David Wilkies tribute to Jill McWilliam, jist a fairmin’ quine.
“You are a great advocate for your native Buchan and for showing folks the wild rugged and remarkable scenery of mountain, land, coast and sea which has inspired you to provide inspiration for others”.
Les Cantlay, York.
Doric language – let’s keep it guan
Jill Cantlay McWillam is a lover of the Doric Language, she lives in Cruden Bay on the beautiful North East coast of Scotland. Above all. Cruden Bay is well known for its World Class Golf course, and Gothic cliff top ruin which inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula.
However, obvious tourist attractions aside, Cruden Bay is nestled in the heart of Doric country with a rich farming and seafaring heritage with generations of local families treasuring their Doric roots and ancient Doric Language.
From farming stock who spoke the Doric language
Jill has been collecting and archiving video footage for over 30 years and through the wide range of services now available. That is to say, it has never been easier for her share her work, and now many more people can enjoy and explore the remarkable footage she has captured over the years.
Jill feel’s it’s really important to capture as much of this information as she can relating to the Doric Language before it’s too late and gone for ever. And moreover, Jill sees it is her goal to preserve the past and inform the future.
Working with local communities
Over the years Jill has spent a lot of time working with local communities and sees great value in linking with every generation to help grow awareness in our local heritage and proud culture. The Doric language is unique to the North East of Scotland, and consequently suffers from being a niche within a niche which puts it in real danger of extinction as each successive generation passes.
Since launching the Doric Future website in October 2019
we have been delighted with the many personal contributions written especially for the site, as well as the video features which were filmed at Jill’s Doric Studio in Cruden Bay.
It has also become clear that our appeal is broadening out across wider Scottish cultures with interest coming from the most unlikely of sources, check out the extracts below from our YouTube channel, I think you’ll see what we mean.
It’s with this growing interest in mind we will be delighted to include submissions from a broad variety of cultural perspectives from all across Scotland, which we hope in time will create interesting content to be enjoyed by one and all. We also hope this will inspire others to make their own contributions and will in time tie these distinct cultural threads together here in this unique website.
Jill hope’s you enjoy your visit to her site and that you take away something you didn’t know before.
Pictured above is farmer Jimmy Cantlay,
Jimmy is the father of Doric Future founder Jill Cantlay McWillam. It was Jimmy’s pride of his Doric roots which egnited the same passion in Jill, and the rich legacy of his experience and love for the land he worked for over 60 years inspired her to capture and share the stories he had to tell, and the stories of others like him. In doing so, Jill is realising her ambition of preserving the past and informing the future.