Dear All,
As a native speaker of  the so-called  "Lallans", born in Ayrshire, may
I remind Nabokophiles that the young VN had a Scots tutor, Mr Burness.
He may have been related to Robert Burness (later Burns), the poet of my
native Mauchline, where great aunt Poosie and her husband Wullie Gibson
were the proprietors of Poosie Nansie's Howff, the setting of Burns's 
Jolly Beggars Cantata.  I speculate that Mr Burness (who turns up in 
Pale Fire under another name)  introduced the young VN  to certain
Lowland Scots expressions.  It is unlikely that VN would have
encountered such terms such as "houghmagandie" in Cambridge, Berlin,
Paris, Stanford, Wellesley or Cornell.
 
Seasonally, lang may yer lum reek...
 
Tom Rymour
 
 
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