Caledonian Cramboclink: Verse, broadsheets and in conversation

Citation

Hutchison, A. (2002), "Caledonian Cramboclink: Verse, broadsheets and in conversation", Library Review, Vol. 51 No. 8, pp. 437-438. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2002.51.8.437.15

This attractively presented book is a good platform for William Neill to give voice to his verse and to engage with those who would neglect or disdain the things he values. Neill, writing in English, Gaelic and Scots, and ranging freely in several genres – satire not being the least of these – has stored up plenty ammunition, and doesn’t hesitate to bring it all with him to this particular wappenschaw.

So who does he have it in for? The late, lamented Iain Crichton Smith in a typically perceptive preface points to the obvious targets: those who would scorn or neglect the best of native Scottish culture, either through ignorance, or swayed by seductions from the south. Political and aesthetic judgements are very much cheek by jowl here. The “cramboclink” of the title can be either “doggerel” or “rhymed verse”. Neill, long a champion of varied metrical skill has several goes at those who would have us all turn vague and mystical, or simply bob along in fashion dictated in London.

The risk in this is that you get tagged in turn as a whingeing Jock, or a one theme Wullie. But sample the range of genres and tone here: elegaic, lyrical, extended narrative or epistle, humour sly and uproarious, and you’ll find those charges hard to stick. Satire, of course, should make us all shift a little uneasily. And William Neill is never one to let us settle in comfortably with any false airs or preconceptions.

“Holy Wedlock” opens up a view of the world neatly derived from The Tatler or The Scottish Field:

The Honourable Hermione Chummleigh‐Bummleigh

was wed this morning in St Chasuble’s

in virgin white and all the family valuables,

under old Norman pillars quaint and crumbly.

At the end, though, the keenest satire is delivered almost as an aside:

They say her Daddy was obliged to sell

a thousand acres, Badger’s Wood entire

to settle what came free to quite a few.

Neill has pride in his Ayrshire origins, and points to his kinship in that respect with Alexander Montgomerie, Walter Kennedy and Robert Burns amongst the makars (the first two Gaelic speakers like himself). From them too perhaps he draws some of his vigour and a clear determining rhythm: as in this opening, where we learn the fruits of recognition typically come too late:

In Scotland ye’ll no get yir nits

till yir teeth’s ower foondert ti crack thaim.

Or this conclusion, based on a Socratic assurance that the afterlife will consist of lively and elevated conversation.

Yon gie’s a body mair encouragement

nor Tally Dante’s dowie kirkyaird verse

ten‐laftit Paradise and nine‐fauld Hell.

Till ye refleck naebodie kent

whit is’t that follies on frae kist and hairse.

Bleck naethin, clarsachs, raistin, wha can tell?

This is common‐sensical and reductive in a way that’s both droll and cutting. Not a bad basis for satire with a Scots hallmark – “shrewd and honest” as Crichton Smith would have it. And with a good deal for the reader to take pleasure in along the road.