On 12 December 1966 he put me editorially in charge of his translation and drafted, at my request, a few brief notes on “Orthography & Pronunciation”, in which he expressly says:
I have deliberately refrained from writing in a uniform “standard” Scots. On the contrary, I have made differences between different writers. In doing so, I have made the following units, which are intended to be internally consistent in forms and orthography:
| 1. | MATTHEW. |
| 2. | MARK, except: 2(a), 16.9–20. |
| 3. | LUKE–ACTS. |
| 4. | JOHN, with I–III John, except: 4(a) Jn. 7.53–8.ii; 4(b), Jn. 21. |
| 5. | PAUL, incl. Romans, I–II Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, I–II Thessalonians, Philemon, and (perhaps with some differences) Ephesians. |
| 6. | PASTORALS, incl. I–II Timothy and Titus. |
| 7. | HEBREWS. |
| 8. | JAMES. |
| 9. | I PETER. |
| 10. | II PETER. |
| 11. | JUDE. |
| 12. | REVELATION. |
In quotations from the O.T. I have made occasional use of Old Scots words.
IN ONE OF the few conversations in which my father discussed his translation with me during his last illness, he said that in revising his first drafts he had carefully reconsidered all such variants and alternative renderings as they contained, and had in most cases indicated his final preference, but that in doing so he had often mistrusted his own judgement, and still felt doubtful about many of the spellings he had adopted. Accordingly he instructed me that in editing his manuscripts I must always, in the last resort, be guided by my own editorial judgement.
The manuscripts of his translation are contained in ten notebooks ranging in format from 8¼×6½ to 10¼×8¼ ins., and comprise:
(a) REVISED FIRST DRAFTS (Matthew, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, I–II Corinthians, Hebrews, and Revelation): All text is written, in single verses, on recto pages; it contains a great many variants; and many alternative renderings are also written, with notes, on previous verso pages.
(b) REVISED FINAL TRANSCRIPTS (Mark, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, I–II Thessalonians, I–II Timothy, Titus, Philemon, James, I–II Peter, I–III John, and Jude): All text is transcribed, in solid paragraphs, on recto pages; it contains only a few remaining variants; and scarcely any alternative renderings are written en face on previous verso pages. There are, however, a few explanatory or critical notes.
The Revised First Drafts together contain about three-fourths of my father’s translation, and have, of course, demanded much more editorial attention than the Revised Final Transcripts.
Without having lost sight of the requirement that each of the twelve authorial units already specified should be internally consistent in forms and orthography, I have made a good many minor alterations in my father’s spelling. Most of them do not require any detailed discussion, but a few brief comments must now be made on those which affect the pronunciation.
In his revised final transcript of I–III John,19 my father throughout writes “truith”. Throughout his revised first draft of John’s Gospel20 he first also wrote “truith”, but subsequently altered it, wherever it occurred, to “trowth”; and in a definitive list of spellings compiled less than three months before his health broke down he expressly adopts “trowth” as standard in Luke, Acts, and John. John’s Gospel and I–III John all, however, belong to one of his twelve authorial units; and in I–III John I have accordingly substituted “trowth” for “truith” wherever it occurs.
In the same annotated list of standard spellings, my father records his final preference for the spellings “king(dom), wing, wisdom”. But in one of the few conversations in which we discussed his translation during his last illness he told me that he had never finally made up his mind whether these words should be pronounced king, wing, wizdom, or keeng, weeng, weezdom. I received the impression that he had not completely overcome his hankering for the pronunciations keeng, weeng, weezdom; and after prolonged editorial indecision I finally resolved to spell these words so as to be pronounced keeng, weeng, weezdom, in the Pauline Epistles, Mark, Matthew, and Hebrews, but so as to be pronounced king, wing, wizdom everywhere else. Any reader who dislikes my spellings of these words should simply ignore them.
Finally, my father’s manuscripts also provide much evidence which suggests that he had not finally made up his mind how two other words should be pronounced: “same”, which he sometimes spells “sam”; and “shame(fu)”, which he often spells “sham(fu)”. I doubt whether he would have retained either of these spellings if the last two volumes of The Scottish National Dictionary had been published before his death; and I have always (except once) substituted “same, shame(fu)”, for “sam, sham(fu)”, wherever each occurs.
My father had once told me, while I was still at school, that “fornicatio” was a legalism which had first been introduced into the language of Christian morals by Jerome in the Vulgate. A few months before his health broke down, I asked him whether “hurin”, etc., would not therefore be much better Scots translations of πορνεία, etc., than “furnication”, etc. After his death I found that in the revised first draft of I Corinthians 5.9–11 he had originally written “furnicators”, etc., but had subsequently added in pencil the variant “hoorers”, etc. Elsewhere in his manuscripts, there are a few other passages (e.g., I Cor. 6.9) in which he had tentatively added the same or similar variants. All such additions are written in shaky handwriting, and appear to have been made not long before his health broke down. I feel sure that if it had not broken down so soon after our discussion of this particular question, he would once more have gone through all his voluminous manuscripts, adding similar variants wherever appropriate; and I doubt whether he would in the end have preferred “furnicators” to “hurers”. I have throughout his translation altered the text accordingly; and in my apparatus criticus I have accurately reported all such alterations.
My father’s own passionate devotion to truth was probably the only dogmatic commitment which restricted the freedom which his combined knowledge of Greek and Scots permitted him to exercise; and, like his collateral ancestor Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie, he was sometimes an exuberant translator. In deciding which of several variants or alternative renderings to adopt, I have sometimes hesitated to collaborate with his scholarship in inhibiting his creativity; and, although I have in general been governed by such final preferences as he has indicated, mine have not always coincided with his. Thus in I Corinthians 14.11 his text reads:
I will be like a barbârian tae him an he will be like a barbârian tae me.
But written on the previous verso page there is also an alternative rendering, which reads:
my speech will be like the {cheepin o a spug/currooin o a (cushie) doo} tae him an his will be like the {chitterin o a swallow/claikin o a [kae/craw]} tae me.
At first sight, this may perhaps seem far-fetched. It should not, however, be overlooked that, in classical Greek, foreign languages were proverbially compared to the twittering of birds;21 and, although βάρβαρος means “anyone who does not speak Greek”, it does not strictly mean “anyone who is not civilised”. In the text printed below,