with them.) Before going any further he entirely revised these preliminary drafts. But during the last seven months of 1959 he also completed his first drafts of Philippians, I–II Thessalonians, II–III John, Titus, and II Timothy; and in 1960 he completed those of I Timothy, Colossians, Ephesians, I John, and II Peter.
Early in 1961 he began work on the Gospels; and it took him two years and three months to complete the first drafts of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. On 23 June 1963 he began work on Acts; and by 19 February 1964 he had also completed his first draft of Revelation. Since the beginning of 1961, when he had first set out to translate the Gospels, his progress had thus been surprisingly rapid. But much the most difficult part of his daunting task still lay ahead of him; and it was not until towards the end of the following year that he finally completed the first drafts of II Corinthians, I Corinthians, Romans, and Hebrews, the last of which was finished on 10 October 1965, at “9.3 p.m.” Thus it had taken him approximately eight years to translate the whole of the New Testament into Scots; and all that he had so far produced was only a first draft. He was now eighty years old, and no longer possessed sufficiently good eyesight to read small print.
Early in 1966 he began to make what he called a revised edition of his first drafts, and had soon completed revised final transcripts of James, Mark, and Jude. Then he embarked on a hasty revision of the first drafts of Matthew, Luke, and Acts: but at the end of April 1966, he resumed the labour of transcription; and during the summer months he completed his revised final transcripts of I Peter, I-II Timothy, Titus, I-III John, II Peter, Philemon, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, and Ephesians (completed 28 September 1966). Thus it had already cost him eight or nine laborious months to transcribe only one fourth of his first drafts. Even if he had succeeded in maintaining the same rate of progress, it would have taken him at least two more years to complete the task of revising and transcribing the other three-fourths; and, probably because he was beginning to feel that he was not destined to live so long, he now set out to revise the first drafts of I-II Corinthians, Romans, Hebrews, Acts, Matthew, Luke, John, and Revelation. He began to make this rapid revision on 29 September 1966, and finally completed it on II December 1966, at “c. 9.45 p.m.”
On 12 December 1966 he put me editorially in charge of his translation and drafted, at my request, a few brief notes on “Orthography & Pronunciation”, in which he expressly says:
I have deliberately refrained from writing in a uniform “standard” Scots. On the contrary, I have made differences between different writers. In doing so, I have made the following units, which are intended to be internally consistent in forms and orthography:
| 1. | MATTHEW. |
| 2. | MARK, except: 2(a), 16.9–20. |
| 3. | LUKE–ACTS. |
| 4. | JOHN, with I–III John, except: 4(a) Jn. 7.53–8.ii; 4(b), Jn. 21. |
| 5. | PAUL, incl. Romans, I–II Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, I–II Thessalonians, Philemon, and (perhaps with some differences) Ephesians. |
| 6. | PASTORALS, incl. I–II Timothy and Titus. |
| 7. | HEBREWS. |
| 8. | JAMES. |
| 9. | I PETER. |
| 10. | II PETER. |
| 11. | JUDE. |
| 12. | REVELATION. |
In quotations from the O.T. I have made occasional use of Old Scots words.
IN ONE OF the few conversations in which my father discussed his translation with me during his last illness, he said that in revising his first drafts he had carefully reconsidered all such variants and alternative renderings as they contained, and had in most cases indicated his final preference, but that in doing so he had often mistrusted his own judgement, and still felt doubtful about many of the spellings he had adopted. Accordingly he instructed me that in editing his manuscripts I must always, in the last resort, be guided by my own editorial judgement.
The manuscripts of his translation are contained in ten notebooks ranging in format from 8¼×6½ to 10¼×8¼ ins., and comprise:
(a) REVISED FIRST DRAFTS (Matthew, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, I–II Corinthians, Hebrews, and Revelation): All text is written, in single verses, on recto pages; it contains a great many variants; and many alternative renderings are also written, with notes, on previous verso pages.
(b) REVISED FINAL TRANSCRIPTS (Mark, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, I–II Thessalonians, I–II Timothy, Titus, Philemon, James, I–II Peter, I–III John, and Jude): All text is transcribed, in solid paragraphs, on recto pages; it contains only a few remaining variants; and scarcely any alternative renderings are written en face on previous verso pages. There are, however, a few explanatory or critical notes.
The Revised First Drafts together contain about three-fourths of my father’s translation, and have, of course, demanded much more editorial attention than the Revised Final Transcripts.
Without having lost sight of the requirement that each of the twelve authorial units already specified should be internally consistent in forms and orthography, I have made a good many minor alterations in my father’s spelling. Most of them do not require any detailed discussion, but a few brief comments must now be made on those which affect the pronunciation.
In his revised final transcript of I–III John,19 my father throughout writes “truith”. Throughout his revised first draft of John’s Gospel20 he first also wrote “truith”, but subsequently altered it, wherever it occurred, to “trowth”; and in a definitive list of spellings compiled less than three months before his health broke down he expressly adopts “trowth” as standard in Luke, Acts, and John. John’s Gospel and I–III John all, however, belong to one of his twelve authorial units; and in I–III John I have accordingly substituted “trowth” for “truith” wherever it occurs.
In the same annotated list of standard spellings, my father records his final preference for the spellings “king(dom), wing, wisdom”. But in one of the few conversations in which we discussed his translation during his last illness he told me that he had never finally made up his mind whether these words should be pronounced king, wing, wizdom, or keeng, weeng, weezdom. I received the impression that he had not completely overcome his hankering for the pronunciations keeng, weeng, weezdom; and after prolonged editorial indecision I finally resolved to spell these words so as to be pronounced keeng, weeng, weezdom, in the Pauline Epistles, Mark, Matthew, and Hebrews, but so as to be pronounced king, wing, wizdom everywhere else. Any reader who dislikes my spellings of these words should simply ignore them.
Finally, my father’s manuscripts also provide much evidence which suggests that he had not finally made up his mind how two other words should be pronounced: “same”, which he sometimes spells “sam”; and “shame(fu)”, which he often spells “sham(fu)”. I doubt whether he would have retained either of these spellings if the last two volumes of The Scottish National Dictionary had been published before his death; and I have always (except once) substituted “same, shame(fu)”, for “sam, sham(fu)”, wherever each occurs.
My father had once told me, while I was still at school, that “fornicatio” was a legalism which had first been introduced into the language of
