The New Penguin Book of Scottish Verse [Hardcover]

This big new compilation is a much-needed survey over several hundred years of writing in Scotland, from the so-called `dark ages,' through the anonymous ballads, right up to the concrete poetry of the 1960s and beyond. It begins in the linguistic confusion of early medieval Scotland; Latin, Welsh, Old English, Old French and Old Norse gradually give way to Scots with a scatter of Gaelic. By the 19th century English has taken over almost entirely, but the book comes to a close with what seems like a new flowering of trilingualism, as Gaelic and Scots writing return to our pages in strength. Languages other than English are all given a facing-page translation in English, and the Scots is well-glossed, so the book remains very approachable, for all its diversity.

We may know about Burns and Scott, and of course they are well-represented, but we are introduced here to dozens of less-familiar names and works. The real revelation (for me) was in the wealth of the carefully excerpted stretches of medieval Scots verse. I only really knew Robert Henryson's work, but we get passages here from several other 15th century poets, such as William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas, whose work all has a richness and sinew that really makes you want to read them aloud.

Post-Burns, there is something of a fallow period, into which creeps a strong strain of twee romanticism; in the midst of this rather bleary stuff a dash of MacGonagall is actually quite welcome! There remains however, not that much to get excited about until the arrival of Hugh MacDiarmid's extraordinary "On A Raised Beach" and Robert Garioch's "The Wire" - a nightmarish Modernist vision in broad Scots. These lead naturally on to the many fine Scots poets of the late 20th century; Edwin Morgan and Douglas Dunn, to name just two.

It is always tempting to look for themes in an anthology, and there are several that recur across the centuries. The vicious name-calling that Dunbar and Thomas Maitland both so clearly enjoy in the medieval period is taken up with equal delight in Sydney Goodsir's Smith's 20th-century "The Grace of God and the Meth-Drinker." You'd never guess there were 500 years between them. The violence of war that preoccupies many early poets is also of course echoed in the 20th century, although there is also a delightful anecdote from Barbour's "The Bruce" in the 14th century of the great king halting his entire army's progress to wait for their laundrywoman to give birth. Presumably she was expected to be back on the road again straight afterwards! And there is something of an obsession with bad weather that crops up time and again through the years; from Douglas's "Eneados" (Virgil in medieval Scots), through ballads such as "Get up and bar the door," James Thomson's elegant Augustan "Winter," and so on.

My one disappointment was that none of the Gaelic translations seemed to have much power or conviction; but perhaps that just tells me I ought to try to learn the language and read them in the original! All-in-all, this is a massive work, and a finely balanced, engaging and entertaining one too.