What I learned when I translated Hamlet into Scots

A SELECTION of recent books from Orkney highlights the significance of regional Scots voices, or, if “regional” suggests a restriction, “archipelagic” might be a better term. All island groups are archipelagos and nations are also archipelagic configurations. It’s a better idea than one trying to lord it over all the others.

Archipelagic identity is the prevailing ethos of the two books edited by Alison Miller. That Bright Lifting Tide: Twelve Orkney Writers, with a foreword by Liz Lochhead (Kirkwall, The Orcadian, for the George Mackay Brown Fellowship: wirdsmit, 2015) is a short compendium of biographical-critical essays, portraits and extracts from The Orkneyinga Saga, written around 1200 AD, through Mary Brunton, Walter Traill Dennison, J Storer Clouston, Edwin Muir, Robert Rendall, Eric Linklater, CM Costie, Ann Scott-Moncrieff, Ernest Marwick, Margaret Tait, George Mackay Brown and Bessie Skea.

The complementary volume, also edited by Miller, is Gousters, Glims and Veerie-Orums: Writeen fae Orkney Voices, with a foreword by Simon Hall (Kirkwall: The Orcadian, 2021), which publishes the work of contemporaries, Barbara Johnston, Barbara West, Caroline Hume, Greer Norquoy, Ingrid Grieve, Issy Grieve, Lorraine Bruce, Moyra Brown, Sheila Garson, Vera Butler and Miller herself.

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Taken together, the diversity and depth of the work in both books is a vivid testament to the health of crafty and imaginative writing in the cradle the Orkney archipelago affords.

Liz Lochhead quotes Mackay Brown at the opening of her foreword to the former book: “We never thought there could be writers in our islands. Writers were people who lives in cities and faraway places. The islands were for fishermen, farmers and shopkeepers.”

George himself, Liz in her Foreword , and then each writer in turn, introduced by Miller, demonstrates two things – one, that the islands were and have always been populated by writers, storytellers, poets, but also that it’s taken until relatively recently for a wider public to become aware of them, or rather, for the veil of obscurity and self-concealment to be removed and free access to their work to be available for younger generations. Progress is possible, and these books are its demonstration.

To accompany them, beautifully produced chapbooks give solo space, as if for an artist’s first one-person exhibition: Ingrid Leonard’s Rammo in Stennes (Brecka, Stenness, Orkney: Abersee Press, 2022) and Kevin Cormack’s Toonie Void (Breckan, Stenness, Orkney: Abersee Press, 2021). Each is an original voice, local but also with international provenance, emotionally highly literate and intellectually sharp and insightful.

And Ragnhild Ljosland’s book, Chrissie’s Bodle: Discovering Orkney’s Forgotten Writer Christina M. Costie (Kirkwall: The Orcadian, 2011) looks in greater detail at Christina Mackay Costie (1902-67), a “true poet” not to be dismissed as a “spinster lawyer” writer of mere “verse”. The book is an impressive revaluation, scholarly, accessible, intriguing and objective, a retelling of the story of a writer’s life overshadowed by more familiar names and oppressed within a patriarchy given to the neglect of discrimination and value.

Colin Burnett’s A Working Class State of Mind (Edinburgh: Pierpoint Press, 2021) is at the other end of the spectrum from these Orkney writers. A series of short chapters centres on three friends, Aldo, Dougie and Craig, as they abuse themselves and others, surviving with gleeful and intermittently amoral abandon.

Malevolence is sometimes part of what’s done in this world and there’s no shying away from it. The humour is quickening, and a kind of liability. You have to watch out, for laughter has no moral priority. Humour can always serve more than one political purpose.

The opening chapter begins: “Ah laid the boax ae painkillers alongside the boattle ae Smirnoff vodka oan the coffee table.” You know exactly where you are after one sentence.

The second chapter begins: “The inside ae a bettin shoap is some sight. Yince yur in here yae cannae help but feel civilisation as we ken it is comin tae an abrupt end.”

