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**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Mar 20

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

Anns gach gnìomh a nì duine ’s mór urram nan gàidheal: Donnchadh Bàn Mac an t-Saoir as the Voice of the Gael’s Military Masculinity in the 18th Century

—Liesbeth Van Hulle, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies

4/4

https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/jshs.2022.0345?journalCode=jshs

Abstract

The eighteenth century witnessed the changed perception of the Highland male as he evolved from an unruly member of a warrior society to the ideal soldier, participating in the military activities of the British empire. This article explores firstly, how this transformation came about, from the celebration of the warrior society the Gàidhealtachd appeared to be, to the personal identification with the Gael's martial self. Secondly, this article establishes how and why the ordinary Highland man embraced this military identity. As the voice of the eighteenth-century Gael is rather difficult to trace, the life and oeuvre of Donnchadh Bàn Mac an t-Saoir (Duncan Bàn MacIntyre) is used to represent his fellow Highlanders. Donnchadh Bàn spent his entire adult life carrying arms and was a life-long proponent of the military masculinity the Gael displayed. Especially his enlistment in the Breadalbane Fencibles provides a unique insight. When his fervour for the Gael's warrior masculinity is checked against the many letters from the tenants on the Breadalbane estate, it is not a picture of an innately warrior masculinity that emerges, but one of a man choosing a temporary military path to hunt down economic security and independence.

#Scottish #literature #poetry

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**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Mar 20

Mar 20

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

How does it begin?
With the piper’s drone
with the coarse fabric of the land…

Ben Dorain: An Ecopoetic Translation
Garry MacKenzie on translating “Moladh Beinn Dóbhrain” into a 21st-century ecopoem

3/4

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/8/2/113

Abstract

In this article, I reflect on my own practice in translating Duncan Bàn Macintyre’s eighteenth-century Gaelic poem, Moladh Beinn Dóbhrain, into a twenty-first century ‘ecopoem’. Macintyre’s Moladh Beinn Dóbhrain has been praised for its naturalism. My translation of this long poem emphasises the immediacy and biological specificity of Macintyre’s descriptions. I explore how the act of translation might intersect with contemporary ecological concerns. My poem is not simply a translation, but incorporates Moladh Beinn Dóbhrain into a new work which juxtaposes a free English version of Macintyre’s work with original material concerned with contemporary research into deer behaviour and ideas of ecological interconnectedness, including biosemiotics and Timothy Morton’s ‘dark ecology’. This article is a reflection on my production of a twenty-first century excavation and reimagining of Macintyre’s Moladh Beinn Dóbhrain. I consider how the difficulties of translation might be turned into imaginative opportunities, and explore how translation has the potential to function as exposition and expansion of an original text, in order to create a poem which is itself an ecosystem, comprising of multiple ecological, cultural and political interactions.

Keywords: ecopoetics; translation; Gaelic poetry; Scottish poetry; mountains in poetry; creative criticism; ecology; red deer; biosemiotics; Scottish Highlands

#Scottish #Gaelic #literature

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**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Mar 20

Mar 20

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

“The richness of Donnchadh Bàn’s language becomes a metaphor for the richness of nature... The poem is a song & the music itself becomes a metaphor for the co-existence of different forms of life”

—Meg Bateman introduces Ben Dorain: a conversation with a mountain, by Garry MacKenzie, (Irish Pages Press/Cló An Mhíl Bhuí, 2021)

2/4

https://irishpages.org/in-praise-of-ben-dorain/?v=7885444af42e

Den Dorain – a steep-sided, conical Scottish mountain. Its sides are sere and brown and a scattering of snow is on its peak.

#Scottish #literature #poetry

**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Mar 20

Mar 20

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

Donnchadh Bàn Mac an t-Saoir (Duncan Ban MacIntyre, 1724–1812), one of the greatest 18th-century #Gaelic poets, was born 301 years ago #OTD, 20 March

Prof Alan Riach on Donnchadh Bàn’s most famous work, “Moladh Beinn Dóbhrain” (“Praise of Ben Dorain”)

1/4

https://www.thenational.scot/news/14861208.not-burns-duncan-ban-macintyre-and-his-gaelic-manifesto-for-land-reform/

The National · Feb 5, 2016Not Burns – Duncan Ban MacIntyre and his Gaelic manifesto for land reformBy The National Staff

