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by
William Soutar
Read by Marilyn Wright
Click
here to listen to this in RealAudio
 William
Soutar (1898-1943)
Born
in Perth, Soutar served in the Navy during the First World War, before
taking a degree in English at Edinburgh University in 1923.
He suffered from a progressive spinal disease which kept him at
home thereafter, and from 1930 he was confined to bed.
He kept diaries, journals and dream books throughout his long
illness, selections from which have been published as ‘Diaries of a
Dying Man’. He was a
socialist, a pacifist and a Scottish Nationalist.
Convinced that cultural revival could only come by making the
Scots language accessible to children, he wrote ‘Bairnrhymes’,
riddles and ‘Whigmaleeries’ with that audience in mind, as well as
songs and poems much influenced by the ballad tradition.
A close friend of Hugh MacDairmid, Soutar played an important
part in the Scottish Literary Revival.
O
luely, luely cam she in
And
luely she lay doun:
I
kent her be her caller lips
And
her breists sae sma’ and roun’.
A’
thru the nicht we spak nae word
Nor
sinder’d bane frae bane:
A’
thru the nicht I heard her hert
Gang
soundin’ wi’ my ain.
It
was about the waukrife hour
Whan
cocks begin to craw
That
she smool’d saftly thru the mirk
Afore
the day wud daw.
Sae
luely, luely, cam she in
Sae
luely was she gaen
And
wi’ her a’ my simmer days
Like
they had never been.
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