Scots Poem

Language Hands unloading: Bekkie  Blance  Jarvis  Maujenes  Questatch  Haragold  Fubbister There as many words here as trees. They mak the skyline hard tae read, mak hid hard tae mind whar yur fae. The gutter girls, I mind the skirl o their tongues, cuttan under yur ear, hittan bone lik their knives, here then gone. Dutchmen at Login’s Inn, cheeks lik cheeses, a creamy, curdled thickness in the mooth, words pigtail – blond. Du’ll no be gluffd by a peerie scaur, the Lerookman said. Are you French, said the Grimsbyman, openan his throat fur the burn. That wis nothin! On this shore the black folk speak Orkney, the bosses talk business, the Frenchies sing love while they’re paddlin, the servants hing ower a window, a stove or a fish hole an yarn aboot hom. They’re missan the language that sits at the fire, axs if the kettle is on. Morag MacInnes, from Alias Isobel: an Orkney narrative (Orkney: Hansel Cooperative Press, 2008) Poem supplied courtesy of the Scottish Poetry Library

Note on the origins of the poem This poem is inspired by the mixter maxter of voices any H B C worker encountered in the 1800s at York Bay or indeed any of the  Canadian Trading Posts. Though there were many Orknies, as they were called, there were also a hundred other voices - including the Cree. For Isobel Gunn, the heroine of this poetry sequence, the dislocation was a double one, because she was posing as a man; so she had to learn to accommodate more than just new dialects.

About the Poet     Morag MacInnes is an Orcadian writer, lecturer and community artist. She has lived in Shetland, Germany and Lincolnshire, but is now back home investigating new voices and concerns on the islands. Her short stories have been published in a number of collections, including the Asham Award winners' publication Shoefly Baby (2005). Her poem Aqui Vive un Pinctor appeared in the first Wigtown Poetry Collection. She is the author of Alias Isobel, a poetry sequence about Isobel Gunn, first white woman to work in Northwest Canada, published by Hansel Cooperative Press 2008.