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Bannatyne Manuscript

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79-569: The Bannatyne Manuscript is an anthology of literature compiled in Scotland in the sixteenth century. It is an important source for the Scots poetry of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The manuscript contains texts of the poems of the great makars , many anonymous Scots pieces and works by medieval English poets. It was collected in 1568 by the Edinburgh merchant George Bannatyne when he

158-511: A litanic phrase from the Office of the Dead . Apart from its literary quality, the poem is notable for the list of makars it contains, some of whom are historically attestable as poets only from Dunbar's testimony in this work. After listing Lydgate , Gower and Chaucer , the makars invoked are Scottish. All but two are cited as having died by the time of the composition. The two exceptions are

237-923: A 1996 trial before the Census, by the General Register Office for Scotland (GRO), suggested that there were around 1.5 million speakers of Scots, with 30% of Scots responding "Yes" to the question "Can you speak the Scots language?", but only 17% responding "Aye" to the question "Can you speak Scots?". It was also found that older, working-class people were more likely to answer in the affirmative. The University of Aberdeen Scots Leid Quorum performed its own research in 1995, cautiously suggesting that there were 2.7 million speakers, though with clarification as to why these figures required context. The GRO questions, as freely acknowledged by those who set them, were not as detailed and systematic as those of

316-650: A Scots language listing. The Ferret, a UK -based fact-checking service, wrote an exploratory article in December 2022 to address misconceptions about the Scots language to improve public awareness of its endangered status. In Scotland, Scots is spoken in the Scottish Lowlands , the Northern Isles , Caithness , Arran and Campbeltown . In Ulster , the northern province in Ireland , its area

395-469: A collection of children's nursery rhymes and poems in Scots. The book contains a five-page glossary of contemporary Scots words and their pronunciations. Alexander Gray 's translations into Scots constitute the greater part of his work, and are the main basis for his reputation. In 1983, William Laughton Lorimer 's translation of the New Testament from the original Greek was published. Scots

474-433: A continuum ranging from traditional broad Scots to Scottish Standard English . Many speakers are diglossic and may be able to code-switch along the continuum depending on the situation. Where on this continuum English-influenced Scots becomes Scots-influenced English is difficult to determine. Because standard English now generally has the role of a Dachsprache ('roofing language'), disputes often arise as to whether

553-681: A more phonological manner rather than following the pan-dialect conventions of modern literary Scots, especially for the northern and insular dialects of Scots. Lament for the Makaris " I that in Heill wes and Gladnes ", also known as " The Lament for the Makaris ", is a poem in the form of a danse macabre by the Scottish poet William Dunbar . Every fourth line repeats the Latin refrain timor mortis conturbat me (fear of death troubles me),

632-696: A name for the Lowland vernacular. The Gaelic of Scotland is now usually called Scottish Gaelic . Northumbrian Old English had been established in what is now southeastern Scotland as far as the River Forth by the seventh century, as the region was part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria . By the tenth century, Middle Irish was the language of the Scottish court , and the common use of Old English remained largely confined to this area until

711-413: A number of paradigms for distinguishing between languages and dialects exist, they often render contradictory results. Broad Scots is at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum , with Scottish Standard English at the other. Scots is sometimes regarded as a variety of English, though it has its own distinct dialects; other scholars treat Scots as a distinct Germanic language, in the way that Norwegian

790-556: A picture of the Scottish literary culture of the period which is wider than that otherwise handed down to us from the surviving record. In order and form of citation, the makars that Dunbar mourns in 'The Lament' are: Dunbar offers some small tantalising details beyond customary compliments for the lost poets cited. The title of one poem is given: Clerk of Tranent's "Anteris of Gawane", an otherwise unknown work. Of Mercer, Dunbar extends his critical opinion to say that he "did in luf so lifly write,/ So schort, so quyk, of sentence hie ", and

