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Flora Garry wis a makar o tooring import tae Doric scrievin. She stauns alang we Charles Murray is ain of the maist significant scrievers in Doric tung. As the Herald's obituary to her in 2000 put it "Flora takes her place as the last of a triumvirate of North-east rural poets who did wonders for their native tongue, the others being Charles Murray and J C Milne".
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Remember ... the Buchan dialect was my first language Flora Campbell, wis born in Buchan on 30 Septimmer 1900, the dother o Archie Campbell, a fairmer fa scrievit as "The Buchan Farmer", an his wife Helen Campbell fa scrievit plays for the wireless.
She wis vrocht up it Mains of Auchmunziel (Achmingle) oot by New Deer. She wint tae skweel in New Deer and it Peterheid Academy afore gan tae the Varsity o Aiberdeen. She became a skweel teacher hersel, warkin in Dumfries an then it Strichen. She merriet Robert Campbell Garry fa wis a distant cousin and later became Regius Professor of Physiology at the Varsity o Glasgae. They hid ae loon, Frank. It wis efter the Second Warld War thit Flora Garry gat yokit scrievin an nithin wis taen oot in print tae she wis in her sivventies. Her maist weel-kent collection Bennygoak wis vrocht oot in 1974. The poem o the same title is her maist weel-kent wark an ain o the maist siblime bits o Doric scrievin. Flora deid on 16 June 2000, three munths afore her 100th birthday. |
Flora Garry in 1990, photaed it her hame in Comrie, Perthshire. Photae courtesy o her granson.
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"A Sure TOUCH AN SHARP EYE"
Flora draed on her love o Buchan and her love o the laan in much o her wark:
I don’t think I could have written about anything else than the land as I knew when I was growing up on the farm there in the middle of Buchan. That was what I felt I could write about; it was in me to write about the land and the folk there and the work and the weather and everything there. I wanted to write about that. I felt I knew it and it needed to be written about and when I began to write, it had to be in the speech I knew and had grown up with because remember that the Buchan dialect was my first language and I learned English only after I went to school. |
Derrick McClure wrote of her:
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The great affection in which she and her work are locally held is clear evidence not only for the vitality of her Doric as a poetic medium but for the strength of the folk memory of traditional north-east farming life. Her poems have local and quite often specific settings, and present with sharp accuracy the contrast between the natural beauty of the landscape in the changing seasons and the physically and spiritually exhausting work of those who make their living from it.
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Fae the Kist o Riches / Tobar an Dulachais. Click the ablo tae lug in tae them.
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Charles REID SPIKKIN TAE HAMISH HENDERSON BOOT FLORA
Charles Reid spiks aboot his delicht in the wark o Flora Garry, in particular 'Teuchits'. He spiks aboot teuchits an quos a suppie o ain o Garry's poem. He gies a tale aboot her fowk, fae Auchmunziel (Achmingle) it New Deer. Her fadder scrievit fir the 'Press and Journal' is 'The Buchan Fairmer'. Mr Reid quos his ain fadder fa said thit the "Buchan Fairmer" scrievit weel bit his cornyard wis roch.
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CHARLES REID SPIKS AE VERSE O 'SPRING FEVER'
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in her ain wirds....
It [land] was a sort of religion. It was thing they lived for and thought about. It was every day that they were practising this religion. Religion, using the word in a different sense, meaning the Kirk on a Sunday was in a way a much more superficial thing than this feeling they had about the parks and craps and the beasts. It’s the land and the work of the land and that the changes that have been brought about by the work over the generations. But it is more than that; there was music in every one of those crafties and fairms, there was somebody who could sing, play the melodeon, play the fiddle, dance. And when you think of the generations of labour – toil that we can hardly imagine now - that went to make that. Their ambition was to own a bit of land and then work it and that was made them take these small crofties – family crofts – and they slaved at them and they worked at them, they improved them and added to them but they held on to the land. They had determination and they had courage, but behind all that there was this feeling for the land. The wanting to have a bit of land and wanting to work it and make it produce. |
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Read Jack Webster's accoont o Flora Garry ablo
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CLICK ABLO TAE FIN FLORA GARRY'S BUIKS
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