ABSTRACT
The real difficulty is the break-through of the Doric from the realm of pure description and simple emotion into the realm of pure ideas. MacDiarmid achieves it now and then, but the rushing flood of his thought swirls him back into a stream of English, where only an occasional Scots locution reminds us of the Doric intention. Literary temperaments in Scotland are various and strong, and their agitations reflect with fair accuracy those of a country which is passing through a severe economic and social crisis, and which must call up all its reserves of capacity and imagination, and do some hard thinking on its own account. Lewis Spence stands out as the most marmoreal, the most completely artistic poet in modern Scotland. The Scottish soul was enshrined in vernacular literature, but the vernacular had become associated only with pseudo-rustic lyricism and “matter of Habbie Simson.”
