Happy Birthday!

... jaywalker23! Have a great day, and a wonderful year, dearest.

MacDiarmid

Ahhhh, braid Scots. 
I always loved MacDiarmid, and although I only understand two thirds of the text at times because my knowledge of Scots lets me down sometimes, it's great fun reading it, and imagining how a Scot would pronounce the word, and feeling like I did back in the day when I had Old English with Julez on Thursdays with Ponder Stibbons, and we would try to determine if the alleged verb in the hemistiched sentences of Old English ballads really was the predicator or, indeed, a verb at all, sitting on the orange doughnut couches of the Audimax together, the semester when the college and university fair came to our university and I told her that she could go to Scotland.... Siiigh. Those were the days.

I keep wondering where from I know the world "ilka", though. Either I am merely having a weird association or - is it possible that  it is a Middle High German word for "every" as well? I know that I know it from somewhere, but I cannot remember from where. Maybe it's only Burns' fault that I do, though. Still... ilka vrouwen? Sounds bad, but that might be ungrammatical agreement. Hm.

"A Drunk Man Looks At The Thistle" is really hard to understand. I like the language, but I only understand my two thirds to three quarters and do not get all the references, either. I often catch myself at not really processing the meaning at all, too busy ogling at the pretty language. Silly. I wish I had a Scots dictionary. 

Funnily enough finding some of these poems has helped me understand some the poetry Ali used to write for the CWS back in Glasgow. They were usually in Scots, too, and very good, too. I'll have to search for the one I'm thinking of, as  "At My Father's Grave" uncannily reminded me of the situation in his - although he wildly disagrees with this poem in his, I think.

At My Father's Grave

The sunlicht still on me, you row'd in clood, 
We look upon each ither noo like hills
Across a valley. I'm nae mair your son. 
It is my mind, nae son o'yours, that looks,
And the great darkness o' your death comes up
And equals it across the way. 
A livin' man upon a deid man thinks
And ony sma'er thocht's impossible.