A Scots Quair

A quair is a Scots word, the equivalent of quire, usually without the numerical sense of 24 or 25 sheets of paper. It’s a dictionary word, not one you’re going to meet coming down the Galapark Road. It just means a bunch of pages, thus a book. Perhaps the most renowned one is The Kingis Quair, a long poem by King James I written when he was in captivity in England in 1406. It starts: Heigh in the hevynnis figure circulereThe rody sterres twynklyng as the fyre,And, in Aquary, Citherea the clereRynsid hir tressis like the goldin wyreThat late tofore in fair and fresche atyreThrough Capricorn heved hir hornis bright,North northward approchit the mydnyght . . . It’s perhaps not too surprising that Lewis Grassic Gibbon should have choosen the word quair to describe his trilogy, Sunset Song, Cloud Howe and Grey Granite, the story of Chris(tine) Guthrie. The three novels which make up the trilogy are almost the essence of what it is to be Scottish. They were first published in England by…