Doric: The Dialect of North-east Scotland (Varieties of English Around the World) PDF
Preview Doric: The Dialect of North-east Scotland (Varieties of English Around the World)
<ATSKSWVUIIDUEOZTIBYDOTEFLJWFHTECESHHCOOIEN"ETTRRDFI"DGo1O"""5rSVH4"i0c"ET">:"A"TW"2h,2e0V"doialulemcteotf8"North-EastScotland" Doric: TheDialectofNorth-EastScotland Varieties of English Around the World GeneralEditor EdgarW.Schneider DepartmentofEnglish&AmericanStudies UniversityofRegensburg Universitätsstraße31 D-93053REGENSBURG Germany [email protected] EditorialAssistants AlexanderKautzsch,AndreasHiltscher,MagnusHuber(Regensburg) EditorialBoard MichaelAceto(PuertoRico);LaurieBauer(Wellington) J.K.Chambers(Toronto);JennyCheshire(London) ManfredGörlach(Cologne);BarbaraHorvath(Sydney) JeffreyKallen(Dublin);ThiruKandiah(Colombo) ViviandeKlerk(Grahamstown,SouthAfrica) WilliamA.Kretzschmar,Jr.(Athens,GA) CarolineMacafee(Aberdeen);MichaelMontgomery(Columbia,SC) PeterMühlhäusler(Adelaide);PeterL.Patrick(Colchester) TextSeries VolumeT8 Doric:TheDialectofNorth-EastScotland byJ.DerrickMcClure Doric The Dialect of North-East Scotland J. Derrick McClure UniversityofAberdeen JohnBenjaminsPublishingCompany Amsterdam(cid:1)/(cid:1)Philadelphia TM ThepaperusedinthispublicationmeetstheminimumrequirementsofAmerican 8 NationalStandardforInformationSciences–PermanenceofPaperforPrinted LibraryMaterials,ansiz39.48-1984. LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData McClure,J.Derrick Doric:thedialectofNorth-EastScotland/ J.DerrickMcClure. p. cm.(VarietiesofEnglishAroundtheWorld,issn0172–7362;v.T8) Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. 1.Scotslanguage--Dialects--Scotland--Grampian.2.Grampian(Scotland)--Social lifeandcustoms.I.Title.II.Series. PE2121.N7 M38 2002 427.9’4121--dc21 2001056475 isbn902724717(cid:3)X(Eur.)/158811130(cid:3)X(US)(Hb;alk.paper) ©2002–JohnBenjaminsB.V. Nopartofthisbookmaybereproducedinanyform,byprint,photoprint,microfilm,orany othermeans,withoutwrittenpermissionfromthepublisher. JohnBenjaminsPublishingCo.·P.O.Box36224·1020meAmsterdam·TheNetherlands JohnBenjaminsNorthAmerica·P.O.Box27519·Philadelphiapa19118-0519·usa Table of Contents . The North-East: an overview . Demographic and linguistic history . Previous accounts of the dialect . Examples of recorded speech 5. Examples of written texts . Poetry . Prose . Drama References Glossary Index Thanks are due to the following for permission to print copyright material: Ronald S. Wadsworth, secretary to the Charles Murray Memorial Trust, for Charles Murray’s Winter; James Michie, President of the David Rorie Society, for Mary Symon’s The Glen’s Muster-Roll; Steve Savage Publishers Ltd. for Flora Garry’s Mains o’ Yawal’s Dookand Peter Buchan’s The Skipper’s Wife; Margaret Duncan for J.C. Milne’s O for Friday Nicht!; Cath Scott for Alexander Scott’s Haar in Princes Street; Bet Mackie for Alastair Mackie’s Aiberdeen The-Day; Sheena Blackhall for her Wanted; Sandy Stronach and Bennachie Publishing for Texts 18-23 in the Poetry section. Thanks are also due to Simon Fogiel for the extracts from the Student Shows and to Jill Hay for the extract from the Attic pantomime (Drama section, Texts 7 and 8). I have been unable to locate George Ritchie and Raymond Falconer, or to identify the copyright holders for their poems. The North-East: an overview1 “The North-East,” in Scotland, is not simply a geographical expression; though the fundamental reason for the region’s distinctive identity is clear from the merest glance at a map. This great hump of land, bounded by coast- lines running east-to-west and roughly north-east to south-west and on the landward side by mountain ranges, forms a natural territorial unit which has become home to one of the strongest and best-preserved regional cultures in Scotland (Maps 1 and 2)2. Map 1 Doric: the dialect of North-East Scotland Map 2 The interior landscape with its delightful and often spectacular variety of farm- land, forest, moorland and rugged mountains, and the coast with its alterna- tions of long sandy beaches and imposing cliffs, have often been described; usually in terms which clearly reveal the affection which this part of Scotland inspires in both natives and visitors. We