Frisk Waatir Troot By Robert Alan Jamieson

Frisk Waatir Troot - Robert Alan Jamieson. A childhood picture from Sandness.

Read By Laurence Graham

Frisk Waatir Troot

The writer uses a distinctive scheme of phonetics  "... a way of writing that might look complicated, but at the heart of it is a very simple system, one that once a person knows what a particular graph stands for, whether they be Shetlandic or not, allows them to make a fairly good attempt at uttering the sound, and so truly hearing the sound of Shetlandic in the poem, not just seeing it upon the page..."  (Robert Alan Jamieson  A Quite-Right upon the Sacred Peatbank, 2004)

Afoar he laerns t'sykil a byk
he's tentilie rowin da flatboddim
roond an aroond Melbie logh.

Siks jieir aald
an dark paetie waatir's
slappin at da syd.

He's wurriet'at sumien myght kiek
fae da quhyt-waasht hoos
akross da girssie mødoo an sie

waatir siepin in aboot
his rubber bøt fiet -
an he'd gjit a lugfoo

quhan he wan hem,
fir no tellin oniebodie
he laekit denchir tø.

Before he learns to ride a bike, he's carefully rowing the skiff, round and round Melby loch.
Six years old, and dark peaty water's slapping at the side.
He's worried that someone might look from the white-washed house across the grassy meadow and see
Water seeping in about his rubber-boot feet - and he'd get an earful
When he got home, for not telling anybody that he likes danger too.