>> I'm not so sure that the use of the apostrophe *was* trivial, Peter.
>
> I agree, but authors can be so precious. This recent episode I'd
regularized
> the text according to the Scots style sheet, as I'd normally do, only to
> have the author gnawing away at interminable length and insisting
> oh-so-politely that he knew better... He claims that this is a special
form
> of Scots that Ulster catholics bring with them when they come across the
> water; my Ullans contact disagrees...
The Scots Style Sheet (50s? published in Lines Review courtesy of Callum
Mcdonald) was, strictly, Lallans, one of the things we were fighting
*against*.
... the one of the things we never seemed to manage to assimilate
was to take Lao Tzu's advice, and never fight a war on two (or more) fronts
at once.
If you look at how they transcribe, Tom is (to use a technical term) Glasgow
Irish (background Catholic, from the wrong side of the Pale) and Jim Kelman
is (in your terms) Ulster *Protestant* background.
"Ulster Catholic" isn't, to my ear, something that makes a whole lot
of sense when it comes to Glasgow.
... then you've got Tom Paulin coming in from totally across the left-field,
and writing using idioms that seem to me staight oot ah whaur a wuz brung
up.
> I guess victory in the language wars entitles folk like him to do as he
> pleases.
I'm not sure we did win -- all that (metaphorical) blood shed, and what did
we end-up with?
"Trainspotting" !!!
<<
I think, if I remember rightly, that Angus Calder wrote something
> interesting on this -- the rural/urban thing, and poetry in Glasgow
> specifically
>>
Wasn't that -- Alexander Trocchi (Calder and Boyes) -- +Young Adam+?
Before the Wars ...
<<
-- in the Hamish Henderson issue of Chapman, no. 82.
>>
That was yet ANOTHER issue (ideological, not _Chapman_), how the ratfinks at
the School of Scottish Studies wouldn't let HH edit the folk-songs he'd
collected in the Highlands&Islands, wasn't it?
... angels weep ...
Never a hardman oot o the east, but I did spend my young Saturday nights at
age eleven watching the fights outside the Dennistoun Palais, and I've still
got a neat white triangular scar on my left kneecap to prove this.
How stupid can you get?
Try kiting down the back of the hill behind the Palias on a single
roller-skate perched on the back of a copy of The Beano Annual, and hit a
brick wall at forty miles an hour ...
Strawberry jam, and nine stitches.
Still pains me to remember this -- off to drink a bottle of Irn Bru and do
my best to forget *that* incident, and how the cold winds of dawn howled
across a suspension bridge across the Clyde.
(Not) Kenneth White
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