The Student Who Could Write
 
On coming across “The Student / (Of Renfrewshire, 1820)” 
by Douglas Dunn, from Barbarians (1979), first published
in New Edinburgh Review (November 1978)
 
 
I found this poem forty years ago
hanging in the Burrell. Its poise and truth
echoed my own, bizarre and pitiful youth.
The schoolboy guesses he’s per se uncouth;
what education’s for, he doesn’t know.
     A pot of ancient pain
     was stirred by that refrain:
  “Difficult Latin sticks in my throat
  And the scarecrow wears my coat.”
 
No doubt the piece was relatively new
when it punched in early into Barbarians,
that cri de coeur for [uz] egalitarians.
(Philip Larkin thought Douglas said ‘librarians’.)
They still do verse?! I mused. Hand-written too.
     The metre, rhyme, and form
     combine to stem the storm:
  “Difficult Latin sticks in my throat
  And the scarecrow wears my coat.”
 
Already then, I'd seen a star in Dunn,
an upstart from a modest social station
who felt a sense of moral obligation
and pricked the conscience of the Scottish nation,
others continuing what he’d begun,
     this mentor, guide, and light,
     the student who could write:
  “Difficult Latin sticks in my throat
  And the scarecrow wears my coat.”

Duncan Gillies MacLaurin

If you have any thoughts about this poem, Duncan Gillies MacLaurin  would be pleased to hear them