Scottish Love Poems

I ordered this one a few months ago and finally found it smoldering in my mailbox last week. I'll write about the insides later, but I loved one of the blurbs on the back cover:

"Far from the dourness and taciturnity of legend, the Scot appears here as a lover only slightly less impressive than the Italian."
-The Times

That made me laugh. I grew up listening to Roddy Frame and The Trashcan Sinatras so I guess I was better prepared than The Times for the lack of dourness. As I expected, there's some great stuff here....

Like the Hugh MacDiarmid I was reading last week, some of the poems are in Scots, which can be a challenge. Often I can puzzle it out by reading aloud. The bonus is getting to sound like a female Groundskeeper Willie. Och!

Comments

[Leah]

The last time we were in Scotland, my husband and I went on a "literature" walk in Edinburgh which consisted of lots of pub stops and a man and a woman reciting Robert Burns' poetry and arguing whether he was a romantic or a drunken womanizer (based on the poem). It was great!

"Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose,
Frae aff its thorny tree;
And my fause luver staw the rose,
But left the thorn wi' me."

Robert Burns "The Banks o' Doon"

[Greer]

That must have been a great tour, Leah. Thank you for sharing the poem. Have you heard the cd 'Eddi Reader Sings The Songs Of Robert Burns'? Really, really lovely.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXH9DVS76yM

[Leah]

I haven't - I will check it out on youtube!

Leah