869-612: A representative sample of Scotland's adult population) claim to speak Scots to varying degrees. The 2011 UK census was the first to ask residents of Scotland about Scots. A campaign called Aye Can was set up to help individuals answer the question. The specific wording used was "Which of these can you do? Tick all that apply" with options for "Understand", "Speak", "Read" and "Write" in three columns: English, Scottish Gaelic and Scots. Of approximately 5.1 million respondents, about 1.2 million (24%) could speak, read and write Scots, 3.2 million (62%) had no skills in Scots and

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948-641: A series of unclassified appendices which were partly written by scribes other than Bannatyne himself. The first section contains pieces with a religious theme. Many predate the Reformation . It includes Robert Henryson's "Ane Prayer for the Pest", Alexander Scott's translations of the first and fifty-first psalms , William Dunbar's "The Tabill Of Confessioun", "Rorate Celi Desuper" and "Done Is A Battell On The Dragon Blak" and John Lydgate's "O Creaturis Creat{sic} Of Me Your Creator." The "Secound Pairt" of

1027-525: A servant to the royal Stewarts, and a collector of manuscripts. Scots language Scots is a language variety descended from Early Middle English in the West Germanic language family . Most commonly spoken in the Scottish Lowlands , the Northern Isles of Scotland , and northern Ulster in Ireland (where the local dialect is known as Ulster Scots ), it is sometimes called: Lowland Scots , to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic ,

1106-506: A suitable medium of education or culture". Students reverted to Scots outside the classroom, but the reversion was not complete. What occurred, and has been occurring ever since, is a process of language attrition , whereby successive generations have adopted more and more features from Standard English. This process has accelerated rapidly since widespread access to mass media in English and increased population mobility became available after

1185-591: Is also used, though this is more often taken to mean the Lallans literary form . Scots in Ireland is known in official circles as Ulster-Scots ( Ulstèr-Scotch in revivalist Ulster-Scots) or "Ullans", a recent neologism merging Ulster and Lallans. Scots is a contraction of Scottis , the Older Scots and northern version of late Old English : Scottisc (modern English "Scottish"), which replaced

1264-604: Is closely linked to but distinct from Danish . Native speakers sometimes refer to their vernacular as braid Scots (or "broad Scots" in English) or use a dialect name such as the " Doric " or the " Buchan Claik ". The old-fashioned Scotch , an English loan, occurs occasionally, especially in Ulster. The term Lallans , a variant of the Modern Scots word lawlands [ˈlo̜ːlən(d)z, ˈlɑːlənz] ,

1343-562: Is in Scots, for example. Scott introduced vernacular dialogue to his novels. Other well-known authors like Robert Louis Stevenson , William Alexander, George MacDonald , J. M. Barrie and other members of the Kailyard school like Ian Maclaren also wrote in Scots or used it in dialogue. In the Victorian era popular Scottish newspapers regularly included articles and commentary in the vernacular, often of unprecedented proportions. In

1422-767: Is lykest to our language..." ( For though several have written of (the subject) in English, which is the language most similar to ours... ). However, with the increasing influence and availability of books printed in England, most writing in Scotland came to be done in the English fashion. In his first speech to the English Parliament in March 1603, King James VI and I declared, "Hath not God first united these two Kingdomes both in Language, Religion, and similitude of maners?" . Following James VI's move to London,

1501-1014: Is represented by "The Slicht Remeid Of Luve", "Ane Ballat Maid To The Derisioun And Scorne Of Wantoun Wemen", "The Justing And Debait Up At The Drum" and "Of May". William Dunbar's poetry dominates the section. Among the works of his to be included are "Best To Be Blyth", The Dregy Of Dunbar , Lament for the Makaris , "The Dance Of The Seven Deadly Sins", "My Panefull Purs So Priclis Me", "The Wowing Of The King Quhen He Was In Dunfermeling", The Fenyeit Freir of Tungland , "The Birth Of Antichrist", The Twa Cummeris , The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie and "The Testament Of Master Andro Kennedy". "The Thrid Pairt" also contains The Wife of Auchtermuchty , "Kynd Kittock", How The First Helandman of God Was Maid , " Christis Kirk On The Green " and Quhy Sowld Nocht Allane Honorit Be . Three poems in this section address specific women: Margaret Fleming, Grisel 'Crissell' Sandilands, and Jonet Reid, all of which are attributed to Robert Sempill . Bannatyne divided this section, on

