Scottish people have never been taught how to read, write and express themselves to their fullest capability in Scots, as some of them have been in English. This is not, of course, to suggest that there are not plenty of capable and articulate Scots speakers, but that has nothing to do with their educational experience. A situation persists in which the population generally believes Scots to be ‘bad English’, ‘slang’ or – to use a phrase once common in the corridors of Scottish schools –‘the language of the gutter’. There are recent signs of more enlightened attitudes in the teaching profession, among educationalists and in both national and local government, and these are welcome. We are still, however, a long way from Scots – despite its being the language of the ‘national bard’ Robert Burns, the language of the world’s song of fellowship ‘Auld Lang Syne’, the language of a magnificent oral culture of song and story, the language of daily usage for hundreds of thousands of people, and the language of a six-hundred-year-old literature, one of the richest in Europe, of which the vast bulk of the population are kept in utter ignorance – getting the recognition and protection as a priceless national asset that it deserves.
Nobody, on taking up this book, can read a paragraph or a page from it and seriously conclude that the medium of William Laughton Lorimer’s translation is bad English, slang or the language of the gutter. Nor is it good enough to differentiate between Lorimer’s Scots and everyday spoken Scots, applauding one while denigrating the other as if there were no connection between them. Here is a work in a language that is articulate, literate, ornate, delicate, robust, cheerful, moving and profound, capable of capturing and liberating all the rich wonders of its subject matter. It should be a book savoured and enjoyed by tens of thousands, not by a select few. If Scotland should develop into a culturally and linguistically self-respecting, self-confident society, The New Testament in Scots will remain in print for many years to come, for the best of reasons: because there will be an increasing demand from the people, of all faiths and of none, to read it.
James Robertson, 2012
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
MY FATHER’S PARENTS were the Rev. Robert Lorimer, Free Church Minister of Mains & Strathmartine, a rural parish situated on the northern outskirts of Dundee, and Isabella Lockhart Robertson, who were married at Berne, Switzerland, in 1869, and during the next seventeen years had five sons and three daughters. He was the seventh of these eight children, was born at Strathmartine in 1885, and lived for most of his life within sight of the Sidlaws. When they grew up, his two eldest brothers, John Gordon Lorimer and David Lockhart Robertson Lorimer, both made distinguished contributions to Oriental linguistic studies; his eldest sister, Hilda Lockhart Lorimer, made an equally distinguished contribution to Homeric studies, and latterly became Vice-Principal of Somerville College, Oxford; and if he had died without having made the Scots translation of the New Testament printed in this memorial volume, his name might never have become quite so well known as any of theirs.8
Until towards the end of the eighteenth century, his eponymous ancestors had been farmers in Nithsdale: but his father’s paternal grandfather was the Rev. Robert Lorimer, LL.D., nicknamed the Pope of Haddington, who was born in 1765 and died in 1848. He was the son of Robert Lorimer, farmer in Cleughfoot and Gateside, near Sanquhar, but was educated at Glasgow University, and then entered the ministry of the Church of Scotland. In 1792, when he was twenty-six or twenty-seven, the estates of the defunct Marquisate of Annandale devolved upon the Earl of Hopetoun, one of the principal heritors of the wealthy parish of Haddington. In 1793 the Rev. Robert Lorimer was appointed Chaplain to the Hopetoun Fencibles; in 1796 he was ordained Minister of Haddington; and in 1801 he married Elizabeth Gordon, daughter of John Gordon of Balmoor, W.S., and Margaret Stuart, through whom she was descended from James, fourth Earl of Moray, the Bonnie Earl’s grandson. Their son, the Rev. John Gordon Lorimer, D.D., was born in 1804 and died in 1868. After having been educated at Glasgow University, he was ordained Minister of Torryburn, Fife, in 1828, but only three years later became Minister of St David’s (commonly called the Ram’s Horn Kirk), Glasgow. He married Jane Campbell, daughter of the Rev. John Campbell, D.D., who had been Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1819. One of the Rev. Dr John Campbell’s first cousins was Thomas Campbell the poet; and amongst her second cousins Jane Campbell numbered both the classical scholars Lewis Campbell and Charles Badham.
Ever since the Anglo-Scottish Parliamentary Union of 1707, the clergy of the Established Church had not only occupied a much more dignified social position, but had also been much better-off, than most of their parishioners. The Pope of Haddington and his son had both risen in the world, and had both seemingly become pillars of the Establishment. But in 1843, when ten years of mounting conflict between Church and State culminated in the Disruption, the Rev. John Gordon Lorimer instantly renounced his emoluments, and soon became the first Free Church Minister of St David’s, Glasgow. Only a few weeks later, the Pope followed his son’s example, and in due course became Haddington’s first Free Church Minister. What the Earl of Hopetoun may perhaps have had to say about his defection from the Establishment has not been recorded.
The Rev. John Gordon Lorimer’s elder son, Robert, was born in 1840 and died in 1925. Like both his father and his paternal grandfather before him, he was educated at Glasgow University, and then, not without some preliminary hesitation, entered the ministry. In 1866 he was ordained Minister of Mains & Strathmartine; in 1900, when the Free Church and the United Presbyterian Church together formed the United Free Church, he became Strathmartine’s first United Free Church Minister; and in 1909 he retired from active service. Although his ministry had thus lasted for forty-two years, the stipend on which he had brought up a family of eight children had never exceeded £400 a year: but none of them ever questioned the validity of the principles for which his father and grandfather had sacrificed the security which their merits had earned. He was dignified, but not ambitious; and, although he was both considerate and conscientious, he was so undemonstrative that he was not popularly regarded as an inspiring preacher. Before finally deciding to enter the ministry, he had wished to become an architect, and later transformed Strathmartine’s original Free Church into a charming example of Victorian romanesque architecture.9 It was in Rome, while studying architecture, that he first met his future wife, whose family was by contemporary standards much better connected than his.
Her father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all been called David Robertson, and had all served the Honourable East India Company. Her paternal grandfather was Major David Robertson, H.E.I.C., who was born in 1766/7 and died at Cheltenham in 1847. He was the son of Captain David Robertson, H.E.I.C., a naval officer, and Marion Forbes, daughter of Hugh Forbes, advocate, and Margaret Aikman, daughter of William Aikman the painter; and on his mother’s side he was also descended from Duncan Forbes of Culloden, the Lord President’s grandfather, from Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie, grandfather of Sir Thomas Urquhart the translator of Rabelais, and from Grizel Crichton, the Admirable Crichton’s half-sister. He married Caroline Lockhart (described by her grand-daughter Bella as having been “a peepie-weepie old lady who went to bed whenever there was a thunderstorm”) and retired early from service in India because the climate impaired his wife’s health. Three of his four unmarried sisters lived to be very old; and Bella often saw them when she was a child. Like all Scottish gentlewomen of their generation, they ordinarily spoke Scots, not English;