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The Guid Scots Tongue
By ALASDAIR J. McKICHAN (Glasgow University) BRAXFIELD was on the Bench and the Court was crowded to hear the verdict. The trial had been long, the evidence involved, but Counsel for the Defence had played havoc with the Prosecution's case, and to those present it seemed that the accused must be acquitted on this, a capital, charge. But they had reckoned without the vagaries of his Lordship, who, fixing the prisoner with an irritable eye, rasped : " Aye, Aye, ye're a clever chiel, but ye'd be nane the waur o' a hangin'."
This, the most famous of all the notorious Lord Braxfield's dicta, still rings in our ears today, and, although we can scarcely applaud the sentiments behind his judgement, we can- not but relish, the pawkiness of his language. The Scots tongue seems better fitted than any other for the acid sarcasm, the searing self-criticism and the paradox, one or other of which forms the barb of every Aberdonian story, and had Braxfield's words been pronounced in faultless English it is doubtful whether they would have survived today.
Apart altogether from the questionable justice, it would be unusual to hear a similar utterance coming from a member of the Scottish Bench today. An unbiased judgement there would be, of course. It might even be delivered with a wit as dry as Braxfield's, but, more likely than not, it would be spoken in the modulated tones of Oxford and the B.B.C. Indeed, it would be possible to stray into the Court of Session in Edin- burgh, and from aural evidence alone, imagine that you had come, not round the corner from St. Giles and the quiet dignity of Parliament Square, but in from the bustle of the Strand. The voices from the Bench, the Bar, and even the witness-box might support this theory, for, in the last half century or so, it has become the custom for the well educated Scot to adopt the manner of speech of the Southern Englishman.
My selection of the Law, as an example of a walk of life in which this habit obtains, was not altogether fortuitous, for of all our Scottish institutions the Law is only rivalled by the Church in its sturdy spirit of jealous nationalism. The members of this profession resist bitterly, and we Scotsmen think rightly, all attempts to anglicise its workings. Indeed, the leaders of the Covenant Movement, who favour a mild brand of Nation- alism, are almost all either solicitors or advocates. Thus it is surprising and significant that men like these should have em- braced so enthusiastically this pernicious habit.
The urge to efface all evidence of his origin seems to have come early to the travelled Scot. We have. Boswell's own word for it that, when at his first meeting with Johnson, it was divulged that he was " a Scotch gentleman," he blurted out, " Mr. Johnson, indeed I come from Scotland, but I cannot help k." A truism which was met with the broadside it so richly deserved : " Sir," replied the Doctor, " that, I find, is what a ,very great many of your countrymen cannot help." It is easy, too, to imagine that gregarious Anglo-Scot moulding the robust Undertones of his native Auchinleck to the genteel pleasantries of the London drawing-rooms. But in Boswell's day the Scot at home felt no qualms about his natural speech. Then the lairds took to sending their sons to the English public schools and to Oxford or Cambridge, instead ono Utrecht or Paris, and soon the landed gentry all spoke with this imported refinement. Still, the habit was confined to this small upper class. But the present century brought the influence of radio and cheap travel. The ambitious Scot, a self-conscious body, Wondered whether he would not fare better if he imitated.the glib off-hand speech of the Englishman which was so suitable for the casual conversation. Having made his decision, he had a model ready at hand. He had only to listen to the news bulletins read in the immaculate diction of Portland Place, and soon he could lengthen his vowels and clip his consonants as in the manner born. At present only society and the business and professional classes are affected by the fashion. The working man and woman have no inhibitions about using their mother tongue. Here, however, a more repellent influence is at work. Scot- land's street corners, like most others in Britain, are hideous with the drape suit, the crew cut and the pseudo American accent. The teenagers (an ugly word, but evocative of the brash young people it connotes) ape their heroes of the comic strip or Hollywood and mouth their inanities, sideways, after the style of Mr. James Cagney. But this, we hope, is a passing phase. It seems more likely that, following the usual course of events, the fads of the upper classes will become in time the habits of the lower, and then all Scotland will speak with one ghastly cultured voice.
Some may argue that this standardisation of our national language should be a forward, and- not a backward, step. Indeed, I have heard a schoolmaster at a well-known Scottish school earnestly advising his sixth-year pupils that theyshould, for their own sakes, look to their accents and cultivate the " Accepted Pronunciation." This I believe is a common, and, I suppose, well intentioned, practice. The result of it is that by the time many students arrive at their universities they are half converted to this obnoxious creed and speak in a hybrid patois that has to be heard to be believed. By the time they graduate the process is complete and their accents would pass unremarked in Kensington High Street. . But surely this chameleon-like change goes unappreciated by the very people it is intended to impress. My own English friends, at least, aver that they like and admire an unadorned Scottish voice. I have known some of them on arriving from the south in Glasgow's St. Enoch Station, simply stand and drink in the accents flowing round them—bemused, as it were, by the glottal stop. • And what a price we should have to pay for this standardisation. We should lose not only the hackneyed accent of the standard stage Scotsman, which is that of the central industrial belt, but also the gentle unhurried cadences of the Western Highlands, the precisely enunciated syllables of Inverness and the kindred speech of the far north. We should lose the thick, warm, burring of the Borders, personified for most of us in the voice of Mr. Jock Wemyss, saying " Well, it's been a grand game . . ."—words which in recent years have been subject to too many reservations and qualifications—and away would go the Ayrshire Doric of Burns. It is almost inconceivable that the Aberdonian could be parted from the language of Buchan; it it a way of speech which' seems to be brazed on to him for life by the prevailing east wind, but in time, I suppose, it would go, along with querulous tones of the Fifer, and the downrightness of the capital. No conceiv- able gain in efficiency or mutual understanding could compen- sate for the loss of these national riches.
The sad state of affairs which exists was remarked on by Sheriff Ross-McLean, Q.C., when he spoke recently at a function in his own Sheriffdom. The Sheriff, who is well known for his shrewd observations on Scottish problems, urged that, before it was too late, Scotsmen should recognise this current affectation for what it is; that we should put aside these laboriously learned gentilities and speak our own pithy language. He argued that our speech was only one of our many national assets which we were heedlessly jettisoning in favour of glossier, imported substitutes, and he advised that before we clamour with Covenants and Commissions we should conserve such of our characteristics as we still possess. I am sure the Sheriff does not mean that we should turn into Saltire- waving kilted caricatures, but rather he means that unless we exhibit at home the independence, individuality and lack of snobbery which made us the world's best emigrants, our plea for a bigger share in the running of our own country cannot be other than an empty gesture. Here is one Scotsman who agrees with the Sheriff; who will continue to roll his " r's fearlessly; and who will not exchange his porridge for a mess of packaged pap.
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