The Shame Game: an embarrassment of Scots

‘Nor are the many languages the enemies of humankind

But the little tyrant must mould things into one body

To control them and give them his single vision

(Zulu poet, Mazisi Kunene’s poem On the Nature of Truth from The Ancestors and the Sacred Mountain, 1982)

This blog was provoked by a Twitter storm over the activities of a young Scot on social media. She wasn’t advocating drowning kittens but had the audacity to recite her own poetry in Scots and highlight Scots vocabulary. For her crime Miss PunnyPennie aka @Lenniesaurus became the target of inciteful barbs along the lines of Scots is ‘just English spelt wrong.’

In the Sunday Times Tony Allen-Mills told readers her ‘ditties’ were recited “in a barely understandable Scottish burr.” Cliché heaven. He described her as a “controversial” linguist – in translation she speaks like many fellow-Scots speak when not talking to non-natives. In short she isn’t speaking proper English. Now it’s a funny thing that journalists and media commentators making a living commenting on others are very thin-skinned when it comes to their own behaviour coming under scrutiny. And so it was with Mr Mills or @TAMinUK as he is known on Twitter who became quite defensive and a little angry when his prejudices were pointed out to him. Then he inadvertently insulted the Gaelic language.

There’s a lot of it about. Last April The Scotsman (sic) newspaper ran a piece on 50 Scottish slang words translated: funniest and best sayings and slang phrases from Scotland – and what they mean in English which began “Though English is the first language in Scotland” and listed as ‘slang’ Scots language words such as bonnie, braw, gallus, heid, lugs, ken. It was the 1960s Parliamo Glasgow all over again. And again.

50 Scottish slang words translated: funniest and best sayings and slang phrases from Scotland – and what they mean in English | The Scotsman

In 2014, the year the British state discovered a region called Scotland on its northern periphery, the Guardian newspaper printed a scoop exposé that Scots spoke differently from elsewhere in the UK. The article began with a joke which was apt because the whole piece was a joke. You know the kind of joke that starts, there was this Irishman or there was this Pakistani or there was this Scotsman. Scots speech is bloody incomprehensible! was the gist of it. Demeaning nonsense.

“It [Scots] even has its own dictionary” the author wrote. His mention of Scottish culture was  restricted to a single example – predictably Robert Burns. The expert on Scotland hailed from Cheshire, a son of a Scottish father. Presumably we have to take Mr Smith seriously because in common with lots and lots of ‘experts’ on Scots and Scotland he has holidayed in Scotland. Perhaps he should spend more time here for he exhibited considerable ignorance of his subject. Sassenach, he as erroneously explained was a derogatory term for an English person. It isn’t derogatory, it simply means southerner. Teucheter once a disparaging term Lowlanders used for a Highlander is very much still in common usage, in northeast Doric, and refers to a countra chiel.  

Scots: do you know your teuchters from your sassenachs? | Scotland | The Guardian

Also inaccurate was his assertion that Scots is spoken in the Lowlands, central belt and Grampian – Grampian?? I dinna hink so, min. He went on to mention Scots is really English, traced back to Anglo Saxon in the 11^th century. That is true. As it is true that present-day English has its roots in the same Anglo Saxon. But it does not occur to the writer, Mark Smith, that since the English spoken today evolved from then, changing and adapting, with input coming from later invaders to these shores, mainly French and Norman so, too, did Scots – which developed as a language with those same influences plus Norse and Gaelic. So why is English regarded as a legitimate language but Scots having emerged in a similar way, not?  The answer is it is nothing to do with roots but the power structure of the Union. – beautifully encapsulated by Kunene as the little tyrant seeks to take difference and create sameness, uniformity. The uniformity of the tyrant’s values and, vitally, language.  

Unity through conformity has been the battle cry of every tyrannous power since the 16^th century. It’s a simple enough dogma. Overpower. Dominate. Centralise. Subdue.   

Emerging nation states imposed unity through centralisation and suppression of potential rival cultural symbols and languages – demanding acceptance and adherence to those officially sanctioned by the state. In the UK the British state is essentially defined by the English language and England’s cultural traditions … afternoon tea on the lawn, cricket on the village green, red London buses – none of which have much relevance to Scotland. Would the British state be content to isolate the cultural mores of one of its other parts, let’s say Scotland, as emblematic of Britain or the UK – Burns, Irn Bru, tartan and ceilidhs? The short answer is no. English people would not accept Britishness defined through these symbols alone. And in tandem with symbolism comes language. The English language was imposed as the lingua franca, if you’ll pardon the expression, of the United Kingdom – an instrument intended to integrate all parts of the UK and eradicate difference.

Life for Scots was increasingly Anglicised. Scottish culture, languages and dialects systematically suppressed; in the early 18^th century by legal penalty, later lifted, and then through the drip by drip of ridicule, sneering and derision that has also been experience by Ireland and Wales.

