[lit-ideas] Re: vocative particles
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2005 11:12:15 -0800
on 1/29/05 9:48 AM, Mirembe Nantongo at nantongo@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> I found interesting the word order reversal in Scots 'O' usage noted in JL's
> info and it instantly made me think of that bizarre Burns song about rushes,
> which has always generated a single pressing question in my mind, i.e.:
> What's with the O, dude?
>
> (Green grow the rushes, O;
> Green grow the rushes, O;
> The sweetest hours that e'er I spend,
> Are spent among the lasses, O.)
>
As always when discussing Scottish peoples, you must distinguish among the
Celts, who began life in the Ural mountains, the Picts, about whom virtually
nothing is known, Scandinavian invaders--King Eric the Skullsplitter, for
example--and sundry border peoples, among whom Burns numbered. At Burns
suppers this evening--his birthday was earlier this week--people all over
the world will conflate all these groups, read Burns, play bagpipes, drink
smokey whisky from the Outer Isles, cover their faces with makeup.
Burns was no teuchter, running around in a kilt. And he didn't write, like
some lug from the Urals, "Green grow the rushes, Oi."
Have you considered a paper about clan rallying cries and their equivalents
elsewhere in the world, life and death vocatives? In the fog of war, with
dry mouth, you had to be able to shout out something short and instantly
recognizable. My lot supposedly got out, "Loch Moy." I suspect it was
oftened shortened to "Oi."
And it *is* a bizarre song.
David Ritchie
Helpful as ever in
Portland, Oregon
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