#Scottish #literature #poetry

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**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Mar 19

Mar 19

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

“At the age of 17, I thought it one of the most fast-moving, boisterous & consistently entertaining novels I had ever read”

The late “Grub Street Irregular” Jeremy Lewis on Tobias Smollett’s RODERICK RANDOM. Lewis published a biography of Smollett in 2003

5/5

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3601236/My-king-of-comedy.html

The TelegraphescenicAs a shy, clumsy 1950s schoolboy, Jeremy Lewis longed to inhabit the elegant, exuberant world of Tobias Smollett's novels. Now he has written a biography of his hero, a great writer long scorned by academics

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury

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**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Mar 19

Mar 19

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

The Scenic Route to Humphry Clinker

Dr Ronnie Young shows how Smollett’s cantankerous Travels Through France and Italy – a “journal of gripes, snipes and stereotypes” – laid the groundwork for his finest novel

4/5

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2012/05/the-scenic-route-to-humphry-clinker-smolletts-travels-through-france-and-italy/

The Bottle Imp · May 1, 2012The Scenic Route to 'Humphry Clinker': Smollett's Travels Through France and Italy - The Bottle ImpIn 1763, Tobias Smollett embarked on a two-year trip round France and Italy. The great eighteenth-century novelist, historian, journalist and man of letters had good reason for quitting Britain. His support for the deeply unpopular prime ministership of the 3rd Earl of Bute (from 1762-1763) had left him the target of what he saw as […]

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury

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**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Mar 19

Mar 19

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

Tobias Smollett, Novelist: Brutish or British?

Prof Juliet Shields addresses Tobias Smollett’s exclusion from recent studies of the development of the 18th-century novel

3/5

https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/43514/chapter/364250240?login=false

Abstract
This article addresses Tobias Smollett’s exclusion from recent studies of the development of the eighteenth-century novel. Tracing continuities between Tobias Smollett’s most highly regarded novels, Roderick Random (1748) and Humphry Clinker (1771) and the critically neglected Peregrine Pickle (1750–1751), Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753), and Sir Launcelot Greaves (1760–1761), it demonstrates that all of these works represent the experience of being on the margins of elite metropolitan English society. Although Smollett’s novels have been charged with formlessness, this article argues that their “plot” or structuring principle is the marginalized protagonist’s progress toward a British identity. The uncouth humor and physical violence of which critics have complained are simply incidental to that progress, which is never a straightforward trajectory, but which is driven by the protagonist’s repeated and often misguided efforts to infiltrate the inner circles of fashionable English society.

#Scottish #literature #Smollett

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**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Mar 19

Mar 19

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

“a sharp, quirky, funny satirist, relishing the details of the lives of the underprivileged… Grotesquerie, bodily functions, compulsions, addictions and corruptions, are depicted in detail in a social context of unstable movement, forces that can cut across desires, unpredictable friendships, inimical individuals: Smollett’s world is close to Welsh in these regards also.”

Prof Alan Riach compares Smollett to Irvine Welsh

2/5

https://www.thenational.scot/news/16095421.tobias-smollett---scotlands-original-irvine-welsh/

The National · Mar 19, 2018Tobias Smollett - Scotland's original Irvine WelshBy Alan Riach

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury

**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Mar 19 *

Mar 19 *

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

Tobias Smollett (1721–1771) was baptised #OTD, 19 March.

George Orwell thought him “Scotland’s best novelist”, “whose outstanding intellectual honesty may have been connected with the fact that he was not an Englishman” (Tribune, 22/9/1944)

1/5

https://orwell.ru/library/reviews/smollett/english/e_ts

#Scottish #literature #Smollett

**Dr Surekha Davies (she/her)** @drsurekhadavies.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy · Mar 19

Mar 19

Dr Surekha Davies (she/her) @drsurekhadavies.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy

Public book talk (no need to RSVP) on HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY ( @ucpress.bsky.social ) at Wesleyan University on Tuesday March 25th at 4:30pm in PAC), room 100! #ancient #medieval #earlymodern #histsci #histmed #18thCentury #politics #HAMH 1/ wesleyan.campuslabs.com/engage/event...

Event poster with title: Center for the Humanities, Spring 2025, Wesleyan University.
Image: A girl with a hairy face and flowers in her hair, wearing a full-length dress with a floral pattern, stands facing forward, holding a sheet of paper against her waist, with both hands.
Rest of text in post thread.