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The ethos is a younger-generation Irvine Welsh and generations pass over very quickly in this world. Like Trainspotting, the structure comprises short stories that build into an interconnected world, a novel in-the-making that leaves the door open. The arc of its trajectory arises from the Thatcher era: “Suttin Thatcher did dae fur the better, even if it wis unintentional, wis that she set future workin class Scots free fae the oot dated brain washed mentality that somehow bein British actually meant suttin.

‘Fur aw ma faither’s generation’s rage against the machine, eh? Maist ae thum seemed proud tae be British. But the moment she started shuttin doon the British industries wis the day bein Scottish started tae mean suttin again.”

But we’re taken forward into Covid-era lockdown. The book centres on the virtues of friendship, dog-walking, and caring about, as well as exploiting, vulnerable others as well as ourselves.

Written entirely in East-coast Scots, the novel is lucid, fast, funny, hard, twisty, comical, brutal, benign, happily cheeky, and so linguistically erratic that the nature of being erratic quickly becomes an incontrovertible virtue – the reader is just wheeched alang ithoot devaul or even mercy. It leaves you asking, “When’s the sequel?” I’m assured there is one on the way.

We’ve roamed around in the Scots language in literature in various forms over the last few weeks, in poems, prose fiction, critical and historical exposition, and across the nation’s geographical diversity. We’ve noted a number of locations and the idioms, dialects, language forms peculiar to each of them, and we’ve considered the spectrum of literary language, from the most “authentic” in the sense of quasi-documentary transcription of spoken, native, indigenous voices, to the most artificial – in a good sense – of literary language constructed from whatever sources seem apt.

Sydney Goodsir Smith’s rebuke to negativity, “Wha the deil spoke like King Lear?” is a keen reminder of the eternal counter-argument, “Yes. We can.” So here’s an extended example to play with.

Translating King Lear into Scots

This is a translation I made into Scots of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act I, Scene I. Everyone knows what happens in Hamlet. In the opening scene, the night guards Bernardo and Francisco are exchanging places when Hamlet’s friend Horatio arrives with Marcellus. The guards have seen the ghost of Hamlet’s father, and they’ve brought Horatio up to the battlements to confirm its identity, should it re-appear. It does so, twice, but doesn’t speak.

This group of frightened mortals will take the news to the young Hamlet and see what he makes of it. The atmosphere is full of foreboding. The whole country is preparing for war. Something is very much out of place, and indeed, rotten in the state itself. It feels pretty close to where we are in Scotland, right now.

The Scots language version not only emphasises that proximity but brings out something in Shakespeare that is darker and more blackly comic, bitter and ironic. What better way to enter the new year?

Barnardo: Wha’s there?

Francisco: Naw, but, answer me. Haud and unfauld yersel’!

Barnardo: Lang live the King!

Francisco: Barnardo?

Barnardo: Aye!

Francisco: Fegs, but ye’re here oan yir time.

Barnardo: I’ th’ howe-dumb-deid. Awa’ tae yir kip, Francisco.

Francisco: Mercy tae ye. It’s cauld eneuch and I’m richt seek at hert.

Barnardo: Haen ye a quaet guard?

Francisco: There’s no’ a moose stirrin’.

Barnardo: Weel, weel. Guid nicht. Gin ye suld see twa ither sauls,

Tell them – ‘Mak’ haste!’

Francisco: I’m thinkin’ I’m hearin’ them here… Haud! Wha’s that?

ENTER Marcellus and Horatio

Marcellus: Freends, freends tae this grund!

Horatio: Aye, an’ leal men tae the Dane!

Francisco: Aye. Weel, an’ guid nicht.

Marcellus: Fareweill, honest sodger. Wha hes yir place?

Francisco: Barnardo. Guid nicht.

EXIT Francisco

Marcellus: Hoa! Barnardo!