Scotland is not a nation of a single language. There is Gaelic, mention of which nowadays is always accompanied by an outcry along the lines of – they didna spik it here. It’s a dead language. Gaelic was spoken across Scotland from the 5^th century. In common with the other nations of the UK, Scotland is a mongrel nation absorbing the languages of migrants. The different people who landed on our shores brought with them their languages to add to those already spoken in Scotland. Some ancient languages once spoken in Scotland have been lost altogether and others blended over time. Gaelic has largely preserved its distinctiveness but in common with probably every language, has absorbed new words to keep it relevant.

James VI outlawed Gaelic in 1616 when he decided Inglis (English) would be the language spoken in Scotland. Gaelic in retreat was disparaged by Lowlanders and has struggled ever since. Get them young applied then as now and schools were set up throughout Scotland, in every parish, to teach children English. Enforced uniformization was underway in the 17^th century. A century later came the Union of the United Kingdoms, shortly followed by the brutal repression following the Jacobite risings. All aspects of Highland life were undermined.  Language is a powerful weapon in the mouths of people and the reason centralising powers feel compelled to control them.

In Scotland Gaelic suffered under the pressure of the capitalisation of society – common languages of commerce were Scots and English because those were the languages spoken in Lowland areas where trade was greatest. The same forces that came for Gaelic came then for Scots and Doric (although Doric’s roots in the countryside of the northeast was able to survive well into the 20^th century.)  On a wave of Anglicisation the words that came out of Scots’ mouths changed. Much braid Scots words and expressions were expunged from ‘polite’ society that was complicit in undermining the language that had served the people very well since the 11^th century and now branded, uncouth.  Scotticisms, as they were sneeringly termed,  were best dropped by any Scot with ambition who was advised to adopt the language of South Britain. The first Scottish MPs to sit in the Union parliament at Westminster in London were openly mocked for the way they spoke.

Across the many and disparate nations of the British Empire, English became the language of government; to enable commerce and trade and maintain greater control from London. Diversity, seen as potential weakness in Britain’s overall command.

All modern empires have used language to impose their values on conquered peoples. Suppress native languages, and by dint of this erode native culture, and impose the centralising power’s own language as the only official language of government and authority – and sometimes the only language permitted to be spoken or written. Spain banned all languages but Spanish throughout its empire in the Americas. Native languages were banned in Mexico from the start of the 20^th century until 1935. The Portuguese behaved the same way in Brazil and France within its empire. Always the most effective means of imposing the official language of the oppressor was through schools, denigrating native languages spoken locally and thrashing the message home when resisted. In Wales, for example, speaking Welsh in schools was rigidly banned. Any child who dared speak his or her own language was humiliated and punished – some were made to wear a wooden collar with the letters WN for Welsh Not or Welsh Note carved into it.  

Following Union with England Scottish pupils were increasingly taught in English. Children speaking and writing in the language they communicated in at home were ‘corrected’ and forced to use English terms. By the middle of the 19^th century Scottish names were standardised in registrations of births, deaths and marriages. By the 1872 Education Act the overwhelming use of English in Scottish schools was rampant or ramming up, in today’s parlance. In 1886 the Scotch Code made English mandatory in schools.   

In 1924 William Grant, a lecturer at Aberdeen Training Centre, editor of the Scottish National Dictionary and authority on braid Scots argued for teaching Scottish culture through the Scots language in schools. He denied the vernacular was vulgar, that Scots was in any way a corruption of standard English.

Grant understood the vital link between language and its literature. He deprecated the tendency to substitute English words for Scots ones and the loss of so much of the richness of expression of the language. We have a prime example of that today with the majority of the Scottish press adopting the English word jab in the context of a vaccination against Covid-19. The Scots equivalent is jag and it is this word the majority of Scots are familiar with however there are elements in Scotland who deride the term  – for purely ideological reasons. They see it as Scots trying to assert their difference from England – which it is and what is wrong with that? Why substitute a good – no better and more descriptive word for an injection because England has a different one? It’s the perverse reasoning of the extreme Unionism that everything English is by its nature superior to its Scottish equivalent. Their prejudice has roots that stretch back to the earliest days of incipient imperialism.  

William Grant died in 1946, the year in which a report on primary education in Scotland insisted English was the language of the educated person, not Scots. A fine example of how colonies are brought to heel – impose by punishment and law a set of values that are artificially defined as representative of the whole unified state and said to be its ‘norms.’

Deference to the English language and to England became ingrained into Scotland but perhaps the recent revival of interest in Scotland’s languages and dialects is a product of Scots new found confidence in who we are. Who we are is no second-rate people whose identity has been totally crushed and undermined over three centuries but a population that recognises we are the equals of everyone else – and so are our languages.

The Covid ‘jag’ promises hope, not only for escape from a dreadful pandemic but escape, too, from long years of humiliation and oppression as a nation with much to offer the world. But we need our voice to do it.              

Pancho Villa murders Keig man

The Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs made a statement in the House of Commons on Wednesday April 22nd 1914 about the brutal murder of Keig man at the hands of Pancho Villa. A telegram from a citizen of El Paso was read out in the US Senate stating that Benton was murdered like a dog.

