Ay, Fegs by Charles Murray
Channel: Leamington Books
Date: 2014-12-21

Ay, Fegs by Charles Murray

J. Derrick McClure, University of Aberdeen, wrote in November, 2002: 

"Charles Murray is the leading figure in the development of the North-East dialect of Scots as a literary medium; and by extension, a major influence in the recovery of confidence in Scots as a poetic language which set the scene for the Scottish Renaissance of the 1920s.

"The North-East of Scotland, in the mid-nineteenth century, was a self-contained and self-sufficient agricultural community with a strongly-marked dialect locally known as the “Doric” (which has survived remarkably well to the present day), a splendid tradition of folk-song and folk poetry, and a distinctive social culture based on large-scale arable farms employing workers who regularly “flitted” – moved from one place of work to another – every few terms. Murray's father, a joiner by trade, had a high local reputation for his skill in reciting dialect poetry, including his own writings; and Murray, in his boyhood, absorbed the full range and vitality of this remarkable folk- culture."