**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Mar 10

Mar 10

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

10 March is International Bagpipe Day!

Why to St. Paul’s, my Dear? What make you chuse
A Church that Jacobites and Papists use,
Where English Mass is lyrick’d o’er by Boys,
And Popish Bagpipes make a hideous Noise?

—how 18th-century English satirists used bagpipes to signify Jacobitism & Catholicism, & the threat to the Establishment

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2013/05/the-scottish-bagpipe-political-and-religious-symbolism-in-english-literature-and-satire/

The Bottle Imp · May 1, 2013The Scottish Bagpipe: Political and Religious Symbolism in English Literature and Satire - The Bottle ImpIf you try typing the word ‘bagpipe’ in Google Images, you might be forgiven for assuming the bagpipe world extends little beyond Scotland. Out of the first fifty images, only two show non-Highland bagpipes. This is indeed a culturally interesting detail, since there are hundreds of different kinds of bagpipe in the world — from […]

#Scottish #literature #culture

**Mick Garratt** @Fhithich@toot.community · Feb 16

Feb 16

Mick Garratt @Fhithich@toot.community

Rievaulx Bridge: Monks, Floods, and Tanks

In 1826, William Turner stood on this bridge to paint his famous view of Rievaulx Abbey. Anyone hoping to recreate his masterpiece today would be sorely disappointed, thanks to the abundance of trees along the river and the endless stream of traffic rattling across the bridge. This three-arched, hump-backed structure, built from limestone ...

http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=37465

#NorthYorkMoors #Rievaulx #Ryedale

**Letterform Archive** @letterformarchive@typo.social · Feb 6

Feb 6

Letterform Archive @letterformarchive@typo.social

George Bickham (engraver), The Universal Penman, London, 1736.

See more in the Online Archive: https://oa.letterformarchive.org/item?workID=lfa_writingmanuals_0135&targPic=lfa_writingmanuals_0135_002.jpg

Engraved drawing of a person at a desk leaning over a book and papers, and writing with a pen.

Title page of an engraved book. At the top is “The” in an italic, “Universal Penman” in a blackletter with many flourishes, “Engrav’d” in a script, and “By George Bickham” in a roman.

#Calligraphy #GeorgeBickham #WritingBooks

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**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Jan 22

Jan 22

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

Byron’s poem “When I Roved, a Young Highlander”, illustrated by Currier & Ives, New York – via the Philadelphia Museum of Art

SCENE: Currier & Ives offices, mid/late-19th century

CURRIER: Remember, Lord Byron was mad, bad, & dangerous to know
IVES: Right – I’ll give him a bugle, a mini-kilt, & a shotgun
CURRIER:

4/4

https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/263199

A hand-coloured lithograph, showing an idealised and youthful Lord Byron amid a jumble of rocks, streams, hills, and trees, and wearing a fanciful artist's idea of Highland costume – a cap with eagle feathers, a chequered neck-cloth, a plaid sash, a brightly coloured yellow, red and green kilt that is much too short with a ridiculously outsized furry ermine sporran, tartan socks, and little buckled pumps. He holds aloft a bugle in his right hand and cradles a shotgun in his left, while looking into the middle distance. A dead (? or bored) stag lies at his feet and a hunting dog stands beside him.

#Scottish #literature #poetry

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**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Jan 22 *

Jan 22 *

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

“Like Burns, Byron knew how earthy values crossed social strata. But by Byron’s time, polite society was even more thoroughly committed to grinding down public festivities in fairs, sports and open air gatherings. Byron was a shock for polite, well-educated readers. He horrified his public.”

—Prof Alan Riach on Burns, Byron, & overlapping traditions

3/4

https://www.thenational.scot/news/15987226.aristocratic-lord-byron-shares-ploughman-burns/

The National · Feb 12, 2018What aristocratic Lord Byron shares with ploughman BurnsBy Alan Riach

#Scottish #literature #poetry

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**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Jan 22

Jan 22

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

Byron declared that he was 'half a Scot by birth, and bred / A whole one'. To what extent should we privilege such a claim? In what ways did Byron engage with a Scottish poetic heritage, if at all?

