I've never much been one for dialect writing: the way some authors try to render speech phonetically, particularly when it's used to heighten the freakshow exoticness of a speaker with a vernacular other than standard English (such as Gullah, French Creole, or Appalachian mountaineer). My attitude is colored by the reaction of one of Horace Kephart's Smoky Mountain neighbors upon seeing printed "hillbilly" speech, as rendered by John Fox of Trail of the Lonesome Pine fame. Here is Kephart’s account:
One day I handed a volume of John Fox's stories to a neighbor and asked him to read it, being curious to learn how those vivid pictures of mountain life would impress one who was born and bred in the same atmosphere. He scanned a few lines of the dialogue, then suddenly stared at me in amazement.
"What's the matter with it?" I asked, wondering what he could have found to startle him at the very beginning of the story.
"Why, that feller don't know how to spell!" [italics in original]
Gravely, I explained that dialect must be spelled as it is pronounced, so far as possible, or the life and savor of it would be lost. But it was of no use. My friend was outraged. "That tale-teller then is jest makin' fun of the mountain people by misspelling' our talk. You educated folks don't spell your own words the way you say them."
Kephart acknowledges this as "a most palpable hit" that gave him a "new point of view," even if it didn't prevent him from going ahead and misspelling mountain talk. In fact, the account is the very opening of the chapter entitled "The Mountain Dialect" in Kephart's classic Our Southern Highlanders.
The problem with the novelists like Fox and others -- among them Mark Twain, George Washington Cable (whose New Orleans Creole characters "toke lak theez") and of course Joel Chandler Harris of "Bre'er Rabbit" fame -- is that they are outsiders panning linguistic curiosity for publishing gold. In some cases they purport "scholarship," there is never an acknowledgment of a debt. It's high-toned circus barking.
However, when it comes to reading dialect, I do make one exception: Scots. And that is because its literary purveyors -- Robert Burns, George MacDonald -- are themselves Scots. It is their own native vernacular that they are rendering, not anything outlandish (c'mon, groan, fans of Outlander). With the ethical ground thus cleared, the modes of appreciation are given free rein to enjoy it as much as any foreign language.
My principal way of enjoying foreign languages has always been through singing, and as I'm writing this in high Advent it seems appropriate to mention that most of the songs I know in German, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin, or Macaroni (bilingual Latin-English) are Christmas carols culled from the official books of the Christmas Carol Canon (pictured here).
Regrettably, Scots is not well-represented in the Christmas Carol Canon. If it were competing in an EU Wassail Derby, Scots would finish so far behind other regional dialects such as Flemish or Catalan that it might almost be said not to be trying.
The reason is probably to be found in Reformed theology, which particularly in Scotland reviled anything smacking of a popish "mass." With Christmas it's right there in the name; not much use trying to get around it. What the reformers objected to were the centuries of cultural encrustation. It was the Bible or nothing. This put an emphasis on Biblical text as the only true basis for religious observance. All else was suspect.
But there I have discovered a new music, as it were. It comes out of where poetic recitation is itself a form of music. Familiar passages of the Bible are chief among this kind of music, particularly (to me) the passages in the second chapter of Luke that describe the "adoration of the shepherds." I recently discovered it as it appears in the Scots Bible, and to me it is thrilling:
Nou, i that same pairt the' war a when herds bid in the rout on the hill and keepin gaird owre their hirsel at nicht. Suddent an angel o the Lord cam an stuid afore them, an the glorie o the Lord shined about them, an they war uncolie frichtit. But the angel said tae them: "Binna nane afeared: I bring ye guid news o gryte blytheness for the haill fowk -- this day in Dauvit's Toun a sauviour hes been born til ye, Christ, the Lord! This gate ye s'ken it is een as I say: ye will finnd a new-born bairn swealed in a barrie an liggin intil a heck."
Syne in a gliff an unco thrang o the airmies of heiven kythed aside the angel, giein laud tae God an liltin: "Glore tae God in the heicht o heiven, and peace on the yird tae men he delytes in!"
Whan the angels quat them and gaed back til heiven, the herds said til ither, "Come, lat us gang owre-bye tae Bethlehem an see this unco at the Lord hes made kent til us." Sae they hid owre tae Bethlehem what they coud drive, an faund Mary an Joseph there wi the new-born babe liggin intil the heck; an whan they say him, they loot fowk ken what hed been said tae them anent the bairn. Aabodie ferliet tae hear what the herds tauld them, but Mary keepit aa thir things lown an cuist them throu her mind her lane. Syne the herds gaid back tae their hirsel, praisin an ruisin God for aa at they hed hard an seen; aathing hed been een as they war tauld.
Behind the appreciation of this is of course the familiarity of the passage in King James English. What a delicious, savory contrast between "baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying a manger" and "bairn swealed in a barrie and liggin intil a heck."
Mythical shepherds for the shepherding: The Scots have been among the world's chief pastoral peoples. Famously, their sonic identity attaches to the chief instrument of pastoral peoples, the bagpipe. But judging from the extant, seasonal music associated with the instrument, Christmas pipes are for the most part continental: Italian, Provençal, German, Polish: all those minority dudelsacks, cornemuses, and zampgnas that any other time of the year get short shrift in the public imagination of bagpipes.
The only remedy for any Christmas-loving Highland piper is to ran(dudel)sack the canon, an appropriately military-sounding activity for everyone's favorite musical weapon. Where the tunes don't "work," bend them to the instrument's will. The First Nowell doesn't "work" on the bagpipe's scale, because the instrument's "ti" absolutely refuses to toe the line. The bagpipe is going to do what it's going to do. But how else to participate in all that liltin o the unco thrang o the airmies of heaven?
