[lit-ideas] Cavaliers and Roundheads
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 10:49:15 EDT
Geary writes:
"You people like the clip clip snip snip of Protestant industry. We like
the
flowery flow of vowels with slowly sipped mint juleps."
I think there is a lot in here. Lot of what.
The teaching I received -- granted, as a gaucho -- is that (North-East)
Protestant settlers were, if not merchant burgeoisie, of puritan Lincolnshire
(Boston) stock mixed with a good dose of Dutch (One of the reasons, they say,
of
the Mayflower sailing from the Netherlands, was that the sons of the soil
were acquiring Netherlandish turns of phrase). From that to the clip clip snip
snip of Lowell is a short distance.
On the other hand, Geary (or Garison, if we trust that one of his ancestors
was a Polish-Jewish emgre) is the land of cavaliers, Walter Raleigh: the
uppercrest, "yeomanry" of "merry old (royal) England" -- and it's only natural
that they should stick to the conjugations and declensions of the Swan of Avon.
(Note that they fox-hunt, too).
Cheers,
JL
ps. In public-school boy slang, 'cavalier' is uncut; roundhead is the
antonym
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