"Jesus was a Scotsman"

‘Jesus was a Scotsman’ could be seen as contentious title for a discussion, but it turns out to be a thoroughly apt one for this marking of the (gey near) 30th anniversary of the publication in 1983 of William Laughton Lorimer's translation of The New Testament into Scots.

On the cover of the Canongate 2012 updated edition, Anthony Burgess writes that Christ was “…figuratively if not necessarily literally, a speaker of a dialect that the establishment would not accept… [his] lips have been opened and he is revealed as a credible Scot of the Lowlands.”

The National Library of Scotland was host to the discussion held on 26 July. It was introduced by NLS’ Modern Scottish Collections Curator, Andrew Martin. The participants were W. L. Lorimer's granddaughter, Christina Lorimer; poet, novelist and active proponent of the Scots language, James Robertson (who also wrote the introduction to this latest edition of The New Testament into Scots) and Michael Hance, director of the Scots Language Centre and Secretary of the Lorimer Trust.  

W. L. Lorimer was a Professor of Greek at the University of St Andrews and was involved in the compilation of the Scots National Dictionary. His Scots translation of the New Testament was done from the Greek. The colossal task of translating the New Testament of the Bible took him 28 years from starting it in 1955 when he retired age 70 to its fruition in 1983 when it was published by his son, Robin, a job that dominated his life. 

As James Robertson noted, while the King James translation was done by a team, this one was ‘done by twa men!’  His father’s work was hand-written with dip pen in notebooks that are now held in NLS and are currently on display. 

As a son of the manse, WL was familiar with the Bible though not religious.  He was surrounded by foreign languages at home with three to four being  spoken at home though Scots was not among them, the family living on a virtual  ‘English Island’ in Angus. However, like anyone who is interested or open to languages, he listened alertly to the many Scots’ dialects but noted them as an academic.  The result is a variety of voices reflecting these dialects and giving life to parables, epistles and stories with humour, humanity and vitality that, due to cultural shifts over decades, are less familiar now than they once were.  In the words of Michael Hance, the language is ‘consistent but not uniform’.

As was brought out in the discussion, the New Testament is more than a religious text, it is also literature and as such this translation is of great significance for the Scots language. James Robertson described the lack of a Scots translation as being ‘a missing building block for Scots.’ 

While Scots has survived, the non-existence of a text in Scots of such an important document is a possible reason for the Scots language’s struggle. The panel agreed that this work is important for Scots to flourish and that it carries the weight and gravity of the authorised version and that the language impressively rises to the challenge of the significance of the undertaking.

To make the point, Robertson read the Woman of Samaria from the Book of John that expressed the strength of life in this Biblical story told in our Mither Tung.  The text seems to lend itself to being read aloud, letting readers hear their own local dialect within the Scots as long as they allow themselves to be open to that linguistic and emotional potential.

This updated edition is a timely reminder of the importance in our culture of lowland Scotland’s own language.  A recording of the event will be available on the NLS site and the Scots Language Centre web site features reading from the Gospels by Tom Fleming.