The Dipper an the Three Wee Deils
an a guid wheen mair poems in Ayrshire Scots
Dr J. A. Begg & J. Reid
978 1 911043 27 0
£12.50
Paperback, 280 pages
The authors of this book both grew up in Ayrshire, a generation apart. One a General Practitioner, and the other a retired Headmaster, each of them spoke and cherished Ayrshire Scots as his native tongue. By writing their poems and tales in the tongue of their childhood, they help to preserve it today as a living language.
Many of the poems have won prizes, and deserved to. Collected together for the first time in 1990, they show a remarkable breadth of humour and sense of delight at the countryside which helped to form the writers.
Now, in 2024, the original ‘Dipper an the Three Wee Deils’ has grown by 100 pages to include a further collection of poems written by Dr Jimmy Begg over the past thirty-five years. But sadly, when John Reid died in 2010, aged 96, his family were unable to locate any as yet unpublished verse among his papers.
With this new enlarged edition, their poetic and linguistic skills are once again devoted to helping the Ayrshire Hospice, which will benefit by the donation of the royalties from the sale of this book.