Scotia Extremis by Andy Jackson and Brian Johnstone sampler

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Scotland: a Split Personality? I’ll ha’e nae hauf-way hoose, but aye be whaur / Extremes meet – Hugh MacDiarmid if a nation can be said to have a soul then the soul of the Scottish nation is surely one which is permanently strung out between the extremes that MacDiarmid evokes in what must be one of his most quotable lines. Taken from his great early poem A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, it seems to sum up both the irascible poet and his nation so well. It was not, of course, his only foray into examining the split psyche of the country. He also explored the notion of the Caledonian Antisyzygy, a term coined by G Gregory Smith in 1919 to encapsulate the conflicting extremes within the culture of Scotland and which MacDiarmid expanded on in a 1931 essay. In his original essay Smith wrote of Scottish literature as being ‘remarkably varied, and becoming, under the stress of foreign influence, almost a zigzag of contradictions.’ Perhaps the most famous examples of this ‘split personality’ in our country’s culture are Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Such dichotomies persist throughout Scottish literary history, however. The rural/urban split goes as far back as the 1480s and Robert Henrysoun’s The Taill of the Uponlandis Mous and the Burges Mous. In Scotland, rivalries seem to be almost a given. It is not difficult to think of examples: Edinburgh / Glasgow, Rangers / Celtic, Native Tongue / English, Protestant/Catholic, not to mention Scottish/British that seemed to be the choice presented to Scots in 2014’s independence referendum. Within Calvinism, Scotland’s very own rigorous form of Protestantism, there is the conflict between the saved – those predestined for heaven – and the eternally damned. Just read Burns’s Holy Willie’s Prayer for elucidation. The whole split personality of the country is perhaps best seen in two contrasting attitudes with which Scottishness is associated: the posturing of ‘wha’s like us? – damn few an they’re aa deid’ and the cultural self-abnegation exemplified by the so-called ‘Scottish cringe’. Where else can anyone live – and write – who lives in Scotland other than ‘whaur extremes meet’? Brian Johnstone, February 2019 12
Whigmaleeries the saltire ~ the lion rampant heather ~ thistle the white heather club ~ the people’s friend tweed ~ tartan glasgow empire ~ glasgow barrowland ballroom haggis ~ nessie 13
Page 3 and 4: andy jackson was born in Salford, E
Page 5 and 6: Scotia Extremis Poems from the extr
Page 7 and 8: Contents Introduction 11 Scotland:
Page 9 and 10: Marion McCready Polphail Village 65
Page 11 and 12: J L Williams A Rush A Kiss A Rush 1
Page 13: Introduction The concept for the Sc
Page 17 and 18: The Lion Rampant We Scots are a fre
Page 19: Melancholy Thistle, Garvald Quarry

Scotia Extremis by Andy Jackson and Brian Johnstone sampler

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