Jamieson’s Dictionary of Scots: The Story of the First Historical Dictionary of the Scots Language by Susan Rennie, and: Scotland in Definition: A History of Scottish Dictionaries edited by Iseabail Macleod and J. Derrick McClure (review)

At this writing, the outcome of Scotland’s referendum on independence, scheduled for September 18 of this year, is unsettled; readers will know it by now and, thereby, whether fairly or not, measure the tide of Scottish nationalism. That nationalism is no longer kilt and claymore, according to Jonathan Freedland: “The Braveheart notion of Scottish nationalism,” he writes, “… has been extinct, even as myth, for several decades” (2014, 47/a), and the Scottish National Party’s white paper, Scotland’s Future: Your Guide to an Independent Scotland, at 649 pages, raises “few rousing calls to Scottish pride or the spirit of Bannockburn, their place taken by information on postal services and the administration of drivers’ licenses” (2014, 47/c). It may well be that “A Scot never likes to be ignored or underrated” (Finlayson 1987, 181), fair enough. Yet, however they vote, Morningside ladies raise an eyebrow at the exceptionalism of Arthur Herman’s How the Scots Invented the Modern World (2001); doubting the gentility of such brazen claims, they’d not be surprised to discover that its author is an American.

The Scots did not invent modern lexicography, either, though they have been central to its evolution. Nevertheless, since the eighteenth century at least, Scots have relentlessly advocated their language, especially in the dictionaries they’ve made. In turn, the books under review here advocate that lexicography. As Mary O’Neill suggests at the outset of her chapter in Scotland in Definition, “From the Union of 1707, the Scottish contribution to the lexicography of English has been considerable. As Scots drove for betterment in post-Union Britain … it could be argued that the potential loss to Scots lexicography became English lexicography’s gain, as Scotland’s skilled linguistic observers and educators concentrated their efforts on English” (266). But as both books under review make plain, in spite of English lexicography’s gain there was no loss to Scots lexicography at all.

The rich tradition of Scots lexicography is susceptible to study at dramatically different scales, as the books in tandem prove. Susan Rennie’s Jamieson’s Dictionary of Scots is intensely focused more or less on the one dictionary—the two-volume Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (1808) by the Reverend John Jamieson (1759–1838)—and it recovers the story of Jamieson’s ambitions and working methods by careful and insightful scrutiny of the archives. Iseabail Macleod and J. Derrick McClure’s Scotland in Definition by contrast sweeps over Scotland’s lexicographical enterprise from before the Union to the present day, not only its representations of Scots but also of Scots Gaelic, as well as its role in English lexicography. Both books are welcome—indeed, compelling—additions to the literature of Scots lexicography and modern lexicography more generally.

Of course, much has been written about Scots lexicography already, from Aitken’s “On Some Deficiencies in Our Scottish Dictionaries” (1980) to half of Christian Kay and Margaret Mackay’s Perspectives on the Older Scottish Tongue (2005)—some of the latter contributed by authors of chapters in Scotland in Definition—and then further to Margaret Dareau and Macleod’s survey of Scottish dictionaries in The Oxford History of English Lexicography (2009, 2.302–325). But there has been no comprehensive single-volume history of Scots lexicography until Scotland in Definition, and on reading Rennie’s book, one realizes how scandalously overlooked Jamieson’s dictionary has been, not only in the history of lexicography, but also in Scots cultural and European intellectual history, though his effect on later lexicography, the Scottish tradition...