Scots Wha Hae
HERE is something about the wild Scottish moors smothered in mist that makes the discovery that a ghostly 200-year-old crime is being re-enacted seem ‘almost matter of fact. Night on Skail Moor, by Horton Giddie, a BBC programme, presupposes from its very title almost anything. Night on the moor is bound to mean murder-and if the setting is Scotland what other touch is required but the historical one, with a soupcon of Bonnie Prince Charlie to taste? One of the most attractive things about this play is its dialogue, the conversation between the couple lost in the mist being more convincing in its spontaneity than any I have heard for a long time. The Scottish atmosphere too is well suggested without being overdone. I liked the soft cautious reticence of both ghost and ghillie, also the upstart Laird who had bought himself a tartan preparatory to founding a clan.
But I couldn’t help thinking that the same story, set for instance in a Canterbury marsh or hill top with the reenacting of an ancient Maori-Pakeha quarrel, would fall lamentably short of the mark. It’s the Scots wha hae the atmosphere and they can get away with it.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19470926.2.27.7
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 431, 26 September 1947, Page 15
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200Scots Wha Hae New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 431, 26 September 1947, Page 15
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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