1580-534: Is sometimes used in contemporary fiction, such as the Edinburgh dialect of Scots in Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh (later made into a motion picture of the same name ). But'n'Ben A-Go-Go by Matthew Fitt is a cyberpunk novel written entirely in what Wir Ain Leed ("Our Own Language") calls "General Scots". Like all cyberpunk work, it contains imaginative neologisms . The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

1659-409: Is still the same. And will bleez bright in that clear mind, That loves the antient strains, Like good Carmichael, patron kind, To whom this book pertains. Catherine Bannatyne, a Scottish noblewoman who lived during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century and was the sister of George Bannatyne, may have been part of the collection's original audience. Prosopographers believe this to be

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1738-567: Is used to describe the Scots language after 1700. A seminal study of Scots was undertaken by JAH Murray and published as Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland . Murray's results were given further publicity by being included in Alexander John Ellis 's book On Early English Pronunciation, Part V alongside results from Orkney and Shetland, as well as the whole of England. Murray and Ellis differed slightly on

1817-540: Is usually defined through the works of Robert John Gregg to include the counties of Down , Antrim , Londonderry and Donegal (especially in East Donegal and Inishowen ). More recently, the Fintona -born linguist Warren Maguire has argued that some of the criteria that Gregg used as distinctive of Ulster-Scots are common in south-west Tyrone and were found in other sites across Northern Ireland investigated by

1896-584: The Celtic language that was historically restricted to most of the Scottish Highlands , the Hebrides , and Galloway after the sixteenth century; or Broad Scots , to distinguish it from Scottish Standard English . Modern Scots is a sister language of Modern English , as the two diverged from the same medieval form of English. Scots is recognised as an indigenous language of Scotland by

1975-481: The English Dialect Dictionary , edited by Joseph Wright . Wright had great difficulty in recruiting volunteers from Scotland, as many refused to cooperate with a venture that regarded Scots as a dialect of English, and he obtained enough help only through the assistance from a Professor Shearer in Scotland. Wright himself rejected the argument that Scots was a separate language, saying that this

2054-509: The Linguistic Survey of Scotland . Dialects of Scots include Insular Scots , Northern Scots , Central Scots , Southern Scots and Ulster Scots . It has been difficult to determine the number of speakers of Scots via census, because many respondents might interpret the question "Do you speak Scots?" in different ways. Campaigners for Scots pressed for this question to be included in the 2001 UK National Census . The results from

2133-735: The Protestant Church of Scotland adopted the 1611 Authorized King James Version of the Bible; subsequently, the Acts of Union 1707 led to Scotland joining England to form the Kingdom of Great Britain , having a single Parliament of Great Britain based in London. After the Union and the shift of political power to England, the use of Scots was discouraged by many in authority and education, as

2212-791: The Romance languages via ecclesiastical and legal Latin , Norman French , and later Parisian French , due to the Auld Alliance . Additionally, there were Dutch and Middle Low German influences due to trade with and immigration from the Low Countries . Scots also includes loan words in the legal and administrative fields resulting from contact with Middle Irish , and reflected in early medieval legal documents. Contemporary Scottish Gaelic loans are mainly for geographical and cultural features, such as cèilidh , loch , whisky , glen and clan . Cumbric and Pictish ,

2291-469: The Second World War . It has recently taken on the nature of wholesale language shift , sometimes also termed language change , convergence or merger . By the end of the twentieth century, Scots was at an advanced stage of language death over much of Lowland Scotland . Residual features of Scots are often regarded as slang. A 2010 Scottish Government study of "public attitudes towards

