The New Kailyard
By IAN FINLAY AMILAN newspaper has warned the poets of the Scots Renaissance—under banner headlines—against using a dialect which gives them only a parochial appeal. No doubt this transalpine challenge will leave the makars as unmoved as criticisms levelled at them from much nearer home have done; but for a long time Scottish writers in general have been uneasy about just such a narrowing down of their sphere.
During the war and just after it a certain cultural quickening occurred in Scotland, as elsewhere. Some excellent verse appeared. Stimulated by the late James Bridie, Glasgow Citizens' Theatre swiftly built a reputation and drew about it a body of players who have made possible serious attempts at play-writing in the vernacular. A wave of interest in archi- tecture and the native crafts passed over the country. The Edinburgh International Festival, by reviving The Thrie Estaits and The Gentle Shepherd and by gathering around it an eager crowd of smaller, unofficial ventures, roused many hopes. These good omens still beckon. But in spite of it all, the Scottish poet, writer or playwright, whether his medium is English or Lallans, is faced with the choice of writing for a very few of his countrymen or of turning his back on them and seeking his fortune in the south.
It is true that in other small countries the writer has to meet the problem of a limited public, but in most of them the language barrier operates to his advantage. It becomes a sort of tariff wall, behind which the writer can supply the demand for work in any field of literature and thus grow to his full stature, whatever that may be. A Scottish writer writing in Scotland, however, at once finds himself hemmed in. Unless he leaves his country, he may be'condemned to write on purely Scottish topics for the rest of his life. Dr. Edwin Muir, one of the few who have escaped and returned, has recently pointed to this " restricted atmosphere " and urged that a Scot must travel in order to expand; but I think that when he blames the constriction on historical causes such as Calvinism and the Industrial Revolution he is only partially right. The progressive regionalisation of Scotland since the war years has severely tightened the constriction.
Struggles to escape are as yet feeble. An obvious one would be the founding of a vigorous journal not restricting itself to Scottish affairs. Every now and then someone is seized with determination to re-establish the old Edinburgh Review. Rarely is the determination even translated into a tentative effort. To-Day and To-Morrow and The Scots Review mark the limit of such attempts. Neither was long-lived. Lack of readers or advertisers may be blamed, but the real cause of the trouble is that Scotland is culturally no longer a nation but a region. The great majority of her people now take their news and views from Scottish-printed editions of the national dailies, whose perfunctory flavouring with items of local appeal only underlines the decline of the country's once characteristically independent way of looking at things. " What is wrong with Scottish writing and broadcasting ? " is a question frequently put, and it is encouraging that this should be, but most of the answers are wide of the mark, notably the answer that talent is in short supply. What is wrong is the parochial and even juvenile outlook brought about by this regionalisation. As every young writer knows, nothing is more salutary than advice to write of what he knows best; but to be constrained to describe always the same old kail- runts in his kailyard is to restrict him from ever gaining his full stature. The danger in Scottish letters today, then, is not that talent is absent but that it is becoming stunted. In the days when the phrase " Scots Renaissance first came into use, rallied by such men as Cunninghame Graham and Hugh McDiarmid, we thought the era of bens and glens and couthie sentiment was about to depart for ever. That era has never been more vigorous than it is today—if " vigorous " is the adjective for such nonsense—and a fair cross-section through Scottish writing would reveal something very like a slice through a bale of pamphlets written for the Come-to-Scotland depart- ment of the tourist drive. And the makars reproached by the Milan newspaper, very different in quality though their work be, rarely attain the wider outlook for which the first of them, McDiarmid, laboured so lonab ago, or they exhibit painful self-consciousness in parading their knowledge of other lands and tongues.
That it is difficult to throw off the bens-and-glens incubus is partly due to the export market, which is quite a considerable one. Books or plays about Scotland must, perhaps especially in America, conform to certain preconceived notions. I recall the story -of a playwright friend, commissioned to write a film- script of the Rob Roy variety. Anxious for historical accuracy, he urged that a certain clan stronghold must consist of no more than a rampart of stones built on a rocky crag, but the pro- ducer held that no one would recognise the scene as Highland unless the stronghold were a turreted baronial castle defended by warriors in Victorian full-dress kilts. This sort of thing, in subtler forms, constantly confronts the Scottish writer who feels impelled to tell strangers something other than what they want to know about his country, so that sentimental and " pawky " tales continue the kailyard tradition abroad long after it has been discredited—though not discarded—at home.
Of course it is not easy for a small body of writers to push against the march of events, however resolute they may be. The regionalisation of Scotland is a historical process, and even the emergence of another Walter Scott in the Scottish capital would not arrest this process. Here a great respon- sibility rests with such bodies 8 the Arts Council and the B.B.C., which have their subsidiary organisations in the region beyond the Border. Only bodies with such resources as theirs could bring sufficient weight to bear to alter the " constrictive pressure " of which Dr. Edwin Muir spoke. As one who is, or has been, associated with both in some degree, I do not propose to comment on their policies here. I feel, however, that they can never fully fulfil their purpose until every vestige of a regional outlook is shed. On the one hand, the Scot has a culture of his own, however modest in achievement, and no amount of Third-Programme importation will make up for lack of intelligent encouragement of the native variety, as Mr. Raymond O'Malley made clear in a brilliant chapter of One Horse Farm. On the other hand, Scottish taste is not so adolescent that it will accept only fare smothered in tartan ribbons. There are north of the Border poets and playwrights and novelists interested in the same profound human problems as their colleagues elsewhere. Until they are free to tackle these without obligation to exploit the Scottish angle, Scottish writing will continue to suffer from too much of that " parochial appeal,"
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