Promoting and supporting the teaching and study of Scottish literature and language
Marina Dossena is Professor of English Language, and Head of the MA programme in European and Pan-American Languages and Literatures at the University of Bergamo (Italy). She is the author of Scotticisms in Grammar and Vocabulary: Like Runes Upon a Standin’ Stane? and co-editor of Letter Writing in Late Modern Europe.
Rule no. 1: Haud yer wheesht! Tam O’Shanter is probably one of the best-known characters in Scottish literature: everybody knows of his love of ae guid crack and ae guid dram, and his narrow escape from the clutches of enraged witches is a landmark moment in poetic story-telling. However, oor Tam has only himself to […]
When The Bottle Imp very kindly invited me to review The Speak House, I did not imagine it would be such a fiendishly difficult task. Of course, it is always difficult to review literature in general, and poetry in particular, but in this case there were additional complications that made the text both more appealing […]
Over the last couple of years, readers of fiction and international TV audiences have become increasingly familiar with the magic of Scottish landscapes thanks to the adventures of a dashing Highlander and his time-travelling spouse from southern England, affectionately called ‘Sassenach’. While the endearing quality of the nickname may be questioned, especially when one considers that the […]
There’s mair nor a roch wind blawin’ Through the great glen o’ the warld the day (H. Henderson, Freedom come all ye, 1960) The connection between history and song, whether popular, radical, or both, is long and well–established in many countries, as tradition, politics and chronicle have often blended in an expressive form capable of eliciting […]
In a letter to his cousin Bob, dated Vailima c. 9 September 18941, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote: DEAR BOB, – You are in error about the Picts. They were a Gaelic race, spoke a Celtic tongue, and we have no evidence that I know of that they were blacker than other Celts. […] The Picts […]