A note on the title

The word 'sangschaw' is used only in the title of the collection, and not in any of the poems. It seems to be a new coining by MacDiarmid: the Concise Scots Dictionary (1985) offers the following information:

sangschaw a song festival e20 [a new coining based on WAPPENSHAW]

wappenshaw la16, 18-e20 n 1 a periodical muster or review of the men under arms in a particular lordship or district 16-, now hist. 2 chf wapinschaw a rifle-shooting competition organised by volunteers, private rifle clubs etc la19-, now Bnf

Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary, which MacDiarmid is known to have consulted, gives the following words and definitions:
To SCHAW, v.a. To show
SCHAW, SCHAGH, s. 1. A wood; a grove. 2. Shade; covert.
SCHAWE, v.a. To sow
WAPINSCHAW... An exhibition of arms, made at certain times in every district.
(The SPL copy is an abridged edition from 1846.)

'Sangschaw' offers a variety of meanings: firstly, a show of strength, a display of the 'weapons in the armoury' of the Scots language, its actual and potential range of effects, and in this sense, in 1925, a revolutionary 'call to arms' in keeping with the recent violent revolutions in Russia (successful) and Germany (unsuccessful). But 'schaw' is a wood, giving 'wood of songs', creating a sense of primeval or pagan mystery and ritual: not everything in the revolution is derived from the rationalism of the Enlightenment. Taking it a step further, the word 'schawe', to sow, gives a sense of these poems being seeds for a new type of song, and of these songs growing, of being cultivated to produce a new poetry or more generally a new culture - a renaissance. The fact that the word itself is a new 'compound' created from elements of old vocabulary underlines MacDiarmid's refusal to see Scots, even in its most archaic forms, as a static, 'given' repository of authentic expression, and his corresponding determination to create a new dynamic from the dialectic of the archaic and the modern.

© Ken Cockburn 2002

Hugh MacDiarmid
Sangshaw