Author and singer, musician, storyteller, and sometimes-fairy Susi Briggs is passionate about Scots language literacy and Scotify-ing what she can. Appointed the National Library of Scotland’s Galloway Scots Scriever for 2024, she’s on a mission to promote the language she loves far and wide.
After writing her first children’s stories in Scots, author, storyteller and musician Susi Briggs was told she’d never get published because Scots was “too niche”. Since then she has had several popular wean’s books published and was recently appointed the National Library of Scotland’s Galloway Scots Screiver for 2024.
The prestigious appointment, which this year celebrates the richness of Galloway Scots, is a joint initiative between the National Library and Creative Scotland, supporting the creation of original writing in Scots and promotion of the language with communities throughout Scotland.
A different region of Scotland is represented each year. Previous Scrievers were Alison Miller as Orcadian Scriever in 2021/22 and Shane Strachan as Doric Scriever last year.
“Every region has its own dialect,” says Susi, who lives in Gatehouse of Fleet. “Even within Dumfries & Galloway there is huge diversity, from Stranraer to Dumfries, Sanquhar and Kelloholm, they all have their own different melodies.”
Susi says she is no linguistics expert but, having grown up in Dumfries, attending Lochside and Lincluden Primary Schools and Dumfries High School, Scots was simply “in my lugs”.
“I was immersed in it as a child at home, though the older generations wouldn’t have thought of Scots as a language, it’s just how they spoke.
“At school we were encouraged to speak ‘properly’. We had baccie tins with words in, the ‘proper’ English words for things that we had to learn. That suggested that Scots wasn’t ‘proper’. The truth is, we’re bilingual and always have been.”
Thanks to a primary school teacher, Mr Ogilvie, who was president of the Robert Burns World Federation at the time, Susi was exposed to Scots for a while at school, and although she says, “he spoon-fed us Rabbie to the point we were sick of it”, she does appreciate the encouragement she was given in Scots language and culture. “Our music teacher Mrs Collier was the same, I vividly remember playing Ye Banks and Braes on a penny whistle for a Burns supper.”
Early encounters with Burns, along with The Broons and Oor Wullie, which felt more current, Susi says, were refreshing: “It was the only time I’d really seen Scots written down because we were taught to read and write in English. Even today, the level of Scots literacy in schools is almost non-existent.”
Scots language literacy is now Susi’s passion. In a drive to expose younger children to more written Scots she writes contemporary Scots children’s stories - including her Nip Nebs series with the late Kirkcudbright-based illustrator Ruthie Redden; Wheesht, with Wigtownshire illustrator William Gorman, and her latest publication, Yum, for nursery-aged hildren – and translates traditional children’s stories into Scots.
After school, Susi worked as a carer and in a chemist’s shop. She became a mum at 19 and, attending music and story groups with her children – Maria, now 26, Matthew, 23, Freya, 15, and Violet, 11 - encountered acclaimed Galloway storyteller Tony Bonning.
“He taught me the art of storytelling,” she says. “I’d always loved writing, and I think it was there in me somewhere. He recognised I had an aptitude for storytelling and would let me lead his groups sometimes when he was away.
“From there, I started making up stories to tell and I’d write them down in the only language I knew to write in, English.”
When Susi decided to send one story, Wee Sleepy Sheepy, off to publishers, it was repeatedly rejected with no feedback, until finally one publisher sent it back saying they’d publish it if she “omitted the Scottish flavour”.
“The only Scots word in it was ‘wee’,” she says. “That was the spark that made me say why are we not allowed to see our own language written down? “I ripped up the letter, got every story I’d ever written in English and translated them all into Scots. I discovered I didn’t have a huge amount of literacy in Scots so I immersed myself in it – Burns, The Corries, everything I could find.”
Meeting Ruthie Redden proved lifechanging: “She wasn’t a natural Scots speaker, but she read my stories and said she could feel it.”
Ruthie illustrated Susi’s Nip Nebs story which was eventually published by Wigtownshire’s Curly Tale Books: “It was a wonderful boost. We’d worked on it together for years, just between us. We felt deep down something would come of it, we just had to have faith something would happen, and it did.”
Nip Nebs was nominated for Scots Bairns’ Book o’ the Year in 2019 and was followed by a sequel Nip Nebs and the Last Berry.
The Scots Publishing Grant helped Susi with her subsequent books, published by Foggie Toddle Books of Wigtown, and she has translated stories into Scots in Itchy Coo Books’ compilations of Aesop’s Fables, Grimm’s fairy tales and stories by Hans Christian Andersen.
Meanwhile Susi was also finding success as a storyteller, performing at events across the region, often as her alter ego Susi Sweet Pea the Fairy Storyteller. As part of her work as Scots Scriever, Susi will continue with her storytelling work across Scotland. She’s involved with a project in Montrose and is hoping to appear at the Belladrum Festival near Inverness in July.
Another project she hopes to work on as Scots Scriever is creating Scots language literacy educational resources, in collaboration with Gatehouse writer, musician and teacher Alan McClure.
Having previously teamed up as The Wee Folk Storytellers, Alan and Susi joined forces during the pandemic to broadcast Oor Wee Podcast, bringing some of their Scots stories and songs together, along with Scots versions of classic children’s tales: “We felt there weren’t any Scots voices in the mainstream media for Scots weans to hear,” Susi explains. “It’s about representation and raising awareness that we exist as speakers of this language.”
Each podcast has a ‘Scotify’ challenge, where Susi challenges Alan to write a song involving a particular Scots word, her favourite being puddock (frog).
One adult listener, who has no children but simply enjoys the podcast himself describes it as an “audible bubble o bliss awa fae the keechstorms o life”.
With the support that comes with the Scots Scriever appointment, Susi says she is so pleased she can “do what she’s already doing, but better and further afield”, connecting with people she wouldn’t normally meet.
Scots poet Liz Niven, who was on the selection panel, said: “The post of Scots Scriever is a wonderful development tae heize up and promote the Scots language. A Dumfries-based Scriever will raise status and knowledge of Dumfriesshire and Galloway Scots even mair.
“A’m fair chuffed tae welcome wir new writer tae the post.”
susibriggs.co.uk
