A century on from the first world war, its poetry sheds intriguing light on the questions of nationhood awaiting an answer in this autumn's referendum
A rural country of mountain and glen? … the 'Three Sisters' ridges on the south side of Glen Coe. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod
For readers of English verse, the term "war poetry" evokes a very specific set of images: mud, blood, lions led by donkeys, ferocious irony and English village greens to be defended. In effect, the canonical parameters of modern English war poetry were established during the 1914-18 period, on the back of the work of a handful of English-born male writers. In recent decades, these parameters have loosened, especially with the wider recognition of the poetry written by women during and about the two world wars. This act of recovery has expanded our view of what war poetry might be, but there is still much to be done.
Given the coincidence that sees both the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war and the referendum on Scottish independence fall in 2014, it is doubly apt that the Association for Scottish Literary Studies should have chosen this year to publish From the Line: Scottish War Poetry 1914-1945. The book, edited by David Goldie and Roderick Watson, offers an opportunity to become familiar with work which is otherwise little known, from the Whitmanesque verse of John MacDougall Hay to the stunning Elegies for the Dead in Cyrenaica by folk singer and scholar Hamish Henderson. It also enables the reader to reflect on what this poetry can tell us about the conflicting loyalties of Scottish participants in the two world wars.
The primary tension was between the poets' sense of their Scottishness as a distinct identity and their duty to defend a greater Britain. For some, the call to arms in 1914 was seen as an opportunity to, as Charles Murray put it, "show them a', whate'er befa',/Auld Scotland counts for something still." At the other end of the spectrum was George Campbell Hay/Deòrsa Mac Iain Dheòrsa , whose extreme Scottish nationalism saw him attempt to evade service in the second world war and who declared himself quite willing to see England fall to the Nazis. And yet he fought.
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Given the coincidence that sees both the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war and the referendum on Scottish independence fall in 2014, it is doubly apt that the Association for Scottish Literary Studies should have chosen this year to publish From the Line: Scottish War Poetry 1914-1945. The book, edited by David Goldie and Roderick Watson, offers an opportunity to become familiar with work which is otherwise little known, from the Whitmanesque verse of John MacDougall Hay to the stunning Elegies for the Dead in Cyrenaica by folk singer and scholar Hamish Henderson. It also enables the reader to reflect on what this poetry can tell us about the conflicting loyalties of Scottish participants in the two world wars.
The primary tension was between the poets' sense of their Scottishness as a distinct identity and their duty to defend a greater Britain. For some, the call to arms in 1914 was seen as an opportunity to, as Charles Murray put it, "show them a', whate'er befa',/Auld Scotland counts for something still." At the other end of the spectrum was George Campbell Hay/Deòrsa Mac Iain Dheòrsa , whose extreme Scottish nationalism saw him attempt to evade service in the second world war and who declared himself quite willing to see England fall to the Nazis. And yet he fought.
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