Barnardo: Aye! Is Horatio wi’ ye?

Horatio: Aye, weill, a piece o’m.

Barnardo: Fair fa’ an’ welcome! Horatio! Marcellus! –

Marcellus: And hes yon thing appeart again the nicht?

Barnardo: I’ve seen naethin’ yet.

Marcellus: Horatio says it’s naethin’ but oor fantice.

He’ll no’ gie ony credit tae the dreidfu’ sicht

We’ve seen here twice, sae I’ve brocht him here

Tae staund attent in the meenits o’ this nicht,

That gin this veesion come,

He’ll grant oor een were true, and speir o’t.

Horatio: Wheesht, wheesht. It’ll no’ appear.

Barnardo: But nou, sit doun. Gang owre aince mair

Whit we twa nichts hae witnessed

Even tae lugs sae stapped as his.

Horatio: Aye bit sit doun,

And let us hear Barnardo speak o’t.

Barnardo: ’Twas juist the nicht afore,

When yon same star, the west’rt frae the pole

Had gone its wey tae licht that pert o’ heevin

Whaur it sits bleezin’ nou, Marcellus an’ masel’,

As the bell struck ane –

ENTER Ghost

Marcellus: Wheesht! Oh, wheesht ye nou. Glisk whaur it gangs again!

Barnardo: I’ the self-like luik o’ the king that’s deid.

Marcellus: Horatio, ye’re a learnit man – speir at it nou –

Barnardo: Is it no’ the king’s ain image? Dae ye ken it nou, Horatio?

Horatio: Maist like. I am dumfoonert a’ wi’ fear an’ wonder.

Barnardo: It begs ye speir o’t.

Marcellus: Aye, speir o’t, Horatio.

Horatio: What like are ye, usurper o’ this time o’ nicht?

Wi’ fair an’ warlike form

The like o’ whilk the buried King o’ Denmark

Marched himsel’ betimes? Speak! I’ Gode’s name, speak!

Marcellus: It’s taken umbrage.

Barnardo: Luik. It irks awa’.

Horatio: Haud! Haud! An’ speak! –

EXIT Ghost

Marcellus: It’s gane, an’ wullny answer.

Barnardo: Hoo’s this, Horatio? Ye trummle an’ grow jabbed.

Is this no’ somethin’ mair than mere fantice?

Your thocht, man?

Horatio: Afore my God, I michtna credit it yet

Wi’oot the sense an’ honest witness

O’ my ain twa een.

Marcellus: Is’t no’ like the King?

Horatio: As you are tae yersel’.

Yon wis the vera armour he hid oan

When he focht ambitious Norroway.

An’ yince he glowered like that in fushious fecht,

When strikin’ sleddin’ Polacks oan the ice.

It’s gey unco’.

Marcellus: An’ twice afore, an’ juist at this deid ’oor,

Wi’ military sway, he’s passed oor watch.

Horatio: I’ what dreid thocht tae work, I canna ken

But i’ the circumspect o’ my opeenion,

It bodes a strange eruption tae oor state.

Marcellus: Aye, weel, sit doon, an’ tell me, he that kens,

Why sic same strict an’ maist observin’ watch

Sae nichtly toils the subjects o’ the land?

An’ why sic daily cast o’ brazen cannon

An’ foreign mart for implements o’war?

Why sic impress o’ shipwrichts, whase sair task

Pits Sunday i’ th’ middle o’ th’ week?

Whit’s up, that sic an sweaty haste

Suld drive the labour nicht as weel as day?

Wha can say?

Horatio: I’ll answer ye.

At least hoo the speik o’t is. Oor last king

Whase image even noo appear’t tae us

Was, as ye ken, by Fortinbras o’ Norroway

Brocht by a jealous pride

Tae combat. And there oor valiant Hamlet –

(For sae indeed this hemisphere hes ca’d ’m)

Slew Fortinbras; wha, by seal’d compact

Approv’t by law and heraldry,

Norroway’d tae forfeit wi’ ’is life

A’ the lands he’d conquer’t tae ’is vanquisher.

