A few weeks ago I made a video called 'What they don't say about the Scottish Accent'
and in the comments section, somebody asked how I could speak for 15 minutes about Scots accents
and yet leave a key thing out. So was Abraham Tomahawk being frivolous or serious? Was Abraham
Tomahawk really the name that his parents gave him? More importantly, was he right about how critical
his suggestion was to my conversation about the Scots language? Whether you're an international
that watches to learn about Scotland, or a Scot that watches to reminisce, this video is for you,
because today, I'm going to talk about 'The Broons' and 'Oor Wullie'. If you're interested in the people,
places and events in Scottish history, then click the subscribe button at the bottom right of the
screen. In the meantime, switch on the subtitles and let me tell you a story. So in the comment section
Abraham Tomahawk said 15 minutes about Scots and no mention of 'The Broons' or 'Oor Wullie' awful.
That's a Scottish word. In fact, apparently Mr Tomahawk's second favourite after turnip.
Not only am I going to justify why there was no mention of 'The Broons' or 'Oor Wullie'. I'm also going
to give you a wee bit of history, a trip down the memory vennel, some cultural observations from
'The Broons' and 'Oor Wullie' and some questions for you to answer in the comment section, one of which
will be a competition with a prize. If you're an international viewer, you're going to get a feel
for one of the cornerstones of Scottish culture growing up, and this is the first time I've said
this, but you'll probably get as much information about Scottish culture from reading the comment
section as you do from the video. I know that I'm going to be interested to see the answers. So first
question Scottish people, and did you or did you not get a Broons book or an Oor Wullie annual every year
for Christmas? Even as an adult, I used to give my elder sister a Broons book for Christmas,
which must have pissed her off when she was hoping for a 20 pound note in a box of Victoria biscuits.
Now here's one of my younger sisters. She's now a seamstress in Perth, in fact she made this shirt.
We've got the same dad but a different mum, and some people say to me, Bruce, did your dad like
to sew his wild oats? And let me tell you, he was a very enthusiastic farmer. This is my younger
sister's son. Now he's a big strapping, handsome, rapalicious, hunk of a man today, but when he was a
little boy growing up in Accra, Ghana, you can imagine how he might look forward with eager anticipation
to see what his uncle and the rich developed west would send him for his Christmas. Will it be money?
Will it be cool, western clothing? Will it be the latest technological gadget? No it's a Broons book,
and next year it will be an Oor Wullie annual. Imagine him opening that international parcel
and thinking, oh my goodness. You just know he's going to get bullied at school.
Now just in case you're one of my international viewers, who didn't have a kindly Afro/Celtic
uncle let me introduce you to the Broons. They're a typical Scottish family; there's Mum Broon
there's Dad Broon, there's two adult sons, Henry and Joe, two adult daughters, Maggie and
Daphne, a teenager, Horace, Gaelic for George, a pair of I'd say eight-year-old twin boys.
Actually, I don't know their names, does anybody know? Can let me know in the comments section
right, and finally of course you've got the baby. I have no idea how old she is, somewhere between
four and thirty six I'd say. So a wide spread of ages that suggest Mum and Dad Broon have been
having a rumpy pumpy, long after either of them look fit for the rumping or the pumping.
Eight children from adult to toddler, and none of them look like the father; your typical Scottish family.
All I'm saying my Canadian cousin is when your DNA test tells you that you're 46% Scottish, then
don't assume there's going to be corresponding birth certificates. There was a war on you know.
Anyway there's Grandpa Broon too, but he lives in his own house in a different street,
where he keeps pigeons in his garden. Now I know this because Oor Wullie, a wee rascal of a primary school
lad, probably about ages with the twins, gets a whole comic book to himself, and each episode always ends
up with him sitting in his garden on an upturned bucket. So he goes round to Grandpa Broon's one day,
and the two of them have a race. They went flying down the street, Wullie on Grandpa Broon's bike, and
Grandpa Broon on Wullie's go-kart. Now Grandpa Broon promised if Wullie won he'd give him one of his prize
homing pigeons. as it was, Wullie did win the race, and he took the pigeon home, but surprise surprise,
by the next morning it was back at Grandpa's house. It was a homing pigeon ya roaster!
How we laughed. Each Broons or Oor Wullie cartoon strip involved some daft misunderstanding like that,
where somebody ended up with egg on their face, and it was written in a broadly universal Broad Scots.