are here concerned with the topogra- phy of the area only to the extent that it has affected the traditional patterns of life, and hence the culture and language, of the inhabitants. Westward, the region extends to the Cairngorm Mountains, and southward to the Mounth, which runs almost to the sea near the town of Stonehaven. Until the advent of modern roads, these two vast highland massifs proved a virtually total barrier to communication between the North-East and the rest of Scotland. Only along the Laigh of Moray, the broad belt of low-lying land which extends along the northern (Moray Firth) coast, has land travel between the North-East and any other area of Scotland been easy. Until the eighteenth or even the nine- teenth century, indeed, the regional capital, the ancient cathedral city and trad- ing port of Aberdeen, maintained more frequent and regular contact with towns of the North European coast than with any other towns in Scotland. The traditional isolation and self-sufficiency of the North-East is certainly a con- tributory factor both to the highly distinctive nature of its dialects and to their unusually good state of preservation even in our own times. Agriculture and fishing are, and have been for generations, two of the The North-East: an overview principal industries of the area. In its southern part, a coastal belt of red sand- stone-derived soil offers fertile arable and grazing land. Elsewhere, one of the most potent contributory factors to the region’s distinctive identity, its folk- memory, and its literature both oral and written, has been an intensive pro- gramme of agricultural improvement begun in the nineteenth century, which transformed the physical face of the North-East and established a way of life which survived until well into living memory. Notwithstanding the efforts of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century landowners to offset the small villages, townships and farms scattered randomly on the more fertile spots by the establishment of larger farms and planned settlements, the large-scale improvement of the area is the work of the individual farmers and their fee’t [hired] workers: a breed whose place in the social history of the North-East is beyond challenge. The rich stocks of cod and herring in the North Sea, too, have since ancient times supported a productive fishing industry. The fishing communities in the small coastal settlements were strictly exclusive and endogamous: young fishermen married girls from their own or other fishing villages, and sons followed their fathers into the trade. Between the farming and the fishing populations there was very little social contact: rather a tradi- tion of mutual antipathy. Despite the daunting conditions of life in the trade — the North Sea is notoriously rough and treacherous — the communities not only endured but prospered; and the North-Eastern fishermen, adapting over the years to technical and commercial developments, maintained the sta- tus of the area as one of the most productive fishing grounds in Europe until international overfishing in recent years resulted in disastrously depleted stocks and reduced the industry to a state of crisis. Aberdeen, not only the largest town in North-East Scotland but one of the most northerly major cities in the world, is in every sense — economic, indus- trial and cultural — the capital of the region. It is situated between the mouths of two rivers, and was originally two distinct settlements focused respectively on a Church foundation at the Don firth and the natural harbour provided by the mouth of the Dee. Both settlements date from very remote times, and though the Don area of the modern city is still known as Old Aberdeen and the city’s name actually means “mouth of the Don”, there is no more concrete evidence that either can claim greater antiquity than the other. Positioned squarely on the principal (and until recently the only practicable) route from South-East to North-East Scotland, and occupying a favourable position for continental trade, Aberdeen was developed from early times as a commercial centre. By a charter of King William I (William the Lion) in 1178 the city
The list of books you might like
