Re: Fiona / draft / PJR

Peter J Ross wrote:

Hi PJR,

If I could only do the accent I might enjoy reading
this aloud more. As it is, it falls short because
I can't even hear the right sounds in my mind.

I'm not surprised you did it.
Shot-red street-lamp haze was the start of us

Tongue twister with distracting hyphenation.
I suppose it's the glass of the lamp that keeps
making me want to read "shot glass".

and checking drawer knives the heart of us,

The rhyme's too close to Sinatra singing Cole Porter
for my liking, but this line works for me.
(Though I'd expect a hyphen to maintain the style
of the previous line.)

Fiona dear, with your rhododendron smile,

Yes indeed.
(Except that Fiona has her personal connotations
and it's not a rhododendron name for me.)

your rhododendron edit,

I can see (hear) the rhyme, but am not sure
'edit' works with any of the other vocab/idea
sets that I'm identifying here.

your flower-eared running of a mile

The first few times, I found the "cauliflower ear"
echo distracting, though I'm beginning to follow
the idea through to an associated meaning so I may
yet learn to like it.

from clocks to an old pimp's lock-up down in Leith.

Isn't there a less 'tinny' word than "pimp"?

Fiona, let's spend some time
In Perth, Kinross and Cowdenbeath

This line conjured "Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch,"
for me, and some other, as yet unidentified, line
which was not in the John Clare poem where I hoped
to find it.

deploring Inglis ("Shug") and Softie Trews
whom you employed,
bristle-head-boyed.

Tricky line to read, but I like it as long as I
can force myself not to re-jig it into something
more normal. I don't object to the "buoyed" which
I also keep (mis-)reading.

The Embro paradigm
(and tell me persiflage isnae nae crime)

Does 'persiflage' really sit comfortably in this
dialect? If it does, I could consider moving north
again. Along with the rhododendron girl, this line
is a keeper.

that who love Scotland use
(but Thomas Chalmers never)
for kennings, hopes, and locking-knifeness blues

Not sure about "kennings". I read it in the Norse(?)
sense, but it has its own Scottish dialect meaning,
too, doesn't it? Hmm. Can I fit them both in to
create an ambiguity? Probably if I work at it.

"locking-knifeness" is one hell of a Spoonerism.
But I like the "lock" there as it makes me think of
love locks and lockets. But it might be too close to
the "lock-up" you had earlier.

from this day on we'll suffer,
I and the rhododendron girl I choose,

Oh yes!

For ever and for ever.

We'll sing a song shows but a part of us.
We'll sing a song shows but a part of us.

And we're back with Cole Porter. But this I do like.



PJR, 2007-06-15



Notes:

I'm not at all sure these notes help me "appreciate"
it in any way. I either already knew what they say
or they added nothing to my understanding and little
to the ease of reading - other than perhaps making
me think I ought to go looking for a meaning which
isn't necessarily the one I might get to if I bother
to follow this beyond the initial "I don't know
what it means but that's never bothered me so far".

I would definitely like to hear a correctly accented
sound file.

g.


The Scottish Gaelic name "Fiona" is pronounced approximately
"FEE-nah". It has two syllables, not three,

"Embro" is an approximation of a Scottish lowlander's pronunciation of
"Edinburgh".

"Inglis" is pronounced "ING-ulls".

Thomas Chalmers founded the Free Church of Scotland in the 1840s . How
the hell did *he* get into this???

.