Chapter 4: The Guid Scots Tongue (130-169)

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Chapter 4The Guid Scots Tongue (130-169)

• The
• Guid
• Scots
• Tongue

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The Story of English

• By Don L. F. Nilsen
• Based on The Story of English
• By Robert McCrum, Robert MacNeil
• and William Cran (Penguin, 2003)

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Scottish Highlands Lowlands (McCrum 150/156)
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Scottish Words in America
Place Names Aberdeen (8) Edinburgh (8) Glasgow (7) Mc (100) Nova Scotia (Canada) bonnie gang haggas laddie lass loch wee whisky (fr. Uisce beatha water of life) (McCrum 130, 147)
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Scottish Pronunciations
No Great English Vowel Shift about the house bone, stone how now brown cow. light, night, right Retention of OE /x/ loch, night, right, fought
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Jonathan Swift (né Dublin 1667)

• He detested vogue words, especially when they
  crept into church. Young preachers, he says,
  use all the modern terms of art, sham, banter,
  mob, bubble, bully, cutting, shuffling and
  palming. (McCrum 134)
• Cf todays William Safire, who has the largest
  mail bag of the New York Times

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Samuel Johnsons Dictionary

• Because England does not have a language academy
  (like the acadamie française) we use
  dictionaries to settle language issues. (McCrum
  137)
• The rise of dictionaries correlates with the rise
  of the Middle Class.
• Up through Websters II with labels like
  vulgar, colloquial, slang, argot,
  jargon, Southern etc.
• But now theres Websters III with no labels

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Johnsons Dictionary The Battle of Culloden

• Samuel Johnsons Dictionary determined spellings,
  analogies, structures, meanings and
  significances. (McCrum 139)
• 1746 was the year that Johnsons dictionary was
  published.
• 1746 was the year that the Jakobean Duke of
  Cumberland defeated Bonnie Prince Charlie at the
  Battle of Culloden. (McCrum 140)

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After the Battle of Culloden (1746) Highland
Scottish Culture was Outlawed
Outlawed Carrying of firearms Hurling of Tabors Playing of bag pipes Speaking of Scots Gaelic Wearing of kilts tartans (McCrum 141-145) So the teuchters fled to Ireland America Australia New Zealand Africa
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Robert Burns (1759-1796)

• Bobbie Burns is the author of Auld Lang Syne.
• Bobbie Burns is also the poet of eating,
  drinking and wenching. (McCrum 152)
• I hae been blythe wi comrades dear
• I hae been merry drinking
• I hae been joyfu gathrin gear
• I hae been happy thinking.

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• But a the pleasures eer I saw
• Tho three times doubled fairly
• That happy night was worth them a,
• Among the rigs o barley.
• (McCrum 152-153)

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Sir Walter Scott (1771-1831)

• Sir Walter Scott Scott wrote
• Ivanhoe
• The Heart of Midlothian
• Rob Roy and
• Quentin Durward
• (McCrum 154)

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Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

• Robert Louis Stevenson wrote
• Treasure Island and
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• (McCrum 154)

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Scots Go To Ireland (McCrum 154/160)
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Scots Migrate to Northern Ireland

• 200,000 Scots migrated to Northern Ireland.
• In turn, some two million of their descendants
  migrated to America during the 18th, 19th and the
  early part of the 20th Centuries. (McCrum 157)

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Scots-Irish Go to America (McCrum 155)
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The Guid Scots Tongue

• The Scottish language in Scotland, in Ulster
  (Ireland), in Nova Scotia (Canada) and Boston and
  Philadelphia (United States) was distinct
• Bone and stone were pronounced bane and
  stane.
• Soft leave, bath, top and sick were
  pronounced saft, lea, tap, and seek.
• How now brown cow would be pronounced Hoo noo
  broon coo. (McCrum 158-159)

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The Scots Irish at War with the Irish Catholics

• In Ulster there are many security measures
• Jeeps
• Roadblocks
• Policemen
• Bullet-proof jackets
• Graffiti
• Damaged Buildings and Roads
• Guns (McCrum 161)

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Many Scots-Irish Migrate to America

• By 1776 (the year of Americas independence)
  almost half of Ulster had crossed the Atlantic.
• In the United States, one out every seven
  colonists was Scots-Irish. (McCrum 161)

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Scots-Irish in America

• The Scots-Irish immigrants in Boston tended to be
  intolerant, violent, unruly and poverty stricken,
  so they werent too welcome.
• They moved South to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
• In 1760, Benjamin Franklin estimated that 1/3 of
  Philadelphia was English, 1/3 was German, and 1/3
  was Scots-Irish. (McCrum 162)

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Scots-Irish Move West Through the Cumberland Gap
(McCrum 158/164)
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Scots-Irish Further Migration

• Most of the Scots-Irish kept going South towards
  the Appalachian Mountains and on through the
  Cumberland Gap.
• They were on the American frontier and bore the
  brunt of Indian hostilities
• They settled in the Southwestern frontier.
• They tended to be fierce, clannish and unruly.
• They wore coonskin caps, carried Kentucky rifles,
  and were really fond of whiskey. (McCrum 163)

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• The Scots-Irish were ferocious Indian fighters,
  great boasters, and compulsive storytellers.
  They had a keen ear for a striking phrase.
• Some of them made it all of the way west to
  Texas. Probably the most famous of them was Davy
  Crockett at the Alamo, who was part real, and
  part legend. Crockett described himself as

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• fresh from the backwoods, half-horse,
  half-alligator, a little touched with snapping
  turtle, can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio,
  ride a streak of lightning, slide down a honey
  locust and not get scratched. (McCrum 163)

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!The Hillbillies

• The Scotch-Irish Hillbillies made stills and
  brewed moonshine. They used words like
  afeared, damnedest, chaw u tabacker,
  hex, plum right or plum crazy. And theyre
  great story tellers. (McCrum 165-166)
• They ate bonny-clabber (curdled sour milk) and
  flannel-cake (a thin wheat cake). They provided
  English with the expression you-all. And when
  they called the cows home at night they used the
  Old-English sucan meaning suck.

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• !!The Hillbillies said tharr, barr, and Herr
  for there, bear, and here.
• They dropped their final g, and used the
  Old-English on in front of ing words, like
  a-huntin, and a-fishin. They also used the
  Old-English form of it, which was hit.
• These features are throughout the Southwest, but
  are most prominent in West Virginia, Kentucky,
  Tennessee and the Ozarks. (McCrum 167)

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!!!Hillbilly Culture Becomes Mainstream

• Today about twenty million people (10 of
  Americans) claim Scots-Irish ancestry.
• The Scots-Irish ballads are currently imitated
  and reproduced throughout the United States.
• Dolly Parton, Pat Boone, Kenny Rogers and Willie
  Nelson are four of these ballad singers. (McCrum
  168)
• Blue-Collar TV (Bill Engvall and Jeff Foxworthy,
  etc.) also are great Hillbilly story tellers
• It is possible to see reruns of a sitcom called
  The Beverly Hillbillies. It is about some
  hillbillies who struck oil and moved to Beverly
  Hills in California.

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Works Cited

• McCrum, Robert, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil.
  The Story of English. New York, NY Penguin,
  1986. (source of map citations)
• McCrum, Robert, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil.
  The Story of English Third Revised Edition. New
  York, NY Penguin, 2003. (source of text
  citations)