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Thanks Robin. I didn't that they +spoke+ that way btw, I was wondering whether they cared to spell it. best Dave On 15 October 2014 00:58, Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > dave, > > The quick and dirty answer is that the Larry poem originates as a printed > text in Dublin in the 1780s, and it’s about twenty years before the first > Anglicised version appears (in _The Festival of Anacreon_, which whoever > wrote the Wiki entry actually manages to note, but fails to register the > earlier non-Anglicised version). > > There are actually two different Anglicisations, one stemming from _The > Festival of Anacreon_ text and another, which is the one which gets into > Farmer’s anthology, _Musa Pedestris_, arriving via Father Prout’s French > (sic!!!) translation. Heavy weird. > > And yes, they did speak that way then (and to a degree apparently do in > Dublin still) with > alveolar stops ( [t] and [d] ) taking the place of dental fricatives ( > [th] ) – thus the AAVE connection. > > It’s not just a single text (Larry) but a set of texts representing > something like language as she was actually spoke on the Street then, > there. None of the others get Anglicised, and all the texts date from a > very specific place and period – late eighteenth century Dublin. > > Whether the Larry text would have become as popular and (relatively) > familiar in England as it does, if it hadn’t been doctored, is a question. > I’m inclined almost to classify the familiar version as a translation > rather than simply a regularisation or Anglisation. > > An Irish civil servant who produced the only (relatively full) > collection of the texts, in 1938, remarks at the end of his article *** > that he’s going to go on and produce a study of the language of the texts, > but he never did. And more to the point, *no one* has. It’s as if they > vanish from history. > > There was a market for such texts – most of them come from a downmarket > printer called Grogan – but they were never as popular or as > widely-distributed as Standard English/Irish texts, even in Ireland. > > Hm ... Think of the difference in distribution of Tom Leonard’s work > vs. the distribution of work in the less densely Glasgwegian register of > James Kelman. It’s (I think) more than simply poetry vs. prose, though > this is obviously an aspect of it. Jim did write one story, “Nice tae be > nice”, in a denser Glasgow speech than he later employed. I’m majorly > aware of this because that story was originally censored – as in, the > printer refused to print the bloody text, along with, which is partly why > I’m aware of this, a poem of my own in the same issue of the magazine in > which it eventually appeared. > > I’m not sure how much of my own experience in Glasgow in the sixties, > and the whole brouhaha around the Glasgow Language Wars at the time, I’m > reading back into Dublin in the 1780s, especially having been there at the > moment when it all started, when Tom Leonard read (sic! the voice!) “The > Good Thief” aloud at Philip Hobsbaum’s flat in I think 1967 or 1968. > > As it is, the bastards managed to neuter Larry in a way that they didn’t > with Tom’s “Six Glasgow Poems” and subsequent texts. > > As is probably apparent, I’m carrying a lot of heavy baggage in this > area. (There was a time when I would have been offended, deeply offended, > if someone had used the word “dialect” in my presence. That, along with > the avoidance of an apostrophe, is one of the stopped-at-the-frontier > signals by which you can identify a veteran of the Glasgow Language Wars.) > > Best, > > Robin > > *** > O’Sullivan, Donal, “Dublin slang songs, with music,” *Dublin Historical > Record *Vol. I, no. 3 (September 1938), pp. 75-93. > > ------------------------------ > > *From:* David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]> > *Sent:* Tuesday, October 14, 2014 9:02 PM > *To:* [log in to unmask] > *Subject:* Re: Larry from Dublin (continued) > > that's very interesting Rob but an assumption is made that there was an > 'original' text in in non-Anglicised English whereas surely any text rather > than orally transmitted version would have been liable to be set up by the > printers in the King's English, as it were? What I am asking is whether > there is any evidence of a market for printed texts in non-standard English > orthography in the eighteenth or early nineteenth century and if so why? > For if pupils were taught to read it would have been in the standard > English style not a modern attempt at restoring a lost vernacular? > > best > > dave > > > On 14 October 2014 06:09, Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]> > wrote: > >> Crucially >> John Edward Walsh, _Ireland sixty years ago_ (1851), Chap. 8 -- Slang >> Songs [etc.] , for background on Larry, who he was, who might have written >> the poem, etc. >> >> >> http://books.google.ie/books?id=NSENAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA68&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false >> >> There are (at least) nine texts from Dublin in the 1780s relevant to >> Larry – six poems dealing with criminals and their associates, one written >> in the same mode of speech, and two parodies: >> > -- David Joseph Bircumshaw Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw Tumblr: http://zantikus.tumblr.com/ twitter: http://twitter.com/bucketshave blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/ Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.com