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The Golden Treasury of Scottish Verse
The Golden Treasury of Scottish Verse is a timeless collection of Scottish poetry. It contains over three hundred poems ranging from the early medieval period to the twenty-first century, and paints a full-colour portrait of Scotland's poetic heritage and culture.
Edited and introduced by award-winning poets Kathleen Jamie, Don Paterson and Peter Mackay, and including poems by Robert Burns, Carol Ann Duffy, Sorley MacLean, Violet Jacob, William Dunbar, Meg Bateman, George Mackay Brown, Màiri Mhòr nan Òran, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jackie Kay, Liz Lochhead and many more, The Golden Treasury of Scottish Verse is a joyous celebration of Scotland's literary past, present and future.
Edited and introduced by award-winning poets Kathleen Jamie, Don Paterson and Peter Mackay, and including poems by Robert Burns, Carol Ann Duffy, Sorley MacLean, Violet Jacob, William Dunbar, Meg Bateman, George Mackay Brown, Màiri Mhòr nan Òran, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jackie Kay, Liz Lochhead and many more, The Golden Treasury of Scottish Verse is a joyous celebration of Scotland's literary past, present and future.
- GenresPoetry
544 pages, Hardcover
First published December 21, 2021
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78 people want to read
About the author
Kathleen Jamie
71 books326 followersKathleen Jamie is a poet, essayist and travel writer, one of a remarkable clutch of Scottish writers picked out in 1994 as the ‘new generation poets’ – it was a marketing ploy at the time but turns out to have been a very prescient selection. She became Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Stirling in 2011.
http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org....
http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org....
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 17, 2025
Like many others, Palgrave's "Golden Treasury" introduced me to and fed my love of poetry. It was through its pages that I discovered poets who continue to be favourites: the likes of William Blake, Robert Burns, Tennyson and Elizabeth Barrett-Browning. The very title of "The Golden Treasury of Scottish Verse" pays homage to Palgrave's anthology. Edited by three of Scotland's greatest living poets (former Makar Kathleen Jamie, current Makar Peter Mackay and the truly inspiration Don Paterson), its 500+ pages cover the whole spectrum of Scottish poetry, ranging from verse attributed to Columba and ancient traditional ballads to 21st century poetry, every imaginable genre of poetry and verse written in all three of Scotland's main languages (English, Gaelic, Scots) as well as some in Latin and Shetlandic (the Gaelic and Latin poems also helpfully have English translations).
Although there are many familiar names - poets such as Burns, Fergusson and Edwin Morgan - there are plenty names I had not come across before. And even among the more familiar names, the editors have sometimes chosen from their less well-known efforts. The order of the poems is unusual. Most anthologies are chronological or thematic or put works by the same poet together. Here the order is alphabetically by the first word of the title, thus creating an element of randomness, with poems in different genres, from different eras, with different themes and written in different languages rubbing shoulders with each other. Sometimes it even seems as if different poems are talking to each other - or even talking over each other.
With approximately 300 poems, it is difficult to choose highlights. However, there are a few I would like to mention. James Macintyre's 18th century response to Samuel Johnson's criticisms of the Highlands begins (in English translation from the Gaelic): "You're the slimy yellow bellied toad,/You're the sluggish crawler of ditches,/You're the lizard of the swamp..." and continues for several verses in the same vein. These old Gaelic poets didn't pull their punches!
Inequality, poverty and hypocrisy feature in many poems. These include Rachel Annand Taylor's (1876-1960) "The Princess of Scotland" which is a conversation in which each question is answered with descriptions of poverty. The great 18th century Sutherland Gaelic bard Rob Donn uses his "An Elegy For the Children of the House of Rispond" as a platform to criticise the way the wealthy keep their wealth to themselves, with lines like: "Their gold's more darkly hoarded/Than when it was in the mine" before admitting his words will fall on deaf ears: "I fear that you won't listen/And won't help out the poor,/Anymore than these bachelors did/Until a week ago tonight". It won't surprise anyone to know that Rob Donn was regularly in trouble with the authorities! Although very different in both structure and language, I saw a connection between Rob Donn's poem and Robert Burns' powerful "A Man's A Man For A That" (also featured).
Dugald Buchanan's "The Skull" is one of several poems that make the point that in death, our wealth in life is irrelevant: "Your face will not tell/Now who you are,/If you were a king or a duke,/Alexander the Great,/Or a hungry slave/Who died on a fetid midden". Ageing too is a common theme, as in Duncan Macintyre's poignant "Last Farewell to the Mountains".
There are lots of poems, particularly among the many Gaelic verses, about the Highland Clearances, the Campbells attacks on the MacDonalds at the Massacre of Glencoe and the conflicts between the houses of Hanover and Stuart, culminating in the battle of Culloden. In "A Song on the Massacre of Glencoe", the 18th century Gaelic poet Murdoch Matheson celebrates the bravery of the MacDonalds and accuses those who abused their hospitality by murdering them of cowardice. John Macrae's "Sleep Peacefully" looks back at his life in Scotland, expressing both regret and hope for his life in the new land.
