That you move from elizabethan language-creativity to scots, Judy, feels right.
Writers need a folk behind them with a rich vernacular.
And LGGibbons' recent editor, Tom Crawford, taught me this in Auckland circa
1962 about the time of his big Burns book.
I visited old Tom in Aberdeen maybe twelve years ago, but having then lost touch
with him, presume he has died without my hearing.
I was lucky to have him as a teacher and guide.
Max
Quoting Judy Prince <[log in to unmask]>:
> Thanks for giving my word a sanctioned life, Max. Surely, I was thinking of
> the last of the 3 definitions you've found. <g>
> In fact, I just wrote a word that "felt" like what those many 'thee', 'thy',
> 'thou' words did to my head. BTW, I've actually met and spoken with
> old-time Quakers who used the words, which were the familiar form of "you"
> (as many English folk will know already, but many Americans do not).
> My desire to make up a word, or change nouns to verbs, and so on, was first
> brought on by reading Shakespeare as an adult---long after having been
> forced in school to read and understand those plays from age 13.
>
> One of the delightful shocks of reading the plays again years later was
> seeing that the playwright was far more creative, as were other writers in
> that "stretching English language" Elizabethan period, as compared with now.
> Their writings, especially Shakespeare's of course, made our clever modern
> poems comparatively staid, rut-laid.
>
> Recently, I've begun Lewis Grassic Gibbon's trilogy,_A Scots Quair (meaning
> "book"). It confirms my feeling that not knowing the meaning of a word or a
> few words can ring bells and send up associations rather more thrilling than
> a run of known words. Here's a bit from the Prelude ("The Unfurrowed
> Field") of Gibbon's first novel of the trilogy, _Sunset Song_:
>
> "But even so he was gey slow to get on with the courting and just hung
> around Kirsty like a futret round a trap with a bit meat in it, not sure if
> the meat was worth the risk; and the time was getting on and faith!
> something drastic would have to be done. So one night after they had all
> had supper in the kitchen and old Sinclair had up and nodded to Kirsty and
> said 'Ah well, I'll away to my bed. You'll not be long in making for yours,
> Kirsty?' And Kirsty said 'No', and gave her mother a sly bit look, and off
> the old mistress went up to her room and then Kirsty began fleering and
> flirting with Chae and he was a man warm enough and they were alone
> together................." (p 11, edited and introduced by Tom Crawford,
> Canongate Classics, Canongate Books Ltd, Edinburgh, 1996)
>
> Not so many "unknowns" (to non-Scots) in this selection, but it's one I
> enjoyed for Gibbon's style and the subject.
>
> zyxxxow me
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