Wi’ tartan plaid and buckled shoon, he’ll come nae mair to oor toon: Experts on how Scots’ war poetry is a timeless tribute to the fallen
On Remembrance Sunday, poets’ lines of bravery and awful loss salute those who fell while exposing the terrible cost of war
After the sacrifice, came the elegies, the resonant poems of war still paying tribute to those long fallen.
On Remembrance Sunday, the lines will be remembered, particularly, of course, the most famous of all, In Flanders Fields, by John Mccrae: “In Flanders fields the poppies blow, Between the crosses row on row.”
But the work of Scots poets can stand alongside more famous writers like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, according to professor Roderick Watson.
He co-edited From The Line, a collection of Scottish war poetry from 1914-1945, and said: “It’s a feature of human experience to be caught up in conflict or to have to live with the aftermath, so it’s not surprising these very powerful events generate very powerful responses like poetry,” he explained.
“Poems may seem out of place in that they seem to people to be lyrical and about nature, but that’s a terrible misapprehension. Poetry has been dealing with powerful, difficult human emotions forever so it’s no surprise that, on the battlefronts of the First and Second World Wars, verses were written to confront traumas and experiences beyond the nightmares of these men.
“There was an extraordinary concentration of very fine Scottish boys who found themselves in the desert campaign in North Africa in the Second World War.
“And many of them were socialists, like Hamish Henderson, Robert Garioch and George Campbell Hay, among others.
“And they give particular spin to the Scottish war poetry, different from visions of people in the first war, like Wilfred Owen.
“These Scottish poets saw themselves in the grip of larger forces, as fighting their fellow working class men. They have a common compassion for the soldier on the other side.”