—Daniel Cook, “Byron’s Scottish Poetry”, The Byron Journal 50/1, 2022
Online via Project MUSE (institutional subscription required)

@litstudies

2/4

https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/105/article/860879

Abstract:

Looking back on his early life in Aberdeen, Byron declared that he was 'half a Scot by birth, and bred / A whole one'. To what extent should we privilege such a claim? In what ways did Byron engage with a Scottish poetic heritage, if at all? By expanding our remit of what counts as 'Scottish' within his work, and in the period more broadly, we come closer to understanding Byron's investment in the people, poets, and places associated with his maternal country. Narrowly focusing on a small selection of Scottish poems (chiefly 'Lachin Y Gair', 'Song', and 'Golice Macbane') has obscured the many references to Macpherson, Burns, Campbell, Scott and others found across Byron's oeuvre, from the early Newstead Abbey poems to The Island. Placing Byron in an expansive reading context, I argue, entails pushing beyond a rigid Scots-English boundary in the pursuit of a philological understanding of Scottish poetry.

#Scottish #literature #poetry

**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Jan 22

Jan 22

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred
A whole one, and my heart flies to my head,—

The great Romantic poet George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron – Lord Byron – was born on this day, 22 Jan, 1788
A

1/4

from “Don Juan”, Canto X
George Gordon Byron

And all our little feuds, at least all mine,
Dear Jefferson, once my most redoubted foe
(As far as rhyme and criticism combine
To make such puppets of us things below),
Are over: Here's a health to 'Auld Lang Syne!'
I do not know you, and may never know
Your face—but you have acted on the whole
Most nobly, and I own it from my soul.

And when I use the phrase of 'Auld Lang Syne!'
'Tis not address'd to you—the more's the pity
For me, for I would rather take my wine
With you, than aught (save Scott) in your proud city.
But somehow,—it may seem a schoolboy's whine,
And yet I seek not to be grand nor witty,
But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred
A whole one, and my heart flies to my head,—

As 'Auld Lang Syne' brings Scotland, one and all,
Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills, and clear streams,
The Dee, the Don, Balgounie's brig's black wall,
All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams
Of what I then dreamt, clothed in their own pall,
Like Banquo's offspring;—floating past me seems
My childhood in this childishness of mine:
I care not—'t is a glimpse of 'Auld Lang Syne.'

And though, as you remember, in a fit
Of wrath and rhyme, when juvenile and curly,
I rail'd at Scots to show my wrath and wit,
Which must be own'd was sensitive and surly,
Yet 'tis in vain such sallies to permit,
They cannot quench young feelings fresh and early:
I 'scotch'd not kill'd' the Scotchman in my blood,
And love the land of 'mountain and of flood.'

#Scottish #literature #poetry

**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Dec 8, 2024

Dec 8, 2024

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

Anatomy of a song: identifying the songs in Allan Ramsay’s THE TEA-TABLE MISCELLANY
12 Dec, Edinburgh & online – free

Dr Brianna Robertson-Kirkland discusses Allan Ramsay’s collection of traditional Scottish songs & other works, assembled between 1723 & 1737

@litstudies

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/dr-brianna-robertson-kirkland-allan-ramsays-the-tea-table-miscellany-tickets-1108163389529

EventbriteDr Brianna Robertson-Kirkland, 'Allan Ramsay’s The Tea-Table Miscellany''Anatomy of a Song: Identifying the songs in Allan Ramsay’s The Tea-Table Miscellany'

#Scottish #literature #18thcentury

**Sarah Jackson** @sarahijackson@wandering.shop · Oct 20, 2024

Oct 20, 2024

Sarah Jackson @sarahijackson@wandering.shop

While researching 18thC schools for the novel I greatly enjoyed these delightful catty textbook titles by schoolmaster John Holmes:

A New Grammar of the Latin Tongue... freed from the many obscurities, defects, superfluities, and errors, which render the common grammar an insufferable impediment to the progress of education (1732)

1/2

#18thCentury #History #EducationHistory

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**Assoc for Scottish Literature** @scotlit@mastodon.scot · Oct 17, 2024

Oct 17, 2024

Assoc for Scottish Literature @scotlit@mastodon.scot

Ye’re stridin doon the Canongate, brent new
and lookin like ye’ve never been awa,
were never found curled deid upon the straw
in Bedlam’s cells; ye’re twenty-fower and fou –
no claret-fou, but o yersel and life…

—James Robertson, “Fergusson’s Statue”

5/5

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/fergussons-statue/