Many of Burns' poems are in the
Lowland Scots dialect; a few are wholly in ordinary English; and some combine the two idioms.
It is a fact that Americans from all sections and of all racial extractions are more alike than the Welsh are like the English, the Lancashireman like the Cockney, or for that matter the
Lowland Scot like the Highlander.
One of The signatures it bears is that of Robert Marshall, a
lowland Scot who, at one Communion service where the people were many and the provisions few, said, "Gin ye're Christian ye'll be contenit wi'it, and gin ye're no, 'tis mar than ye deserve." It was a harsh life, scrambling to carve a home out of a wilderness.
Find out what life was like for a
lowland Scot serving in the British Army in 1748, in Alba Adventure Company's historic re-enactment.
Like me, Burns was a
Lowland Scot and I doubt if he ever saw a kilt, far less wore one.
An internationally recognised folklorist, singer and broadcaster, Margaret was brought up in a family of tradition bearers - Gaelic on her mother's side and
Lowland Scots on her father's.
Williamson's (1982a + b: 54-77 + 52-87) work on '
Lowland Scots in Education' is particularly fascinating and relevant to this study.
Evidently, the tramp's panoply of 'the kailyard brogue'--akin to a humorously excessive use of
Lowland Scots language--is anticipated as an easy means of gaining the favour and support of an envisioned 'brither Scot'.
The latter, which is also called
Lowland Scots, is a Germanic language and similar to English.
It is a mixture of words deriving from the Norn and
Lowland Scots, with many unique terms which people from mainland Scotland would not recognise.