     William S. Benton of Keig

This was slap-bang in the middle of the Mexican Revolution and Pancho Villa (General Villa of the revolutionary army) was in charge of Mexico’s northern area of Chihuahua. William Smith Benton had lived in Mexico for over twenty years and grown immensely wealthy on his cattle ranch of over 100,000. It is said that revolutionaries had relieved him of his ranch and it was from Texas that he travelled south to demand he be allowed to move 400 head of his cattle from his estate north into the US.

Benton was either a highly respected and honoured citizen of the region, according to the New York Times, or a man who disrespected and abused native Mexicans, according to supporters of the Revolution.

Both he and Villa were hot-tempered and when Villa refused Benton’s request or demand on grounds that Mexico had need of the beef and that Benton was a cattle thief and murderer Benton accused him of being a bandit and desperado. One version of events reports that Villa launched at Benton with a dagger and would have killed him on the spot but for the intervention of the Mexican’s wife, Maria Luz Corral.

On his way to Villa’s home Benton had met up with an American railroad engineer called Gustav Bauch. Both men waited to see Villa at his home. Benton was said to be armed with a pistol.

William S. Benton was the son of James Benton of Airlie at Keig in Aberdeenshire, born in 1860. Several Bentons lived in the northeast, having moved to Scotland from Long Benton , near Newcastle Yorkshire in England at the invitation of a laird of Newe during the early 18th century. As farmers they cultivated land in west Aberdeenshire, including Meikle Endovie and Tonley, “the holdings of the English immigrants.” Bentons moved to Keig – Old Balgowan and Airlie at Keig, above Alford, to Crookmore at Tullynessle and others to Banffshire to Sheriffhaugh.

But the Aberdeenshire Bentons were not for settling down for long and migrated abroad both east and west in search of careers and fortune –

“while several have won wealth and honours, others have merely left their bones to bleach in the foreign land which they chose as the means of gratifying their ambitions.”

A cousin of William S. Benton, James Thomson Benton, was murdered in Texas in 1875 – I haven’t checked out the circumstances of that killing and it must be said the Benton’s are not easy to trace for they suffer from a sever dearth of variety of names – if it’s not William then it’s James. Texas, however, was a lawless place and disputes were often ended by pistols. The year James Thomson Benton was murdered the young William, a lad of fifteen, finished his elementary education at Aberdeen Grammar School and in England and enrolled at Aberdeen University. By 1877 he had left university and emigrated to Texas, to join his cousin’s family.

Stateside there were banking Bentons, transport Bentons and silver mining interests Bentons. And, of course, ranching Bentons.

The events of the 17th February 1914 are much disputed and those witnesses that were around were said to have been moved away to other parts of Mexico on orders from Villa.

Villa accused Benton of reaching for his six-shooter during their loud altercation in an attempt to assassinate him at which point Villa’s guards arrested Benton. It was claimed Benton was summarily tried and admitted his guilt and knowing he was to be executed requested his ranch was given over to his widow, a Mexican, and that his grave was dug deep to prevent coyotes from feeding on his body.

Whatever went on in the room, Gustav Bauch waiting in the hall outside noticed everything went suddenly quiet and when Benton failed to reappear he asked about his whereabouts, at which point Bauch was arrested by Villa’s merciless right-hand man, Fierro.

Rumours abounded that Benton had been taken out and clubbed to death by Fierro then set on fire to destroy evidence of the crime. Meanwhile Bauch, an American, was ‘fitted-up’ with accusations he was a spy for the anti-revolutionaries and jailed. Quickly the men’s disappearance was raised with Benton’s widow, although she was unaware she was a widow then, who asked the American government to look into her husband’s disappearance. The Americans went along with Villas version of events that Benton was tried and found guilty and at the time of their enquiries he still lived, in jail despite Benton’s widow’s belief he had been killed.

Then Pancho Villas declared Benton had been executed and thinking he could cover up what was clearly violent murder ordered a posthumous case against Benton be prepared to satisfy the man’s widow, and the Americans on her behalf. Forging documents is one thing but forging a signature when you don’t know what it looks like is something else. The search was on for a document bearing Benton’s signature and his original complaint about the movement of his cattle was tracked down bearing a signature which could be copied. There was still the small issue of Bauch being a witness to the sudden disappearance of Benton – and given that Benton’s body had been disposed of things were becoming complicated. It was decided therefore to execute Bauch – in Benton’s place so to speak -and once his body decayed it would be presented as Benton’s.

When news of Benton’s death leaked out the Los Angeles Times headline read:

Blame Tequila for Execution: Benton Victim of Villa’s Lust for Liquor

and went on to demonise Villa in an all-too-familiar racist tone accusing him of being high on drink and drugs. The contrary view among many Mexicans was that Villa was a national hero and Benton the villain. Villa was also destined to die violently by firing squad a few years later.

For a time in Britain there was continued hope Benton was alive and in custody with the government content to channel enquiries through the Americans. As the mystery deepened Villa told the Americans Benton had been executed but the American State Department did not inform the press of this and somehow became implicated in covering up the Benton affair. The British government was reluctant to make much of the matter but for a time newspapers pushed for answers which didn’t come.