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#9252 11/12/00 08:47 PM
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Read The Go-Between.

Thanks Bridget, I think I'll follow your advice. I enjoyed it as a school literature text at the age of 14. Bits of it are now floating back to me - Leo, Mercury, the soaring temperatures, belladonna - but much of it, including the Hugh/You reference, is lost in time.


#9253 11/15/00 05:22 AM
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..and now I'm going to have to re-read it too, because I don't remember anything about belladonna or Mercury. (I hope I didn't recommend the wrong book....)


#9254 11/15/00 12:37 PM
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belladonna ...

Definitely the right book Bridget. The beautiful but deadly female is his leitmotif in this (and all the other versions of the same story he also wrote!)


#9255 11/19/00 08:04 AM
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belladonna...

quoted, by Ambrose Bierce I believe, as a fine example of the similarity of the English and Italian languages!


#9256 11/20/00 11:56 AM
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PS: Saesneg = Saxon = English

Thanks for the P.S., mav. I have a Canadian friend of Scots origin who invariably refers to the English as "sassenacks" (I think... never saw him write it, phonetic approximation here) and now, thanks to you, I know the Gaelic origin. This friend also sports a tee-shirt that reads "The only reason Scotland doesn't float off to the North Sea is because* England sucks."

---
* bad grammar, I know: just quoting


#9257 11/20/00 12:03 PM
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I never read The Go-Between, though I think I saw the movie! Thanks for the reference, Bridget.

Yes, certain Yankees (i.e. those who live in the north of this great soon-to-be-ungoverned-if-we-don't-watch-our-collective R'ses country) say You for Hugh, Yuman for human, Yumid for humid.


#9258 11/20/00 10:25 PM
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anna, this word is in my backlog of potential wwftd[s]; here is what I have on sassenach:

("s&s@n&x) [repr. Gael. Sasunnach adj. English, n. an Englishman = Irish Sasanach, Sacsanach, f. Sasan-, repr. the Teut. ethnic name Saxon. (Cf. Gael. Sasunn, Irish Sasana, Sacsain, England.)]

The name given by the Gaelic inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland to their ‘Saxon’ or English neighbours. (Sometimes attributed to Welsh speakers: the corresponding Welsh form is Seisnig.)

All loved their McClan, save a Sassenach brute, Who came to the Highlands to fish and to shoot. - 1869 W. S. Gilbert (Bab Ball. 187)



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