Subject
Re: McDiarmid, Southey, etc.
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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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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
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/