Ayont the Thistle Quotes

“Sorley MacLean's poetry, along with Derick Thomson's periodical Gairm (1951), the Gaelic Books Council (1968), the rise of Runrig (1973), the founding of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on Skye (1973) and, economically, the Highlands and Islands Development Board (1965), set in train the revival of the Gaelic language and turned the orientation of thought and language of the Gaels from the traditions of the past to facing the future with an increased sense of confidence.”
― Ann Matheson, Ayont the Thistle: A gallimaufry of poetry and prose to mark the centenary (1926 - 2026) of Hugh MacDiarmid's 'A Drunk Man looks at the Thistle'

“Scotland's no daid:
it's juist aye in rehearsal.
learnin lines it disna trust,
forgettin cues
as soon as the spot-lichts cam oan.”
― Jim Mackintosh, Ayont the Thistle: A gallimaufry of poetry and prose to mark the centenary (1926 - 2026) of Hugh MacDiarmid's 'A Drunk Man looks at the Thistle'

“MacDiarmid's words were composed, to a startling degree, out of words that had, indeed, been written before. A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle does not go as far as the copy-and-paste collages of his later work in English, but his great Scots poem is nevertheless made up of lines that are routinely borrowed or extracted, quoted or adapted, compiled or found or lifted: from Burns, Child, Wordsworth, Nietzsche, Shestov, Blok, Dostoevsky, H.G. Wells, A.R. Orage, Sachervell Sitwell...”
― Alexander Linklater, Ayont the Thistle: A gallimaufry of poetry and prose to mark the centenary (1926 - 2026) of Hugh MacDiarmid's 'A Drunk Man looks at the Thistle'

“Outside, its a hard frost but a pale blue sky, an the kail an sprouts in the gairden are bairdit wi white. In the wuids a hoodie-craw's cawin, an the hedges are full o cocky wee robins shoutin the odds. The swing o the axe an the crack o splittin sticks lets distant neibours ken ye're up, ye've got throu anither nicht. Then twistin the Southern Reporter inti spirlies, coverin them wi kindlin an coal, an a match ti the fire: the day begins wi a mug o tea an a slice o toast, nithert in the ingle. Ay, Niel Gow's auld tune 'Whisky at Nicht an Dry in the Mornin' has some truth ti't tae.”
― Brian Holton, Ayont the Thistle: A gallimaufry of poetry and prose to mark the centenary (1926 - 2026) of Hugh MacDiarmid's 'A Drunk Man looks at the Thistle'

“It intrigued me that literary people raved about the poems MacDiarmid wrote while living in Shetland, especially 'On a Raised Beach', while I found them hard to appreciate. As a Shetlander and a geographer who knew the place fairly intimately, including the steep storm beaches (and lack of post-glacial isostatic uplift necessary for raised beaches), I found his battering-ram approach to using geological terminology a bit indigestible. We all have moments of epiphany when we discover something profound, and I suppose that may have been the feeling he tried to convey but, along with what felt like garbled geomorphology, theology and - in my 'book' - the heinous crime of exoticising the Shaetlan tongue and its ancestry in the Norn language, it all felt a bit contrived, as if skiting the surface. But meanwhile, living and working in Edinburgh, I was learning to keep my mouth shut, and that any criticism of MacDiarmid's poetry was unthinkable. So I ungraciously joined the ranks of those who 'quite liked a few of his early lyrics' to get me off the hook.”
― Christine De Luca, Ayont the Thistle: A gallimaufry of poetry and prose to mark the centenary (1926 - 2026) of Hugh MacDiarmid's 'A Drunk Man looks at the Thistle'