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proposed: the word gardyloo, now fallen into desuetude, shall be
resurrected and required as a warning cry whenever a congressman
is about to put voice to a declamation within the Hallowed Halls
of Congress [or substitute 'minister' and 'Parliament']
gardyloo - used in Edinburgh, in the days when chamber pots were in common
use, as a warning cry when throwing slops from the windows into the streets;
[perhaps from French garde a l'eau - look out for the water; also possibly
the source of the word loo]
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"At ten o’clock at night the whole cargo of the chamber utensils is flung out of a back window that looks into some street or lane, and the maid calls "Gardy loo" to the passengers."
Smollett doesn’t record any response from the ‘passengers’.
A great way to start the day (see the ‘se’nnight’ post)
Supreme one a tentative, uncertain correction: 'garde' is
the French word used for the singular You. 'Gardez' goes
with the plural You, which is much more likely to have
been called down to a street full of people.
Gardez probably descended to gardy.
Incidentally--I just saw and tried "that markup thang"
(hi, Anna) and couldn't figger it out--will keep tryin'.
I came across this passage today in Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s end, set around the period of World War I:
"There was in Edinburgh a society … where the ladies are all great ladies in tall drawing-rooms; circumspect yet shrewd; still yet with a sense of the comic; frugal yet warmly hospitable. It was perhaps just Edinburgh-ness … "
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