Now recently one of my neighbours, Kenny Hutton, told me that he'd bought some Broons and Oor Wullie
books at a charity shop, with cartoon strips going all the way back to when they started
on the 8th of March, 1936. Now for the sake of the internationals, they
appeared in a Dundee based paper that sells all over Scotland called 'The Sunday Post'.
It only comes out one day a week, but I don't know what day that is. Doesn't matter
There's another question actually, how far away from Dundee do they sell The Sunday Post? Anyway at the
end of the year, they put together the best of the strips into a book; one year it'll be a set of
Broons' strips then next, Oor Wullie, until they started milking it by selling the away strips too, grrr.
Anyway, that's how I remember it. If I'm picking raspberries up the wrong row of canes, then I'm sure
you'll let me know in the comment section. The very first Broons characters were a wee bit different
from todays, but they were still recognizable. The flapper girl Maggie, the dark moustached Dad, Henry the spiv
and Daphne the tramp (scruffy one). I think she used my hairdresser.
Oor Wullie looked a wee bit different too. Now, Grandpa Broon didn't come in until November
1936. For the first eight months everybody thought he was dead, but he turned up safe and sound.
He must have been a homing Grandpa. When I started reading through these strips from the
1930s, the first thing that I noticed was the gratuitous carnage and violence right. In the
first four strips, we've got Oor Wullie causing injury to the public by deliberately ramming
a steamroller into a tram. That's right people of Edinburgh, trams! It was the 1930s
Then you've got the Broon twins damaging property and injuring a photographer before their Mum
beat them. Grandpa Broon and Oor Wullie racing pigeons, that's not so bad, and then one where Dad Broon
ends up attacking the staff in Casualty (ER). Pretty much every episode involves something get nicked,
something getting broken, or somebody getting beaten, and everybody is smoking cigarettes or a pipe, even
the baby. I'm joking, that was a joint. During the Empire Exhibition of 1938, the Broons headed off
to Bellahouston Park, where Dad and Grandpa Broon were chased by an escaped lion that they didn't
think was there. They escaped by rowing across a loch, that actually wasn't there. What a commotion.
Oor Wullie went to the same exhibition, and he had to write an essay for the teacher,
describing waterfalls, the Canadian Mounties and the beaver that he saw,
but he wasn't allowed to use slang words in the essay, so stop it!
Between the 29th of October, 1939 and the 10th of March 1946, Henry and Joe were always drawn in uniform,
because it was the war. From the 7th of February 1943 you didn't see them at all, because as
adult males they were away on active duty, but they survived the war and they came back.
Now the message from these comic strips aren't radical. They're twee, establishment, small c
conservative Scotland. So what about Abe the hatchet whining about me not mentioning the Broons?
In that video, what they don't say about the Scottish accent, for which I'll leave a link at
the end by the way, I chatted on about how, when we were children, voices of authority would scold us for
speaking Scots, apart from once a year at (Robert) Burns' season, but in truth, we were allowed the Broons
and Oor Wullie on a Sunday too. Oh and you might get away with a wee bit of Scots at Christmas,
when the annual came out. If you were one of the unfortunate children in Africa, it
might even get rammed down your throat by your uncle. So why were these comic strips okay?
Why were they mainstream and accepted by the small c, maybe even big c conservative establishment?
The first thing that I'd say is that as I read through this book, I noticed that the Broons
and Oor Wullie actually use a combination of Scots and standard English, a bit like myself.
It's like when you get a chicken pakora, but not the full Bhuna. Is the full Bhuna a Scottish
expression? Do you use that other places? Let me know, do other folk use that expression? Here's another thought
These are comic strips. They're a wee bit Harry Lauder, music hall. They're not be taken seriously.
