(17) Lewis Grassic Gibbon, 'Scottish Scene' (1934), in
Smeddum: A Lewis Grassic Gibbon Anthology, ed.
(18) Lewis Grassic Gibbon, 'The Antique Scene', in Lewis Grassic Gibbon and Hugh MacDiarmid, Scottish Scene, or The Intelligent Man's Guide to Albyn (1934); reprinted in Valentina Bold (ed.),
Smeddum: A Lewis Grassic Gibbon Anthology (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2001), p.
In talking about Bunty in his autobiography, as already noted, Moffat says he employs 'One braid Scots word purposely placed in each act, as we put a touch of mustard on a steak to help the flavour!' (Moffat 1955: 26) He specifically claims to identify in these memoirs only three Scots words each used in one of the play's three acts: 'yella-yite', '
smeddum' and 'peelie-wallie'.
The characters discussed here (and others, such as the residents of Shepherd's The Weatherhouse, Meg Menzies in Gibbon's "
Smeddum," and Martha Williamson in Gunn's "The Tax-Gatherer") rescue women from the "lifeless propriety' of a fenced-in life (Shepherd 4).
Salmond's
smeddum and quick wit are prime SNP assets.
(10) Gibbon's love affair with radio continued the following decade with dramatisations of the stories 'Smeddum', 'Sim' 'Clay' and 'Greenden' broadcast on the BBC Home Service between October 1966 and February 1967.
Clay, Smeddum and Greenden, another memorable dramatisation, this time of Gibbon's three Scots Magazine stories, again directed by Pharic Maclaren, appeared on BBC1 as a 'Play for Today' on 24 February 1976, earning a repeat in the same slot on 18 August 1977.