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New Testament in Scots

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The New Testament in Scots, tr. W. L. Lorimer, ed. Robin Lorimer, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1985, 476pp.

The endeavour to produce the entire New Testament in Scots, which William L. Lorimer fulfilled so magnificently in 1966, was not a new one. Indeed, the task had been fully accomplished twice before, though not with such skill and scholarship, by Murdoch Nisbet, around 1520, and by William Wye Smith, whose work was published in 1901 and achieved its final revised edition in 1924. Nisbet, a shadowy figure, who was probably associated with `the Lollards of Kyle' mentioned by John Knox in his 'Historie of the Reformatioun', merely transcribed John Purvey's version of John Wycliffe's English text into a Scots orthography, which was eventually published by the Scottish Text Society.
Smith's 'New Testament in Braid Scots' is a more impressive text, but cannot compare with that of Lorimer, a Professor of Greek at St. Andrews University, insofar as it was translated from the 'Revised Version of 1881' and also shows the influence of the Authorised 'King James Version'. So, as David Ogston has observed, `Now, at last, in the dying decades of the Twentieth Century, we Scots can hear in our own tongue the wonderful works of God; the northern peasant from Galilee has travelled further still into our understanding and our affection'. Indeed, we meet in Lorimer, for the first time, the 'New Testament' story translated into a resilient, poetic and sinewy modern Scots prose, taken from the original Greek. Yet it is now almost 20 years since Lorimer's 'New Testament in Scots' was published by Southside in a splendid hardback edition, and, since then, it has reached an even wider audience through the good offices of Penguin Books (1985).
When Lorimer's work was published, it was the immediate subject of laudatory, if not ecstatic, reviews. Paul H. Scott was wisely to the fore in recognising its significance and the magnitude of the author's ambition: `His purpose then was even more ambitious than MacDiarmid's, who widened the dimensions of poetry in Scots'. This sounds almost casual, but it recognises a very major achievement. Writing in 'The Glasgow Herald', John Fowler approached the subject from another angle, setting Lorimer's work aside other translations: `Compared to the weak kneed neither one thing nor the other of the 'New English Bible' and like translations ... the Lorimer version is forthright, pungent and expressive. It is intoxicatingly quotable'. Peter Levi's review in 'The Spectator' testifies to the fact that `even robustly philistine and foreign readers will find it marvellously alive'.
Most readers of course will be immediately attracted to Lorimer's rendering of the gospels, and of particular merit here are his renderings of the Parable of the `Prodigal Son' (Lk. 15:11-35), and the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Jacob's Well (Jn. 4:1-42). In Luke's text for example, the generous father addresses the furious elder brother as an importunate but much loved child: `Laudie, laudie ... ye ar ey by me, an aathing I hae is yours. But we buid be mirkie and haud it hairtie: your brither wes deid and is in life aince mair ...'. The poetry and spiritual wisdom of the Johannine passages are splendidly realised in lines like these: `Hae ye no a say, `Ither fowr month or hairst? Na, na, I tell ye: cast your een outowre the fíelds an see hou yallow they ar an reddie for shearin!' The double negative captures a Scots idiom which still survives, with perfect precision.
That Scots is a fit vehicle for narrative prose is ably shown, moreover, in Lorimer's `Acks'; for example in the dialogues when St. Paul argues eloquently before King Agrippa. The King, reluctantly impressed and a little mischievous, says: `Ye will be makkin me a Christian wi the skíllie tung o ye'. Paul answers powerfully and even proverbially: `Be it suin, or be it syne ...' (Ac. 26:28-29). Until Lorimer, however, Scots had not been much used as a successful medium of expository writing of an abstract nature, and it is in this context that his versions of the epistles, `Hebrews' and `Revelation' come into their own; one need only look at the famous Paulinian reflections on charity from `I Corinthians' 13:1: `Gin I speak wi the tungs o men an angels, but hae nae luve i my hairt, I am no nane better nor dunnerin bress nor a rínging cymbal', or his meditations on childhood and maturity: `In my bairn days, I hed the speech o a bairn, the mind o a bairn, the thochts o a bairn, but nou I am grown manmuckle, I am throu wi aathing bairnlie' (1 Cor 13:11).
As most readers will know, the `New Testament' was written over a long period of time by different authors in a variety of styles - a comparison between the Greek of Mark and Luke makes this perfectly clear. It is to Lorimer's credit that he therefore sought a variety of Scots styles to represent the disparate nature of his original. For example, his `Hebrews' is the only book in the text to use the phrase `Sith, than' (e.g. Heb. 4:14). `Revelation' is, perhaps, the most poetic book in his rendering, much more so than the gospels. Chapter 19:7, for example, reads: ` ... his Bride is there, aa buskit an boun, buskit an boun, bi the favour o heiven'. The collocation of `buskit' and `boun' has a long pedigree in Scots and is reminiscent of the old ballads (cf. `busk and boun my merry men all'). Lorimer's repetition of the phrase elevates his prose into lyric poetry.
At all times, however, Lorimer's translation exemplifies the dictum of his introductory epigramm: `Your speech makes you come out into the open'. We can rejoice that William L. Lorimer chose to reveal himself in the way that he did, by bequeathing to his nation and his people, a truly magisterial `New Testament in Scots'.

...

The character of the Gospel somehow translates well into Scots: perhaps how the Hebrews were dispossed by the Romans in their own land, much like the Scottish in theirs. The graceful and almost offhand beauty of the language is a dramatic contrast to the formal English translations, and brings out a much more adventurous element in the story of Jesus. It's a book I can't recommend highly enough.

This is a true translation of the New Testament from the Greek into Broad or Lowland Scots and not simply a retelling of the Gospel stories. When read aloud, the real beauty of the language is appreciated more than might be when read silently. Some of the words and phrases are foreign, after all this is another language, yet when read in tandem with a known text, subtle differences in the interpretation can be appreciated.

If you have more than one translation of the New Testament already, or if you have any Scottish blood coursing through your veins, then this is a must have.

If you want to hear the New Testament in something akin to the language of Robert Burns, then this is the book for you! Indeed, in reading this translation you come to better understand the English language in general. For example, in Christ's pronouncement "He who has ears, let him hear" you learn that the word for "ears" in Scots is "lugs". Upon reading this phrase it suddenly occurred to me why a metal nut with two protrusions or "ears" for easy tightening onto a screw or threaded bolt is called a "lug nut". Because the NT is prose and (unlike Burns) not poetry, the natural cadence of Scots speech seems to come through. When my wife and I spent several days in Edinburgh years ago, we were struck by how easily we understood the speech of the people we met there--much more easily in fact than in most parts of the United States--or other parts of Britain. I believe that we were also recognized in Edinburgh as people similar to its inhabitants and as easily understood as if we were in our little hometowns. Indeed the cadence of their speech and accent seemed to have very much in common with the Mid Atlantic and Southern small towns in which we both were raised. As my wife and I both have a good measure of Scotch-Irish blood, this is not too hard to understand. In reading this NT, the only extensive work of Scots prose that I have ever found, I recognize many elements of the language familiar to Americans such as myself with some Scotch-Irish background.

I'm no expert, but I like this as well as or better than the King James translation, and I can understand much of it. Beautiful.