2370-594: The University of Aberdeen , and only included reared speakers (people raised speaking Scots), not those who had learned the language. Part of the difference resulted from the central question posed by surveys: "Do you speak Scots?". In the Aberdeen University study, the question was augmented with the further clause "... or a dialect of Scots such as Border etc.", which resulted in greater recognition from respondents. The GRO concluded that there simply

2449-465: The courtier Patrick Johnston and known poet Walter Kennedy , the latter of whom died c.  1508 . From internal evidence, the lament is generally thought to have been composed c. 1505. Most of the names can be traced to either the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. The list of names in the Lament for the Makaris , all of which are from what Dunbar in the poem calls his " facultie ", suggests

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2528-554: The Crowns in 1603, the Standard English of England came to have an increasing influence on the spelling of Scots through the increasing influence and availability of books printed in England. After the Acts of Union in 1707 the emerging Scottish form of Standard English replaced Scots for most formal writing in Scotland. The eighteenth-century Scots revival saw the introduction of a new literary language descended from

2607-454: The Kingdom of Great Britain, there is ample evidence that Scots was widely held to be an independent sister language forming a pluricentric diasystem with English. German linguist Heinz Kloss considered Modern Scots a Halbsprache ('half language') in terms of an abstand and ausbau languages framework, although today in Scotland most people's speech is somewhere on

2686-520: The Philosopher's Stane , a Scots translation of the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone , was published by Matthew Fitt . The vowel system of Modern Scots: Vowel length is usually conditioned by the Scottish vowel length rule . The orthography of Early Scots had become more or less standardised by the middle to late sixteenth century. After the Union of

2765-480: The Scots language was also featured. It was found that 1,508,540 people reported that they could speak Scots, with 2,444,659 reporting that they could speak, read, write or understand Scots, approximately 45% of Scotland's 2022 population. The Scottish Government set its first Scots Language Policy in 2015, in which it pledged to support its preservation and encourage respect, recognition and use of Scots. The Scottish Parliament website also offers some information on

2844-471: The Scots language" found that 64% of respondents (around 1,000 individuals in a representative sample of Scotland's adult population) "don't really think of Scots as a language", also finding "the most frequent speakers are least likely to agree that it is not a language (58%) and those never speaking Scots most likely to do so (72%)". Before the Treaty of Union 1707 , when Scotland and England joined to form

2923-581: The Scottish Executive recognises and respects Scots (in all its forms) as a distinct language, and does not consider the use of Scots to be an indication of poor competence in English. Evidence for its existence as a separate language lies in the extensive body of Scots literature, its independent – if somewhat fluid – orthographic conventions , and in its former use as the language of the original Parliament of Scotland . Because Scotland retained distinct political, legal, and religious systems after

3002-495: The Scottish government, a regional or minority language of Europe, and a vulnerable language by UNESCO . In a Scottish census from 2022, over 1.5 million people in Scotland reported being able to speak Scots. Given that there are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing a language from a dialect , scholars and other interested parties often disagree about the linguistic, historical and social status of Scots, particularly its relationship to English . Although

3081-638: The Standard English cognate . This Written Scots drew not only on the vernacular, but also on the King James Bible , and was heavily influenced by the norms and conventions of Augustan English poetry . Consequently, this written Scots looked very similar to contemporary Standard English, suggesting a somewhat modified version of that, rather than a distinct speech form with a phonological system which had been developing independently for many centuries. This modern literary dialect, "Scots of

3160-497: The Union, many Scots terms passed into Scottish English. During the 2010s, increased interest was expressed in the language. The status of the language was raised in Scottish schools, with Scots being included in the new national school curriculum . Previously in Scotland's schools there had been little education taking place through the medium of Scots, although it may have been covered superficially in English lessons, which could entail reading some Scots literature and observing

