s after his death, marked a new development in Scots prose. Knox, who led the Protestant Reformation in Scotland, intermingled Scots and English in his highly passionate and personal account. Prose writers of the 1600’s included diarists, such as Sir James Melville, and pamphleteers, such as Sir Thomas Urquhart.
The 1700’s
Throughout the 1500’s and 1600’s, religious conflicts had reduced the flow of Scottish literature, though there remained a strong undercurrent of ballads and popular literature. The religious troubles ended by the 1700’s, and literary and intellectual life flourished.
Allan Ramsay was an important literary figure of the 1700’s. He issued The Tea-Table Miscellany (1724-1737), a famous collection of songs and ballads. The Ever Green (1724) included work by William Dunbar and Robert Henryson with Ramsay’s own revisions and additions. Ramsay’s much admired comedy The Gentle Shepherd (1725) included Scots songs.
In the early 1770’s, Robert Fergusson wrote vivid satirical descriptions of Edinburgh life. His poems depict the amusements, street life, and public houses of the city. They include “Auld Reekie,” a nickname for Edinburgh, “Braid Claith,” and “Leith Races.”
Both Fergusson and Ramsay were overshadowed by Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet. Burns expressed in his poetry much of what came to be seen as the national spirit of Scotland. He attacked the puritanical strictness of the Scottish church and the hypocrisy of human nature in such satires as “The Holy Fair” (1786) and “Holy Willie’s Prayer” (1801). Burns used his great narrative gifts in “Tam o’Shanter” (1791), a poem filled with supernatural humor and horror. He expressed his understanding of men and women in such songs as “Mary Morison” (1786). Burns spent the last years of his life collecting, editing, and rewriting old Scottish folk songs and writing new words to old tunes, for a series of book called The Scots Musical Museum (1787-1803).
Religious authorities opposed drama in the 1700’s, and few plays were written. However, John Home gained popularity with Douglas (1756), a romantic tragedy set in Scotland’s remote past. The play is notable as a forerunner of the idea of Scotland as a land of romance. Notable prose works included the philosophical writings of David Hume, the influential economic study The Wealth of Nations (1776) by Adam Smith, and the Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) by James Boswell, one of the greatest biographies in the English language.
The 1800’s
Authors of the 1800’s are remembered more for their prose fiction than their poetry. Much of this fiction deals with the Scottish national character.
James Macpherson had aroused European interest in Scotland with his versions of the epics Fingal (1762) and Temora (1763). He claimed to have translated them from the Gaelic works of the ancient bard Ossian. Modern scholars are certain that Macpherson forged many of the Gaelic “originals.” He did, however, base his work on some surviving fragments of Highland poetry and stories hundreds of years old.
European readers enjoyed the historical quality of Macpherson’s work. As a result, they were ready for the Romanticism of Sir Walter Scott. Scott and many other Romantic writers focused their interest to remote and faraway places, the medieval past, and folklore and legends. Scott’s narrative poems The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Marmion (1808), and The Lady of the Lake (1810) celebrate deeds of chivalry against colorful Scottish settings. Scott’s Waverley novels are a series of novels mostly based on Scottish history. They include Waverley (1814), Rob Roy (1817), and The Heart of Midlothian (1819). They make up a body of work in which Scott might be seen as the inventor of the historical novel. These works have in common their author’s strong linking of psychology and history.
Susan Ferrier, a friend of Sir Walter Scott, wrote three lively and witty novels of Scottish life—Marriage (1818), The Inheritance (1824), and Destiny (1831). The novels, which deal with marriage, successfully combine English narrative style with Scottish dialogue.
James Hogg wrote the novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824). In the book, the central character believes that he can commit any crime, no matter how horrifying, secure in his salvation. The novel is one of the great psychological masterpieces of the Romantic period. John Galt wrote a series of novels and short stories that explored the rapid social change around him. His Annals of the Parish (1821) records such important events as the American and French revolutions through the eyes of an minister in rural Ayrshire.
Galt was connected with Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, a monthly magazine founded in 1817 in Edinburgh. The editor was John Wilson, who wrote under the pen name Christopher North. Wilson captured the fun, cleverness, and variety of the Edinburgh literary scene in his series of dialogues Noctes Ambrosianae (1822-1835). Blackwood’s and the Edinburgh Review, a quarterly periodical founded in 1802, exerted great influence over Scottish literature and had many distinguished contributors. Among them was Sir Walter Scott’s son-in-law, John Gibson Lockhart. He wrote biographies of Burns and Scott that served as the standard works on their subjects for many years.
Thomas Carlyle influenced many writers with his critical essays and his sternly moral philosophy. He was also a close student of German literature. Carlyle wrote Sartor Resartus (The Tailor Retailored, 1833-1834), a discussion of an imaginary philosophy of clothes; and The French Revolution: A History (1837).
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote both poetry and prose. As a poet, he combined the best elements from several Scots dialects. As a novelist, he often chose historical subjects. He achieved great popularity with his adventure stories, such as Treasure Island (1883) and Kidnapped (1886). One of his most enduring legacies is the short novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), which continued the Scottish tradition of disturbing psychological studies.