How many times have you actually said 'jings crivvens help ma boab'? It's like that lovely English girl who
commented on that video about the Scottish accents, and she said do you actually ever hear people say
braw, bricht moonlicht nicht the nicht? And I said oh yes, I hear English folks say it all the time
and sadly, way too many Scottish children these days too. So whilst the Broons and Oor Wullie were
a staple of every household, whilst they were one of the few release valves for us to be allowed to
see a family speak with our voice, it was acceptable because it was comic, exaggerated
they're not real. That's why I'm not sure they really fitted into a video about the actual history
of the Scots language, but here's something that did; Billy Kay's book 'The Mither Tongue'. It's
a great explanation of the history and vibrancy of the Scots language. I sat down with Billy and
filmed a long conversation with him, that's going to be on the Patreon members page. Now if you
want to become a Patreon member, then just click the tab up there, but even if you don't, it's now
come out as an audiobook with Billy himself reading it, so if you're Scottish or international, and you
want to hear the story of Scots in English, there's no need for subtitles. You hear it spoken
with a Scots accent about the Scots language, read by that very Scot himself. It's available
on Audible. Now Billy's giving me a code for a free download for the audible book for the winner of
our competition. I'm going to give you a question. The best answer to the question in the comments
by the 12th of February, will win that free audible version of 'The Mither Tongue. Now if you don't
win the competition, you can still listen to it potentially free, because Audible do a free 30-day
trial. I'm going to leave a link to the audio book in the description below. You can click that link
sign up for a 30-day trial and listen to the book. Now if you like the idea of audiobooks and you want
to continue after the 30 days, then it's £7.99 a month as of February 2022, and they give you a
credit a month for an audiobook of your choice. I use it all the time. Now the most recent
book that I downloaded was 'Sunset Song' by Lewis Grassick Gibbon, but I've done all the Rebus books, as well;
alcohol, cigarettes, murders. You don't get more Scottish than that, so here's the question
when I was a teacher at Brechin High School, I remember a debate in the staff room about
where the Broons lived. Some said it was Glasgow, and others said it must be Dundee,
because as I said, the publisher D.C. Thompson was a Dundee company. Now
there's a 50-50 chance that even if you just guessed that you'd get it right, but the winner
wouldn't be the answer Glasgow or Dundee, in fact even if you get that bit of the answer wrong, you
can still win, because the winner will be what my wife, Mrs Columbo deems the most interesting,
entertaining or informative reason as to why it's Glasgow or Dundee. Now I'm not going to get involved
I'll be honest with you, I've lived with her for 32 years and I've got no way of predicting what
she's gonna like, but part of that debate in the staff room was where's the But 'n' Ben?
You see, as well as having boxing matches in the living room, nicking each other's stuff
forcing soot down their neighbour's chimney and leaving eight-year-old twins to babysit for a
four-year-old child, and we all ended up with shaved heads, this ordinary Glaswegian/Dundonian
family had a But 'n' Ben holiday home in the countryside, just like every Glaswegian and Dundonian of the day.
The staff room debate raged as to whether the But 'n' Ben was in the Angus hillside or the
Campsie Hills, so you see the winner will be the explanation of why you think they came from.
which town, even if they didn't. If YouTube is listening, this would be a good place to put
an advert, before I tell the folk a Broons story. Are you sitting comfortably? Now, let me get started
with a Broons story from The Sunday Post on the 8th of July, 1951. We start with the
whole family in a train carriage. Now I say the whole family, in fact I can't see Daphne
or one of the twins in this. Has there been two murders? They're heading down to the
Firth of Forth for wee holiday in Auntie Jeanie's cottage when she's away for the weekend. Grandpa
Broon's got a big soft bundle. Ooh err missus, and he says that's his gear for going fishing. Strange
it doesn't look like fishing rods. Anyway, they get to the cottage, and judging by the
position of the Forth Bridge, it must be in North Queensferry. Come away the Fifers!
Oh and thank goodness Daphne has turned up, but one of the twins is still missing.
Henry and Joe help Grandpa load the boat with his soft bundle and two long poles. As Mum, Dad one
twin and the baby look on. When they're out in the Firth of Forth, it turns out that the bundle is
sheets and they stretch them out with poles. As time passes, the family watch from the shore, awfully
curious like. Eventually it gets a bit cold and they decide to haul in the sheets and head back
Now back at the shore, Dad mocks Grandpa because he couldn't have caught a bite with those
sheets, and Joe points out he wasn't even trying to catch fish. The sheets were to
catch coins that folk threw off the train for good luck as it crossed the Forth Bridge.
Grandpa's haul for the day was one pound, twelve shillings and threepence in the 1950s!
I'll be honest, I've been across that bridge and I don't remember doing that.
Let me know in the comments section if you ever did that. On the 20th of August, 1969, Dudley Watkins,
the artist that drew the characters died. D.C. Thompson kept up output by reusing old
strips and various different artists short term, before settling on the illustrator, Ken Harrison.
Oor Wullie and The Broons are undoubtedly iconic parts of Scottish culture,
but they're made up. If you want the real life history of the Scots language
then why not watch this video here. Tha mi an dòchas gum bi lath math leibh. Tiorridh an drasda