The story behind the duo who translated Catalan UDI into Scots

The presence of the flag in this quiet locale might surprise some, but the story behind it and the couple who live in the house is fascinating.

Iain W D Forde, a retired architect, designed the cottage and lives there with his wife Susan, and for nearly 30 years they have run Fons Scotiae, a small specialist publishing operation – named after their village well’s original title – printing books in Scots, the language of Lowland Scotland.

She was born in Wales and raised in Edinburgh, while he was born and bred in the capital.

He says he was fated to write Scots: “Everything seemed to point me that way, though my mother tried to stop me if ever I said ‘aye’ or ‘ken’.

“When my father returned from the war he returned to his job as a publisher in Edinburgh and I still have and use books he gave me then such as the Scots classic ‘Wee Macgreegor’.

“My mother, when he was away fighting, sent me to the school her father had attended, Daniel Stewart’s College, where never a word of Scots was heard in the playground.

“The headmaster Dr Robbie and the English department taught Scots poetry though and we knew Burns, Ferguson and radically, MacDiarmid.”

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Iain says it was impossible not to absorb the basic Scots of the streets, or his older relatives, and by the time he left school, “I had a much greater vocabulary than children today despite my mother”, although he did not immediately have the opportunity to use it.

“Learning to be an architect in Edinburgh College of Art there was no interest in Scots or the other Scots vernacular of architecture, but oddly a very vigorous Burns Supper was held by a year above me, which I have never seen bettered,” he recalls.

“Meeting Susan, who was studying Older Scots and Anglo-Saxon at Edinburgh University, introduced me to the world of ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Dunbar and Henryson. She was my headmaster’s niece.

“Practising architecture in Scotland produced a constant infusion of Scots.

“By 1979 the disappointment of the referendum was doubled as I was working on offices for the new Assembly using the specialist joiners that were working on the Royal High School.

“My enthusiasm for Scottish language, politics and architecture was now fixed.”

SO, after spells as a part-time drummer with Mike Hart’s New Society Syncopators and other bands, and a busy professional life as an architect, Iain thought he would learn a new language when he retired, and opted for Scots because “it was easy”.

However, he says: “This was a big misjudgement. I had before kept a diary in Scots and realised the paucity of my vocabulary.

“A fine old dictionary, Jamieson’s, appeared from a relative in London soon after Lorimer’s New Testament was published.

“This meant that my sources were largely older Scots and I have never changed from this preference.

“Letters about Scots in the papers put me in touch with ‘Lallans’ the Scots magazine and I learned of the need for prose to extend the language.

“As I could not speak Scots due to my background this attracted me.”

Iain W D Forde (left) and his wife Susan, who translated the Catalan UDI into Scots, with their eldest son Jerry

He went on to write “The Paix Machine”, the first modern novel in Scots, which the couple published themselves, aided by the Concise Scots Dictionary.

“The compositor that helped us then has done all our books since and is a giant of patience as every book needed numerous proofs as the work progressed, printers and binders were also helpful,” says Iain.

“All our books are self-published so that we keep control of design and content.

“This was also so that the Scots could be as strong as possible to protect against critics that say it is slang or it is dying out.”

Their methodology also means they have no practical or financial help from any other source, but both say they like it that way – Susan as the editor and Iain the author and illustrator.

While their books have been well received in Lallans magazine and The Scots Independent, as well as being bought by Edinburgh University Library, Susan says more generally Iain’s contribution to the Scots language has been ignored by organisations such as the Association of Scots Literary Studies, Saltire Society, Scottish Arts Council and its successor, and others.

She says: “It is a wholly loss-making venture, since there is not sufficient market for books in Scots without support, so no publisher could accept them, which is why they have been written, illustrated, designed and published in-house.

“We are trying to create a market for the books and have sold a package of them to all Kinross-shire primary schools.

“It is an educational venture – for the Scots language: leir guid braid Scots/learn good broad Scots – as we say on the website.”

THE couple also have more than a passing fondness for Catalonia and its language, and have just completed a translation from Catalan into Scots of their declaration of independence from the October 2017 referendum.

This is being translated into dozens of languages as an online showpiece for the Council of the Republic, which was set up in Belgium by the exiled former president Carles Puigdemont.

Attached to his translation into Catalan, are Iain’s thoughts on the Scots language and the future of Scotland itself.

“The country of Scotland and its tongues must look at the future positively,” he writes.

“For the last 300 years Scotland has been in decline in terms of population, well-being and confidence. So have the languages.

“This has coincided with the union with England. During a similar period from 1066 the ‘old’ English language was suppressed by French and it used that time to hone itself until the time when it was integrated with the French and formed modern English.

“Scots in a similar way has been suppressed by English and has reacted in the same way.

“The spoken language has become simpler and robust and in formal matters uses English as that tongue once used French. But as Scots was a more mature culture there is a different option. That is to use the Scots words which were in use between 1300 and 1700 and are conserved in the literature and dictionaries.

“As we are approaching the time when Scots could be called again to deal with political, cultural and philosophical writing such as this translation of The Catalonian Declaration, this policy of language restoration must be followed vigorously.”

All of which brings us to the story of the Senyera above their front door.

“We knew two people who fought in Spain against the fascists,” says Susan.

“One was John Dunlop, a printer; the other was Jacky MacFarlane who later worked in Edinburgh Corporation Sanitary Department (at the Dump) and was a jazz singer, especially ‘Frankie and Johnny’.

“He was kicked out of the Communist Party for the jazz and was a hero to Edinburgh students.

“We used to have a Free Tibet flag in our garden but it was blown to shreds by the wind with its prayers as yet unheard, but the Saltire on the flagpole is doing fine.

“The Catalan flag is based on the King’s wounds in a battle – the red stripes – which were bandaged by the only cloth available, golden material, perhaps from his clothing, so I was told by a Catalan.”

She adds: “Incidentally, my ‘the Directory of Flags’, Charlotte Greig, ‘A guide to flags around the world’, from Ivy Press does not have a Catalan flag in it, and omits Scots from languages of Scotland.

“I’ll have to write them a letter.”