The BURIED Book Club discussion

I haven't read the Scottish renaissance poet Sydney Goodsir Smith, and I wouldn't normally make a thread for someone without reading them first. However, I found these quotes online about his novel Carotid Cornucopius and was unable to resist.

"Although best-known as a poet, Sydney Goodsir Smith is also celebrated as the author of the experimental novel Carotid Cornucopius (1947), one of the few prose works in Scots published during the Renaissance period. Its exuberant linguistic wordplay has drawn comparison with both Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake and Sir Thomas Urquhart’s 17th-century translation of Rabelais."

"He also wrote a comic novel about Edinburgh called Carotid Cornucopius (1947). It is highly original, written in a language that at first looks quite unintelligible. Persistence and the re-reading of passages is rewarding, however, and great fun for lovers of language. Here is an extract (and there are no typing errors):

Sae they ployed hoppy as screwballs all the day lang until as nicht begroan to fail upone the waurld they ilkane couried doun to slump, haean sighed their proars in dew and peeper forum. Meg, the hoturnal lumping Maw, the Allma Mater of the hippy twine, learnit them the Lauk's Preyer in the sextarian abusage of the Haunt of Mondlethian and though they dudnae get aa the weirds richt their damp demotion and poiety were unmentionable and drolly dutching. The wee gigants did their botchest to follie whit their lowing Maw moo'd, and thus their babby lups repattered owfter her: "Our Cramond that Marchmont Newhaven, Holyrood Bruntsfield Grange; thy Colinton Comely-Bank; thy Liberton in Leith, Arthur's Seat Corstorphine; Granton Lasswade our Dalkeith Braids and Forthbrig us our Tollcrosses, as we Fairmilehead them that Grassmarket Cowgate us. Queensferry us not into Tynecastle but Dean Brig us Tron Mayfield, for St. Giles Inch the King's Park, the Powderhall, the Gorgie; for Waverley and Waverley. Dun Edin."
End thus their bibbyhood fleed bye in cheeriness and sillisence, little racking whit the faurtear helld, and giean nocht a button if it ruined or frazzed. Are ye infeediose? Ay, shairlie. "

I'm five pages into this and still getting the hang of it. My shallow knowledge of Scottish slang is a definite impediment here, but trying to read it out loud has given me some solid giggles. Fans of the Wake will definitely dig this, a conclusion probably reached my anyone reading the above excerpt. Before the book begins, there is a list of fictional books ("gurks") also written by "gude schir Skidderie Smithereens." This includes classics like "Gorgonzholism: Its Cause and Cures" as well as "An Exhuminatioun of the Nature of the Amorous Engines Inployed by the Ancients, as Recentlie Discovered in a Wee Cairdboard Box in John Knox's Hoose."

As with large swaths of the Wake, I may not know exactly what the hell is going on here, but I sure am enjoying the not-knowing.