In the late 1800’s, Scottish writers tended to concentrate on sentimental views of small-town Scottish life. These writers were known as the kailyard (cabbage patch) school. One of the most successful kailyarders was J. M. Barrie. A typical example of his work in this school is The Little Minister (1891), based on life in his hometown of Kirriemuir.
The early 1900’s
George Douglas Brown shattered the cozy, make-believe world of the kailyarders with his dark novel The House with the Green Shutters (1901). He depicted a rural scene in which nearly all the characters were money-grubbing and lacking in compassion or sense of community.
Neil Munro continued the tradition of Scott and Stevenson with his Romantic tales, such as Doom Castle (1901) and Children of Tempest (1903). Like Munro, John Buchan wrote stories of adventure and mystery for a wide audience into the early decades of the 1900’s. His novels include Prester John (1910), The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), and Greenmantle (1916).
Neil Gunn wrote lyrical novels about the Scottish Highlands, including Morning Tide (1931), Highland River (1937), and The Silver Darlings (1941). Sir Compton MacKenzie’s many novels include Sinister Street (1913-1914), a partly autobiographical story that follows an Englishman through school and into London’s low life. Eric Linklater gained fame for his satirical novel Juan in America (1931).
Dramatists of the early 1900’s include Osborne Henry Mavor, who wrote under the name James Bridie, and Robert McLellan. Bridie used his plays as vehicles for complex moral and social themes. His plays include The Anatomist (1930), A Sleeping Clergyman (1933), and Susannah and the Elders (1937). McLellan wrote only in Scots. Among his plays are Jamie the Saxt (1937) and The Flouers o’ Edinburgh (1948).
Many Scottish poets from the 1920’s to 1950 were concerned with the status of the Scots language. Hugh MacDiarmid (the pen name of C. M. Grieve) wanted to return to the poetic tradition of such makars as William Dunbar. He rejected the sentimentality he saw in the poetry of such writers as Robert Burns.
MacDiarmid was the major writer in a movement called the Scottish Renaissance, which flourished from about 1920 to 1940. Writers of the Renaissance wanted to create a Scottish national literature and preserve regional dialects. MacDiarmid wrote in a combination of older dialects, sometimes using obsolete words from dictionaries. His early works were collections of Scots lyrics published in Sangschaw (1925) and Penny Wheep (1926). MacDiarmid’s masterpiece is the patriotic A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926). In the 1930’s, MacDiarmid turned to politics in writing that reflects his support of Communism.
Other writers identified with the Scottish Renaissance included Lewis Grassic Gibbon (the pen name of James Leslie Mitchell), William Soutar, and Sorley MacLean, the greatest Gaelic poet of the 1900’s. MacLean wrote about Scottish history, the country’s landscape, love, and warfare. One of his major works is From Wood to Ridge: Collected Poems in Gaelic and English (1989). Sydney Goodsir Smith, a follower of MacDiarmid, extended the intellectual range of poetry in Scots in such collections as Skail Wind (1941).
The later 1900’s
In the mid-1900’s, Edwin Muir gained recognition for his poetry and his translations of the novels of the Czech writer Franz Kafka. Muir’s poetry was strongly influenced by a period when he underwent psychoanalysis. Many of his poems in Collected Poems 1921-1958 (1960) are symbolic and philosophical.
Adam Drinan (the pen name of Joseph Macleod), the author of Men of the Rocks (1942), and George Campbell Hay, the author of Wind on Loch Fyne (1948), expressed the texture of Gaelic in their English-language poems.
Norman MacCaig combined philosophical meditation with a lively sense of imagery in his poems. Many of his poems evoke the Highland landscape, as does the work of Iain Crichton Smith. Smith, along with MacCaig, MacLean, and the poet and translator Edwin Morgan, represented a confident, wide-ranging Scottish poetry movement of the later 1900’s.
Robin Jenkins gained praise for his mostly autobiographical fiction, including the comic novel Fergus Lamont (1979). Alasdair Gray brought the concerns and techniques of modern literary theory to bear on the Scottish scene. He gained immediate recognition with his first novel, Lanark (1981). The novel reflects Gray’s distinctive blend of realism and fantasy.
Poetry in Scots was still being written in the later 1900’s, most successfully by Tom Leonard. Much of the Scots poetry used local dialects rather than attempting to achieve a national Scots language.
Scottish literature today
Scottish fiction of the later 1900’s and early 2000’s has demonstrated great variety. Muriel Spark enjoys world renown for her coolly experimental, sophisticated fiction, such as the short novel Aiding and Abetting (2000). George Mackay Brown describes life in the Orkney Islands and how life there is affected by the modern world in Beside the Ocean of Time (1994) and other fiction. James Kelman in How Late It Was, How Late (1994) and Irvine Welsh in Trainspotting (1993) and its sequel Porno (2002) portray life in urban Scotland with gritty realism and humor. Both writers use the vivid dialect of the city streets in their work.
