Wigtown Ploughman an Gallowa Scots

‘Wigtown Ploughman Part of His Life’ marks the coming of age of principal  character Andy Walker, who resolves through the tenant-farm system in Galloway to raise himself up from the lowest employment  as ‘boy’ or lowly farm worker to the coveted position of ploughman. Andy’s upbringing is afflicted by the dissolute behaviour of his father and the poverty imposed on the tenant farms of southwest Scotland and is occasionally lightened by his passion for going out in the dead of night to poach. When Andy’s schooling is over he takes to the road to find work on the farms. On these adventures he meets with a number of characters, fights and sexual encounters along the way. Similarly to McNeillie’s second novel, ‘Glasgow Keelie’, which dwells in the Glasgow slums, both of these brutal worlds are void of the slightest conceit to sentiment or romance, with their characters being likewise oblivious to the slightest pangs of conscience or remorse. It is no wonder then that McNeillie’s fiction, and most notably Wigtown Ploughman, would lead to its condemnation from both pulpit an pen. The furore over the social evils exposed in McNeillie’s novel, however, would make the book known as a social commentary on the living conditions and poverty of the Galloway tenant farmers in 1930s Scotland, and would in fact have considerable influence towards this issue being raised in the debates of the Westminster Parliament. Part of the impact of the novel was the setting up of a committee to enquire into the conditions suffered by tenant farmers, and this would lead to eventual implementation of the Rural Workers Housing Act of 1926 (amended in 1938).

McNeillie would come to know Galloway farm life when, due to illness in his family before he was two years old, he was sent from his parental home in Old Kilpatrick, Dunbartonshire to live with his grandfather and grandmother John and Elizabeth McNeillie at North Clutag Farm in Wigtownshire. Old John had a wealth of stories and the young boy was fair taken with both him and Galloway life, the outcome of which would impact on a lifetime’s writing,  firstly as John McNeillie and latterly as Ian Niall. Wigtown Ploughman was described as ‘a novel of no little distinction and power’ (Sunday Times). To another critic, though disturbed by its violence, Wigtown Ploughman was described as ‘shot through with beauty’, with the same critic praising it as a work of authenticity.

There are a considerable number of powerful passages within Wigtown Ploughman, not least when Andy sets to work with the ‘oul man’ at Drumlin Farm, and the privations they come up against in the perennial struggle with wind, weather and soil.  Andy realises his ambition to become a ploughman, brutalised an compromised in turn, going from farm to farm and meeting with a host of dissolute and boisterous characters along the way. Writing as Ian Niall, MacNeillie would go on to write over forty books, among his best known are ‘The Poacher’s Handbook’ and his memoir ‘A Galloway Childhood’. He wrote a second novel about Galloway country life, ‘Morryharn Farm’. His first novel as Ian Niall, ‘No Resting Place’, is set among the travelling ‘tinker’ clans of southwest Scotland and was made into a film, though the story was relocated to County Wicklow in Ireland. Released in 1952 it went on to receive considerable acclaim at the Venice Film Festival. John McNeillie is commemorated in a library to his name in Wigtown. In 1998 he was made a Doctor of Letters by the University of Glasgow for his contribution to Scottish literature.

The National Library  holds a wealth of materials from the pen of John McNeillie/Ian Niall and its manuscripts department holds a collection of papers belonging to the late John McNeillie, with letters, reviews and original manuscripts among them. In 2012 Birlinn published a new edition of Wigtown Ploughman with an introduction by the author’s son, Andrew McNeillie.

There are also a number of works by other Gallovidian writers held in the National Library. William Nicholson (1782-1849) as well as being a Scots poet had the makings of an extraordinary character. Nicholson came from the parish of Borgue in Galloway. As a child he became familiar with Ramsay’s ‘Gentle Shepherd’ and with Burns, whose fame at that time was beginning to spread. While at school ‘Wull’ was said to be an indifferent pupil who would rather wander along the banks of the River Tarff than stay in the classroom. Accounts of Nicholson’s life show him to be ill-fated in his chosen occupation of packman, and tell that he was given to too much distraction to make a decent living in the pedlar’s trade. It was during these ventures however that Nicholson would give voice to his poems and songs and where his reputation as a poet would flourish. He attracted fifteen hundred subscribers for his first collection of poems, travelling to Edinburgh where he met with James Hogg who assisted in the publication of Nicholson’s works. Hogg’s assistance is acknowledged in Nicholson’s introduction to his 1814 ‘Tales in Verse’.

Nicholson endured as a pedlar for twenty five years.  He became well known as a songwriter, writing ‘The Braes of Galloway’ and ‘The Banks of Tarff’.  He also earned a reputation as a fine piper. Nicholson’s best known work is ‘The Brownie of Blednoch’ a poem about a weird creature who haunts the Bladnoch area of Galloway.

‘For a foul and a stalwart ghaist is he,
Despair sits brooding aboon his e’e bree,
And unchancie to light o’ a maiden’s e’e,
Is the grim glower o’ Aiken-drum.’

With a proclivity for strong alcohol, Nicholson was said to have indulged in episodes of eccentric behaviour, writing a tract on Universal Redemption which he then took on foot to London in an attempt to present it before the King. He earned a living for a time as a drover and it was while on these travels in the Lancashire town of Warrington that he was plundered by robbers and thrown into a canal, almost drowning.