3239-704: The activities of those such as Thomas Sheridan , who in 1761 gave a series of lectures on English elocution . Charging a guinea at a time (about £200 in today's money ), they were attended by over 300 men, and he was made a freeman of the City of Edinburgh . Following this, some of the city's intellectuals formed the Select Society for Promoting the Reading and Speaking of the English Language in Scotland. These eighteenth-century activities would lead to

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3318-521: The book" or Standard Scots, once again gave Scots an orthography of its own, lacking neither "authority nor author". This literary language used throughout Lowland Scotland and Ulster, embodied by writers such as Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson, Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Murray , David Herbison , James Orr, James Hogg and William Laidlaw among others, is well described in the 1921 Manual of Modern Scots . Other authors developed dialect writing, preferring to represent their own speech in

3397-575: The border between English and Scots dialects. Scots was studied alongside English and Scots Gaelic in the Linguistic Survey of Scotland at the University of Edinburgh , which began in 1949 and began to publish results in the 1970s. Also beginning in the 1970s, the Atlas Linguarum Europae studied the Scots language used at 15 sites in Scotland, each with its own dialect. From the mid-sixteenth century, written Scots

3476-443: The case because her husband's name is included in an appendix of relatives and acquaintances that George attached to the manuscript. Catherine was the daughter of James Bannatyne of Kirktown of Newtyle (1512–1584), a lawyer and burgess of Edinburgh. She was one of 23 children born to him and his first wife, Catherine Telfer (1522–1570). Catherine married William Stewart, and they had a son named Sir Lewis Stewart of Kirkhill. He became

3555-497: The compiler's five-part scheme. Alexander Montgomerie is represented by several poems including "Lyk as the dum Solsequium". Dunbar's "In vice most vicius he excellis" is also included. A poem added to the appendices by Allan Ramsay in 1726 pays tribute to the poetry of the Bannatyne Manuscript and records his use of it in compiling "The Ever Green" of 1724, while borrowed from Carmichael of Skirling. It would be

3634-566: The complementary decline of French made Scots the prestige dialect of most of eastern Scotland. By the sixteenth century, Middle Scots had established orthographic and literary norms largely independent of those developing in England. From 1610 to the 1690s during the Plantation of Ulster , some 200,000 Scots-speaking Lowlanders settled as colonists in Ulster in Ireland. In the core areas of Scots settlement, Scots outnumbered English settlers by five or six to one. The name Modern Scots

3713-403: The creation of Scottish Standard English . Scots remained the vernacular of many rural communities and the growing number of urban working-class Scots. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the use of Scots as a literary language was revived by several prominent Scotsmen such as Robert Burns . Such writers established a new cross-dialect literary norm. Scots terms were included in

3792-556: The document and participated in an eponymous club dedicated to the study and publication of historic Scots literature. The first printed transcript of the manuscript was published by the Bannatyne Club, in three volumes, between 1827 and 1855. The Hunterian Club published a new transcript in 1896. The manuscript is now held by the National Library of Scotland with the shelfmark Adv.MS.1.1.6. A digital version of

3871-434: The earlier i-mutated version Scyttisc . Before the end of the fifteenth century, English speech in Scotland was known as "English" (written Ynglis or Inglis at the time), whereas "Scottish" ( Scottis ) referred to Gaelic . By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the English language used in Scotland had arguably become a distinct language, albeit one lacking a name which clearly distinguished it from all

3950-749: The early twentieth century, a renaissance in the use of Scots occurred, its most vocal figure being Hugh MacDiarmid whose benchmark poem " A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle " (1926) did much to demonstrate the power of Scots as a modern idiom. Other contemporaries were Douglas Young , John Buchan , Sydney Goodsir Smith , Robert Garioch , Edith Anne Robertson and Robert McLellan . The revival extended to verse and other literature. In 1955, three Ayrshire men – Sandy MacMillan, an English teacher at Ayr Academy ; Thomas Limond, noted town chamberlain of Ayr ; and A. L. "Ross" Taylor, rector of Cumnock Academy – collaborated to write Bairnsangs ("Child Songs"),

