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A few months ago I read Cymbeline entire for the first time: it was one of the Shakespeare plays I'd never got round to: it knew bits of it, of course, but not the whole. In the great spoken song I found the editor referred to 'chimney-sweeps' meaning daffodils and 'thunder-stone' meaning thunder-ball as Warwickshire dialect . This was a great surprise to me as I thought it was normative speech. I was born in an Arden parish myself and though I grew up in a grotty part of Brummagem and my dad spoke modified Leicester (he was born in that place) my mum was very very North Warwicks and she used those terms as natural. Nowadays I live among the strata in Leicester: it really is like sitting in a quarry. That's where I get pissed off with the avants: they don't seem to realise where they're coming from, I like them otherwise. It's like the Language Poets declaring war on the Sentence: yes, I understand the analogy, life is the death-sentence, but effectively they declare war on themselves, which doesn't seem too bright an idea. I've been into becoming a fragmented I myself, it ain't fun! Best Dave 2008/6/17 Max Richards <[log in to unmask]>: > Arrr, thanks David. > > I confess I had to google Walter Gabriel... > Learning this: > > The Archers > Much of that first trial episode remains familiar including: "Well me old > pal, me old beauties", as chortled by Walter Gabriel. ... > www.whirligig-tv.co.uk/radio/archers.htm > > My radio listening never made room for him and them back then. > > Incidentally, in NZ a fortnight ago, I caught up with a phrase that I'm told > has been round a while, but how widespread, I wonder? > > 'Crack a sad'(?) > 'Pack a sad', yes... > thus: > Urban Dictionary: Pack a sad > Meaning 'To throw a tantrum'. Oi dont do that or she'll pack a sad. tantrum > sad angry hmph! throw by Kiwiboy Aug 21, 2006 email it comments ... > www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Pack+a+sad > > On 17/6/08 6:04 PM, "David Bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > >> I never hear it used Max. In the East Midlands you get odd bits of >> dialect surviving: like sneap and pootle, but there isn't much. Or >> rather, there doesn't seem to be much, the women, especially, talk >> among themselves in a rather different way from how they talk among >> males, sometimes they let me overhear it! >> I remember when young working in Stourbridge for a while, and there >> where old guys there who still talked dialect, it was virtually >> incomprehensible to me, although I loved the rhythms of their speech, >> and I only came from about 13 miles away. Likewise in Stratford, there >> were still people who talked like Walter Gabriel, I doubt if that's >> the same now. >> >> Best >> >> Dave >> >> 2008/6/17 Max Richards <[log in to unmask]>: >>> (TV here last night ran a long interview with David Attenborough at 82, >>> Leicester boy who began on his science in Leicester quarries.) >>> >>> Well, and is the coorieing word used in the south of the UK? >>> >>> On 17/6/08 7:22 AM, "David Bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >>> >>>> Its warmth, yes, Max, it's very human , I liked that, instinctively. >>>> >>>> Not quite on mummers but I've been trying to find out of late when the >>>> Leicester Waits ended: I did meet someone a few weeks back who >>>> remembered them still happening in a housing estate in the early 70s. >>>> Going round, house to house, y'know. >>>> >>>> Best >>>> >>>> Dave >>>> >>>> 2008/6/16 Max Richards <[log in to unmask]>: >>>>> The recently recommended item on WSGraham >>>>> I have enjoyed for its warmth. Also it >>>>> provides an expression new to me: >>>>> >>>>> Graham, letšs not forget, was a Scottish poet. The Scottish literary >>>>> establishment >>>>> turned his back on him, although it now coories up to his memory. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Googling it I laboriously reach this: >>>>> >>>>> Association of British Scrabble Players - Words >>>>> coorie+ courie+, to nestle: COORIES, COORIEING, COORIED; COURIES, >>>>> ..... guising, a survival of mumming, where children dress up and go from >>>>> house to house. ... >>>>> >>>>> www.absp.org.uk/words/scots.html >>>>> >>>>> Is that it? >>>>> >>>>> I see therešs also coorying down. >>>>> >>>> >>>> >>> >>> -- >>> >> >> > > -- > -- David Bircumshaw Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/ The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk