Listening to the radio this morning - Woman's Hour in fact - I heard an interview with Scotland's newly appointed Makar, Ms. Liz Lochead. The interviewer, Jenni Murray, pronounced the title 'maakar', but I've always thought that it was pronounced 'maker'. Looking in dictionaries, standard and dialect, I find that I've been wrong all these years. Unless (clutching at straws) my longstanding pronunciation can be found in some version of the Scots tongue.
One of the great Scottish poems is William Dunbar's "Lament for the Makaris" with its repeated doom-laden line, "Timor mortis conturbat me". It seems to hark back to Villon's Ballades " ... du temps jadis".
I think I recall reading a poem by Seán O'Brien modelled on Dunbar's Lament, though I can't remember who or what he was bemoaning.
Anyway, congratulations to Ms. Lochead, I was sort of hoping she might get the job - her or Tom Leonard.