4029-516: The fifteenth century, much literature based on the Royal Court in Edinburgh and the University of St Andrews was produced by writers such as Robert Henryson , William Dunbar , Gavin Douglas and David Lyndsay . The Complaynt of Scotland was an early printed work in Scots. The Eneados is a Middle Scots translation of Virgil 's Aeneid , completed by Gavin Douglas in 1513. After

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4108-622: The language in Scots. In September 2024, experts of the Council of Europe called on the UK Government to "boost support for regional and minority languages", including the Scots Language. The serious use of the Scots language for news, encyclopaediae, documentaries, etc., remains rare. It is reportedly reserved for niches where it is deemed acceptable, e.g. comedy, Burns Night or traditions' representations. Since 2016,

4187-574: The language used in different situations. Such an approach would be inappropriate for a Census." Thus, although it was acknowledged that the "inclusion of such a Census question would undoubtedly raise the profile of Scots", no question about Scots was, in the end, included in the 2001 Census. The Scottish Government's Pupils in Scotland Census 2008 found that 306 pupils spoke Scots as their main home language. A Scottish Government study in 2010 found that 85% of around 1000 respondents (being

4266-430: The last addition to the manuscript. In Seventeen hundred twenty-four, Did Allan Ramsay keen, gather from this book that store, Which fills his Ever Green. Thrice fifty and sax towmonds neat, Frae when it was colected, Let worthy poets hope good fate, Throw time they'll be respected. Fashions of words and witt may change, And rob in part their fame, And make them to dull fops look strange, But sense

4345-571: The local dialect. Much of the material used was often Standard English disguised as Scots, which caused upset among proponents of Standard English and proponents of Scots alike. One example of the educational establishment's approach to Scots is, "Write a poem in Scots. (It is important not to be worried about spelling in this – write as you hear the sounds in your head.)", whereas guidelines for English require teaching pupils to be "writing fluently and legibly with accurate spelling and punctuation". A course in Scots language and culture delivered through

4424-498: The manuscript contains poems with moral or philosophical themes. Among the pieces in the section are Henrysons's "The Abbay Walk", "The Ressoning Betwix Aige and Yowth", "The Ressoning Betwix Deth and Man" and "The Praise of Age". Dunbar's work is well-represented by "All Erdly Joy Returnis In Pane", "Of Manis Mortalitie", "Tydings Fra The Sessioun", "A General Satire", "Of Deming", "Of Covetyce", "Rewl Of Anis Self", "None May Assure In This Warld", "Schir Yet Remembir As Of Befoir", and

4503-409: The manuscript is available to view online. The Bannatyne Manuscript is currently bound as two volumes, with each leaf mounted separately. Volume I comprising 192 leaves is paginated 1–385, while volume II comprising 205 leaves is paginated 387–795. The volumes were rebound in 19th-century green morocco. The Bannatyne Manuscript was divided by its compiler into five principal sections. It also contains

4582-467: The manuscript records that it was presented by William Foulis of Woodhall, a descendant of Bannatyne, to William Carmichael of Skirling in 1712. In the early Eighteenth Century, Allan Ramsay reproduced pieces from the manuscript in his compilation The Ever Green between 1724 and 1727. The manuscript was acquired by the Advocates' Library of Edinburgh in 1772. Walter Scott took an interest in

4661-493: The medieval Brittonic languages of Northern England and Scotland, are the suspected source of a small number of Scots words, such as lum (derived from Cumbric) meaning "chimney". From the thirteenth century, the Early Scots language spread further into Scotland via the burghs , which were proto-urban institutions first established by King David I . In fourteenth-century Scotland, the growth in prestige of Early Scots and