As with Burns, Nicholson’s poems are a blend of Scots and English or stand alone as either Scots or English poems or songs. His most potent works are in his mother tongue, in poems such as ‘Country Lass’, ‘On Tobacco’ or ‘The Brownie of Blednoch’, which is thought to be the original version of the popular children’s song ‘Aiken Drum’. (See ‘Popular Rhymes of Scotland’). Nicholson’s ‘The Braes of Galloway’ became known in the Scottish song tradition as ‘The Galloway Hills’ though the words have changed over generations. This song has been covered by many singers over the years from legendary ballad singer Jeannie Robertson to Scotland’s most famous rock band, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. From Nicholson’s modest comments in his introduction to ‘Tales in Verse’, little could he have known that his poems and songs would still impact on traditional and popular culture today. Galloway writer John Hudson has made steps in recent times to give recognition to Nicholson through his 1999 publication ‘The Collected Poems of William Nicholson “The Bard of Galloway”‘. For deeper insight into Nicholson’s life and works, see the article written by John Hudson.

It is the novelist SR Crockett who gives his name in the Introduction to the 1901 publication of ‘Galloway Gossip’, (or ‘Gallawa Gossip’ as it is called within its pages). Allegedly the work of one Dr De Bruce Trotter it was first published in 1877. A collection of anecdotes and literary curiosities from the Stewartry area of Galloway – ‘which lies between the Merrick and the water of Ken’ – the Preface gives a wholesome defence for Galloway Gossip being written entirely in Scots, as well as an overview on the Scots tongue itself. ‘Galloway Gossip’ has a number of comic tales, it is however blighted by giving air to a number of narrow prejudices. These might be about ‘Incomers’ from Ayrshire, or about the ‘Glesca-Eerish’ or ‘Dundee-Eerish’. Whatever the case, ‘Galloway Gossip’ occasionally gives rein to some bigoted views that would scarcely be tolerated in the present-day.

A number of novels by SR Crockett (1859-1914), are written into the very Galloway landscape. Among them are ‘The Raiders’, ‘Dark o the Moon’ and ‘Men of the Moss Hags’. Crockett’s stories met with huge popularity and he was a bestseller of his day, writing fast-moving historical fiction set among the covenanting and smuggling intrigues of southwest Scotland. Character voices are often given in rich Galloway Scots. Crockett came to the fore following the publication of his story collection ‘The Stickit Minister’. Crockett himself would become a Free Church minister, a calling he left to work on his writing. With the advent of the late modernity period Crockett’s fiction would fall out of fashion, however it has been given more recent recognition through publication of a number of works edited by Cally Phillips, collected together as ‘The Galloway Collection’ with a total of 32 titles in all. The National Library holds a number of original copies of Crockett’s novels as well as some of the 2014 editions as edited by Cally Phillips.

The poet William Neill (1922-2010) was born in Ayrshire and would settle as an English teacher in Castle Douglas in Galloway. Neill wrote in Scots, Gaelic and English. This is evident in his ‘Wild Places: Poems in Three Leids’. He also translated a number of European poems into Scots, among them his translation of Homer. Neill championed minority languages and described his work as ‘a standing up for the small tongues against the big mouths’. Neill’s poems – whether in English or Scots – have often been inspired by the Galloway landscape, as shown in poems such as ‘Seasons’ (see link below). Among his works at the National Library are ‘Wild Places poems in three leids (1985)’ and ‘Tales Frae the Odyssey o Homer owerset intil Scots’ (1992). There are also sound recordings of both of these latter two works.

Galloway past and present, and southwest Scotland as a whole, continues to give inspiration to literature in Scots. James Andrew Begg’s novel in Scots ‘The Man’s the Gowd for a that’, published in 2013, moves from present-day Ayrshire back to the ‘Killing Times’ of the late seventeenth century where it then builds into a generational tale told over three centuries. James Andrew Begg has been writing in Scots over the years and among his works in Scots at the National Library are ‘Alison’s Jants in Ferlieland by Lewis Carol owerset intae West Central Scots (2014)  and ‘Dipper an the three wee deils’ bi J A Begg an J Reid (1990).

Liz Niven is a poet in Scots and English whose work often gives voice to Galloway’s landscape and history. She has been involved in Scots learning and resources over a number of years. Among her works held in the National Library are:

• ‘Cree Lines’ (2000)
• ‘Haud Yer Tongue. Teachers Guide’ (1997)
• ‘Extracted fae a drunk wumman sittin oan a thistle’ (2000).

The Dark Sky Observatory at Loch Doon, a loch which stretches from South Ayrshire and down into the Galloway Forest Park, was the setting for Rab Wilson’s joint 2016 McCash Prize-winning poem ‘Ayont the Sun’. A former coal-miner and psychiatric nurse, Rab Wilson has been active in Scots writing over the years. Among his works held at the National Library are:

• ‘Accent o the mind: poems, chiefly in the Scots language’ (2006)
• ‘Map for the Blind: poems, chiefly in the Scots language’ (2011)
• ‘Ruba’iyat of Omar Khaymm in Scots’ (2004)

The popularly subscribed James McCash Scots Poetry Competition is run jointly by The Herald newspaper and Glasgow University and was set up to celebrate and to promote the writing of poetry in Scots.

Another poet who takes considerable influence from Galloway landscape and life is Stuart A Paterson, the Scots Language Centre’s virtual Poet in Residence in 2015 and poet in residence for BBC Radio Scotland in 2017-18. As one reviewer notes, Paterson’s poetry excels in ‘making the topography of Galloway and Solway the site of varied poetic weather’.  The same reviewer notes his ‘seamless’ use of  Scots where ‘clouds are ‘shilpit’, crows are ‘droukit’, children are described as ‘troupes of weans’ and local characters come a cropper ‘stealing a wheen of neeps’.’ (sabotagereviews August 2016). Titles by Stuart A Paterson held at the National Library include:

• ‘Aye’ (2016)
• ‘Border Lines’ (2015)
• ‘Saving Graces’ (1997)