Sing like a linty
Sing like a linty
Let your voice be heard
Each note an each cadence
An ilk spoken wurd.
Forget the detractors
For these are the ones
Wha stand on the sidelines
Like hunters wi guns.
They’ll shoot down yer music
Ilk word that ye’ve sung
Tae pluck oot yer feathers
And tear out your tongue.
For here is the sport
And the game that they seek
Tae rile an tae herry
Ilk wurd that ye speak.
And even tho it’s just plain wrang
They’ll trash it ‘chavvie’
‘Rough’
or ‘slang’.
So write doon yer language
Scrieve, let it fly
Sing like a linty
Ye’re a burd in the sky.
About this poem
This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2020. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The Scots editor in 2020 was Thomas Clark.
Hamish MacDonald’s 2020 poetry collection, “Wilson’s Ornithology and Burds in Scots”, is a byous, aff-beat mervel o a buik. MacDonald is a maister o the roch edge – thon sudden chynge o texture in a line or image that clauchts at yer een or yer lug like a skelf. His poetry is shairp, tentie, an – whit’s mair – funny. Humour in poetry is a gey kittlie thing tae dae richt, but MacDonald gets it bang on ilka time, wi thon kind o West Coast whimsy that is somehow baith earnest an earned.
Author’s Note:
The poem features in the book Wilson’s Ornithology & Burds in Scots, a collection of poems in Scots set alongside the illustrations of Scots poet and naturalist Alexander Wilson (1766-1813) who became the founding father of American ornithology. As baith bairns and adults we were encouraged to ‘sing like a linty’ (linnet) whenever the occasion of a party or social gathering arose and yet the Scots tongue in which we often expressed ourselves continues to be repressed and vilified in public life. The poem is a call to lose our inhibitions when it comes to writing and speaking in Scots, to ignore the detractors and naysayers and to let language be expressed and heard.