4740-614: The medium of Standard English and produced by the Open University (OU) in Scotland, the Open University's School of Languages and Applied Linguistics as well as Education Scotland became available online for the first time in December 2019. In the 2011 Scottish census , a question on Scots language ability was featured In the 2022 census conducted by the Scottish Government , a question in relation to

4819-420: The newspaper The National has regularly published articles in the language. The 2010s also saw an increasing number of English books translated in Scots and becoming widely available, particularly those in popular children's fiction series such as The Gruffalo , Harry Potter , Diary of a Wimpy Kid , and several by Roald Dahl and David Walliams . In 2021, the music streaming service Spotify created

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4898-401: The old court Scots, but with an orthography that had abandoned some of the more distinctive old Scots spellings and adopted many standard English spellings. Despite the updated spelling, however, the rhymes make it clear that a Scots pronunciation was intended. These writings also introduced what came to be known as the apologetic apostrophe , generally occurring where a consonant exists in

4977-458: The other English variants and dialects spoken in Britain. From 1495, the term Scottis was increasingly used to refer to the Lowland vernacular and Erse , meaning "Irish", was used as a name for Gaelic. For example, towards the end of the fifteenth century, William Dunbar was using Erse to refer to Gaelic and, in the early sixteenth century, Gavin Douglas was using Scottis as

5056-497: The past (e.g. Corby or the former mining areas of Kent ). In the 2022 census conducted by the Scottish Government , it was found that 1,508,540 people reported that they could speak Scots, with 2,444,659 reporting that they could speak, read, write or understand Scots, approximately 45% of Scotland's 2022 population. Among the earliest Scots literature is John Barbour's Brus (fourteenth century), Wyntoun 's Cronykil and Blind Harry 's The Wallace (fifteenth century). From

5135-652: The prologue to the fourth book of The Eneados . t" . The "Fyift Pairt" of the manuscript is given over to fables and other allegories . Ten of Henryson's Morall Fabillis are included alongside the same author's Orpheus and Euridice , "Robene And Makyne" and "The Bludy Serk". Dunbar is represented by "The Goldyn Targe" and The Thrissil and the Rois . The fifth section also contains The Howlat , "The Freiris Of Berwick" and "Colkelbie Sow". The manuscript's appendices, often written by anonymous scribes other than Bannatyne, contain works which are not classified according to

5214-562: The reference to him as a poet of love also accords with the fact that some love poems are attributed to a "Mersar" in the Bannatyne MS . Finally, if the lines "That scorpion fell hes done infek,/ Maister Johne Clerk, and James Afflek,/ Fra balat making and tragidie " can be taken to impart literal information, then it might infer that some particular reputation for work with more serious themes attached to these names. At that time in Scotland "tragedy" denoted any "story, play or poem with

5293-413: The remainder had some degree of skill, such as understanding Scots (0.27 million, 5.2%) or being able to speak it but not read or write it (0.18 million, 3.5%). There were also small numbers of Scots speakers recorded in England and Wales on the 2011 Census, with the largest numbers being either in bordering areas (e.g. Carlisle ) or in areas that had recruited large numbers of Scottish workers in

5372-521: The seventeenth century, anglicisation increased. At the time, many of the oral ballads from the borders and the North East were written down. Writers of the period were Robert Sempill , Robert Sempill the younger , Francis Sempill , Lady Wardlaw and Lady Grizel Baillie . In the eighteenth century, writers such as Allan Ramsay , Robert Burns , James Orr , Robert Fergusson and Walter Scott continued to use Scots – Burns's " Auld Lang Syne "

5451-434: The theme of love, into four subsections: Most of the poems in the section are ascribed to no author. Alexander Scott's poetry is predominant among the named poets. The section contains Dunbar's "Gude Counsale", "Bewty And The Presoneir", "Of The Lady Solistaris At Court","In Prais Of Wemen", "Quha Will Behald Of Luve The Chance" and "Inconstancy Of Luve". Henryson is represented by "The Garment of Gud Ladeis" and Douglas by