There are love poems, murder ballads, stories of adventures, religious verse, reflective poetry, accounts of fauna and flora, stories of deaths at sea, comic verse (some of it quite bawdy) and so much more. In fact my only regret is that the three editors chose not to include any of their own poetry (though Peter Mackay has translated much of the Gaelic poetry into English). If you like poetry, you will love this inclusive and expansive anthology, which is clearly a work of love.
Although there are many familiar names - poets such as Burns, Fergusson and Edwin Morgan - there are plenty names I had not come across before. And even among the more familiar names, the editors have sometimes chosen from their less well-known efforts. The order of the poems is unusual. Most anthologies are chronological or thematic or put works by the same poet together. Here the order is alphabetically by the first word of the title, thus creating an element of randomness, with poems in different genres, from different eras, with different themes and written in different languages rubbing shoulders with each other. Sometimes it even seems as if different poems are talking to each other - or even talking over each other.
With approximately 300 poems, it is difficult to choose highlights. However, there are a few I would like to mention. James Macintyre's 18th century response to Samuel Johnson's criticisms of the Highlands begins (in English translation from the Gaelic): "You're the slimy yellow bellied toad,/You're the sluggish crawler of ditches,/You're the lizard of the swamp..." and continues for several verses in the same vein. These old Gaelic poets didn't pull their punches!
Inequality, poverty and hypocrisy feature in many poems. These include Rachel Annand Taylor's (1876-1960) "The Princess of Scotland" which is a conversation in which each question is answered with descriptions of poverty. The great 18th century Sutherland Gaelic bard Rob Donn uses his "An Elegy For the Children of the House of Rispond" as a platform to criticise the way the wealthy keep their wealth to themselves, with lines like: "Their gold's more darkly hoarded/Than when it was in the mine" before admitting his words will fall on deaf ears: "I fear that you won't listen/And won't help out the poor,/Anymore than these bachelors did/Until a week ago tonight". It won't surprise anyone to know that Rob Donn was regularly in trouble with the authorities! Although very different in both structure and language, I saw a connection between Rob Donn's poem and Robert Burns' powerful "A Man's A Man For A That" (also featured).
Dugald Buchanan's "The Skull" is one of several poems that make the point that in death, our wealth in life is irrelevant: "Your face will not tell/Now who you are,/If you were a king or a duke,/Alexander the Great,/Or a hungry slave/Who died on a fetid midden". Ageing too is a common theme, as in Duncan Macintyre's poignant "Last Farewell to the Mountains".
There are lots of poems, particularly among the many Gaelic verses, about the Highland Clearances, the Campbells attacks on the MacDonalds at the Massacre of Glencoe and the conflicts between the houses of Hanover and Stuart, culminating in the battle of Culloden. In "A Song on the Massacre of Glencoe", the 18th century Gaelic poet Murdoch Matheson celebrates the bravery of the MacDonalds and accuses those who abused their hospitality by murdering them of cowardice. John Macrae's "Sleep Peacefully" looks back at his life in Scotland, expressing both regret and hope for his life in the new land.
There are love poems, murder ballads, stories of adventures, religious verse, reflective poetry, accounts of fauna and flora, stories of deaths at sea, comic verse (some of it quite bawdy) and so much more. In fact my only regret is that the three editors chose not to include any of their own poetry (though Peter Mackay has translated much of the Gaelic poetry into English). If you like poetry, you will love this inclusive and expansive anthology, which is clearly a work of love.
January 11, 2025
Enjoyed reading poetry
March 3, 2026
This collection had its highs and lows for me. Some poems absolutely reminded me why Scottish verse has such a pull, while others felt a little flat.
Take Robert Burns, for example — his “O my Luve is like a red, red rose / That’s newly sprung in June; / O my Luve is like the melody / That’s sweetly play’d in tune”. It’s timeless, and reading it here felt like rediscovering an old favourite.
Another standout for me was the patriotic pride in “This is my country, / The land that begat me. / These windy spaces / Are surely my own. / And those who toil here / In the sweat of their faces / Are flesh of my flesh / And bone of my bone.” Lines like these really made the anthology feel alive.
But while there are beautiful moments like that, the collection as a whole didn’t fully sweep me away. Worth reading for the gems, but not one I’ll treasure on my shelves.
Take Robert Burns, for example — his “O my Luve is like a red, red rose / That’s newly sprung in June; / O my Luve is like the melody / That’s sweetly play’d in tune”. It’s timeless, and reading it here felt like rediscovering an old favourite.
Another standout for me was the patriotic pride in “This is my country, / The land that begat me. / These windy spaces / Are surely my own. / And those who toil here / In the sweat of their faces / Are flesh of my flesh / And bone of my bone.” Lines like these really made the anthology feel alive.
But while there are beautiful moments like that, the collection as a whole didn’t fully sweep me away. Worth reading for the gems, but not one I’ll treasure on my shelves.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews