V. J.




PREFACE


There are few poets to-day who write in the Scots vernacular, and
the modesty of the supply is perhaps determined by the slenderness
of the demand, for pure Scots is a tongue which in the changes of
the age is not widely understood, even in Scotland. The various
accents remain, but the old words tend to be forgotten, and we may
be in sight of the time when that noble speech shall be degraded
to a northern dialect of English. The love of all vanishing things
burns most strongly in those to whom they are a memory rather than a
presence, and it is not unnatural that the best Scots poetry of our
day should have been written by exiles. Stevenson, wearying for his
"hills of home," found a romance in the wet Edinburgh streets, which
might have passed unnoticed had he been condemned to live in the
grim reality. And we have Mr. Charles Murray, who in the South
African veld writes Scots, not as an exercise, but as a living
speech, and recaptures old moods and scenes with a freshness which
is hardly possible for those who with their own eyes have watched
the fading of the outlines. It is the rarest thing, this use of
Scots as a living tongue, and perhaps only the exile can achieve it,
for the Scot at home is apt to write it with an antiquarian zest, as
one polishes Latin hexameters, or with the exaggerations which are
permissible in what does not touch life too nearly. But the exile
uses the Doric because it is the means by which he can best express