Poems, Scots and English

About this book

Poems, Scots and English by John Buchan is a collection of poetry written in the early 20th century. Mixing Scots dialect with English, it blends pastoral portraiture, satire, and wartime reflection. The book likely centers on the Scottish Border landscape and character, the trials of modern life and faith, and the experience of war, while drawing on classical and historical motifs.

The volume is in two parts. Book I (Scots) offers vernacular monologues and idylls—shepherds, elders, and townsfolk speaking with wit, piety, and grit—followed by battlefield and billet poems that carry the voice of ordinary soldiers through fear, duty, comradeship, and home-longing. Laments for change and loss sit beside warm comedy and homesick praise of the “South Countrie,” and Theocritean pastorals are recast in Border speech. Book II (English) broadens the canvas with elegies, dedications, and travel-and-war romances; it contrasts city bustle with moorland peace, urges a braver life against complacency, and revisits exiles, sea captains, and classical echoes. Across both halves the constant notes are love of place, moral stoicism, and the belief that simple, homely affections outlast tumult and war.