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The poet Violet Jacob was born in 1863 into an aristocratic family, lairds of the House of Duns, in Angus. Despite her well-to-do background, she wrote her poems in Scots.

For Lisa Simmons, who teaches an adult education course on the life and work of the poet, Violet Jacob鈥檚 use of Scots in her poetry stemmed from a deep interest in the lives of those who were resident on the Duns estate: 鈥淪he was surrounded by the servants at the house, ran free and was welcomed by the people of the estate. There was always that eagerness throughout her life to communicate with and understand the local population.鈥�

The First World War was to impact directly on Violet Jacob when her only son Harry died as a result of wounds he sustained at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Violet transmuted her feelings of grief into her poetry, perhaps most vividly in her poem entitled Halloween, published in 1921.

鈥淗alloween is set in a bothy, people are guising and bobbing for apples,鈥� explains Lisa. 鈥淏y the fire in the bothy, a ploughman recalls a friend who didn鈥檛 come back from France. So this is after the war. The Halloween revels are going on all around him but he can鈥檛 stop thinking about his friend. He says at the end, 鈥榶e鈥檒l mebbe hae yer Halloween鈥�and the lichts of Halloween in France.鈥欌��

鈥淚 think Halloween is about Harry without a shadow of a doubt, but she鈥檚 used the story of a ploughman who survived the war, but whose friend did not.鈥�

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