5530-536: The thirteenth century. The succeeding variety of Northern Early Middle English spoken in southeastern Scotland is also known as Early Scots . It began to further diverge from the Middle English of Northumbria due to twelfth- and thirteenth-century immigration of Scandinavian-influenced Middle English–speakers from the North and Midlands of England . Later influences on the development of Scots came from

5609-543: The trilogy consisting of "Of Discretioun In Asking", "Of Discretioun In Geving" and "Of Discretioun in Taking". The second section also contains the prologue to the ninth book of Gavin Douglas' Eneados and Alexander Scott's " Ane New Yeir Gift to Quene Mary ". The third section of the manuscript is dedicated to comic entertainment with a heavy bias toward satire . It includes a largely-complete text of Sir David Lyndsay's Satyre Of The Thrie Estaitis . Scott's work

5688-820: The twentieth-century biographer of James Boswell (1740–1795), described James's view of the use of Scots by his father Alexander Boswell (1706–1782) in the eighteenth century while serving as a judge of the Supreme Courts of Scotland : He scorned modern literature, spoke broad Scots from the bench, and even in writing took no pains to avoid the Scotticisms which most of his colleagues were coming to regard as vulgar. However, others did scorn Scots, such as Scottish Enlightenment intellectuals David Hume and Adam Smith , who went to great lengths to get rid of every Scotticism from their writings. Following such examples, many well-off Scots took to learning English through

5767-604: The varieties of Scots are dialects of Scottish English or constitute a separate language in their own right. The UK government now accepts Scots as a regional language and has recognised it as such under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages . Notwithstanding the UK government's and the Scottish Executive's obligations under part II of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages,

5846-489: Was a "quite modern mistake". During the first half of the twentieth century, knowledge of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literary norms waned, and as of 2006 , there is no institutionalised standard literary form. By the 1940s, the Scottish Education Department 's language policy was that Scots had no value: "it is not the language of 'educated' people anywhere, and could not be described as

5925-659: Was increasingly influenced by the developing Standard English of Southern England due to developments in royal and political interactions with England. When William Flower , an English herald , spoke with Mary of Guise and her councillors in 1560, they first used the "Scottyshe toung" . As he found this hard to understand, they switched into her native French. King James VI , who in 1603 became James I of England , observed in his work Some Reulis and Cautelis to Be Observit and Eschewit in Scottis Poesie that "For albeit sindrie hes written of it in English, quhilk

6004-408: Was isolated in his home, escaping the plague that had reached Edinburgh. Bannatyne was motivated by his desire to preserve Scottish literary heritage when compiling this anthology and also included some of his own writing in the manuscript. Contrary to popular claims, it is not the earliest surviving record of the word " fuck ". According to the text of the manuscript itself, it represents; A note in

6083-415: Was not enough linguistic self-awareness amongst the Scottish populace, with people still thinking of themselves as speaking badly pronounced, grammatically inferior English rather than Scots, for an accurate census to be taken. The GRO research concluded that "[a] more precise estimate of genuine Scots language ability would require a more in-depth interview survey and may involve asking various questions about

6162-432: Was the notion of "Scottishness" itself. Many leading Scots of the period, such as David Hume , defined themselves as Northern British rather than Scottish. They attempted to rid themselves of their Scots in a bid to establish standard English as the official language of the newly formed union. Nevertheless, Scots was still spoken across a wide range of domains until the end of the eighteenth century. Frederick Pottle ,

6241-497: Was translated into Scots by Rab Wilson and published in 2004. Alexander Hutchison has translated the poetry of Catullus into Scots, and in the 1980s, Liz Lochhead produced a Scots translation of Tartuffe by Molière . J. K. Annand translated poetry and fiction from German and Medieval Latin into Scots. The strip cartoons Oor Wullie and The Broons in the Sunday Post use some Scots. In 2018, Harry Potter and

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