Robert WHILE David Cameron continues to do the Hokey Cokey over

Europe (you put your right leg in, you put your right leg out), here at iScot magazine we have been having our own civil war... over an apostrophe.

The apostrophe in question has been adorning our moto which appears above our masthead: For those o’ independent mind. Don’t bother flipping back to the front page, it is no longer there. (No, of course the front page is still there, I’m not some sodding magician like Dynamo or David Blaine, disappearing things; I mean the apostrophe; it’s missing. Catch up, catch up!)

In this iScot edition, as in the last, our apostrophe is no more. As John Cleese might have said (but didn’t), it has ceased to be. It has expired and gone to meet its Maker. It is a late apostrophe. It’s a stiff. Bereſt of life, it rests in peace. It has joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-apostrophe.

And we in the ‘P Party (that’s the ‘postrophe party of which I am President for Life) aren’t at all happy about its summary removal. It was excised from its blameless, peaceful and happy existence on the front of this magazine following a deluge of leters (well, three) lambasting us for its use.

The substance of the complaints, for

what one correspondent chose to call “the apologetic apostrophe,” is that its presence was imposed as a sop to English language sensibilities; it represents a nod in the direction of the missing ‘f’ in ‘of’ instead of using the plain, no-nonsense o employed, without adornment, in the auld Scots mither tung.

20 August 2015

Burns

The iScot slogan, “For those o’ independent mind” (and yes, folks, we in the ‘P party are sticking to our guns; please read our mission statement), is actually a variant of the phrase which appears in most versions of the lyrics of A Man’s A Man for A’ That. The poem – or song, if you will – is also known variously by the titles For A’ That and Is There Honest Poverty. In that historic (but oddly dreary) ceremony at the resumption of the Scotish Parliament in 1999, it was the Burns song chosen to celebrate the event.

Cast an eye over the words of that variously titled creation. There are apostrophes aplenty; enough to fill a small wheelbarrow, one might surmise. Indeed, the very stanza from which our moto is derived looks as if a pepperpot filled with apostrophes has spilled across the page. Judge for yourself:

Ye see yon birkie ca’d a lord Wha struts and stares and a’ that Tho’ hundreds worship at his word He’s but a coof for a’ that For a’ that and a’ that His riband, star and a’ that The man o’ independent mind He looks and laughs at a’ that

Now, it may be that the three aforementioned titles have used the same version of Burns’s work; it therefore becomes necessary to go back to the source, the poet’s Kilmarnock first edition, the holy grail of all Robert Burns investigation (if you exclude his leters). Even though A Man’s A Man... did not appear in it, it is worth noting how his other works were treated in that volume.

As John Cleese might have said (but didn’t), it has ceased to be. It has expired and gone to meet its Maker. It is a late apostrophe. It’s a stiff. Bereſt of life, it rests in peace. It has joined the choir invisible. Tis is an ex-apostrophe.

John Wilson, a printer in Kilmarnock, published 612 copies of Poems, Chiefly in the Scotish Dialect, on 31 July, 1786. They sold out within a month.

Not having one in my possession – the last copy, one of twelve known to be in private ownership, fetched £40,000 at auction some three years ago – we must turn to the internet for succour; a digital facsimile of the original Kilmarnock edition is available for perusal (but not, as the website says severely, for emendations).

In every single poem of that facsimile in which the word, ‘of’ appears it is represented as o’.

That is not out and out proof, of course, but it is prety strong evidence; one requires a litle help to travel further in that