An’ a moiety King Hamlet tuik.

An’ juist as like wad Fortinbras ha’e ta’en’t a’ as his,

Gin he’d bin vanquisher. But as the thing fell oot,

His fell tae Hamlet. Nou, sir, young Fortinbras,

A youngsome, unlearn’t, unapproven, gilpy chiel,

Ran i’ the skirts o’ Norroway, here an’ there,

Shark’d up a list o’ louns wi’ fire an’ deviltry

In them. It luiks as like their notion for oor state

Is to recover what his faither lost, and this, I wad jalouse,

Is the drive for a’ oor men tae rax an’ rive baith day an’ nicht,

An’ brings aboot this rummage in the land.

Barnardo: Aye. Thon’s the wey o’t.

It micht yet be that this wanchancy corp

Gangs through oor watch like the king that wis

And is the self-same question o’ these wars.

Horatio: A skelf in the mind’s ee, makin’ it watter:

In a’ the heich an’ summery state o’ Rome,

Before the michty Julius Caesar fell,

The graves were emptied up and a’ the deid in windin’ sheets

Were gibberin’ and squeakin’ doon the Roman streets

Like stern wi’ streams o’ fire ahint an’ bloody dew

Portend disasters i’ th’ sun an’ moon

That a’ the oceans move by,

A’ seems seek eneuch til Doomsday wi’ eclipse.

An’ e’en this foreshadowin’ o’ evil deeds

An’ prologue to disaster comin’ oan,

Baith Lift and Yird thegither show a’

Tae a’ oor folk and a’ their kin and country.

ENTER Ghost

But wheesht, luik there, it comes again!

I’ll beard it, though it blast me. Haud still, ya spook!

Gin ye’ve a soond or voice that ye can use,

Let’s hear ye!

If there is ony guid that I can dae

That micht gie ease tae you and grace tae me,

Let’s hear o’t!

If ye ken ocht o’ this oor

country’s fate,

Which gin we kent it noo we micht avoid,

Gie voice tae’t!

Or gin ye’ve stashed a secret load in life

O’ ill-fared treesure, hid in the wame o’ th’ yird,

For whilk, deid speerits walk, or so’s the speik o’t –

THE COCK CROWS

Let’s hear o’t. Haud nou an’ speak. Marcellus, haud it back.

Marcellus: I’ll hack it wi’ ma pike –

EXIT Ghost

Barnardo: Here it’s –

Horatio: Here it’s –

Marcellus: Here. It’s awa’.

We do offence, it’s o’ sic kingly bearin’,

To try it oot wi’ violence,

For it is as the air, we canny wound it,

An’ oor ain vain tries juist mockery.

Barnardo: It wis gaun tae speak when yon cock crew –

Horatio: An’ then it stertit as gin it felt its guilt

An’ heard its summons. I’ve heard

The cock that trumps the morn’

An’ waukens up the day, ca’s back the deid.

Marcellus: It faded wi’ the cock crow in the air.

Fir eftir that, the speerits roam nae mair.

Then nichts are fine an’ no ill chance befa’s us,

Nor witches dae us hairm.

Horatio: I’ve heard the same masel’ an’ dae believe’t.

But luik, the morn is riz in crammassie

Gangs owre the dew o’ thon heich eastward brae.

Brak’ up nou, an’ by my best avisement,

Let’s speak o’ this we’ve seen the nicht

Tae Hamlet, the younker, for certes as I breathe,

This speerit, dumb tae us, will speak tae him.

Are we agreed we suld acquent him wi’t?

As needfu’ in oor lealty, and as fits obeisance?

Let’s dae’t. Aye. And I this mornin’ ken

Whaur we sall find him skulkin’ close nearby.

EXEUNT