The Flight of the Heron on Project Gutenberg (and some notes on textual history)

[regshoe]

At long last, here it is. Aww, I am pleased to have made an ebook of such a favourite as this. :)

The Gutenberg uploader volunteers were particularly speedy this time; the ebook was up and on the site about four hours after I submitted it this morning, so that was a nice surprise! Many thanks to them, and to sanguinity for proofreading.

I have also made my own cover image for this ebook. Gutenberg ebooks can use a picture of the actual book's cover as the cover image only if it has the title and author's name on it, but many old books don't (having them on the spine instead), and FotH is one of these. In that case you can use a scan of the title page, but that's not terribly visually interesting, and I wanted my fave to have a nice-looking cover; so I made this one, trying to imitate the appearance of the original book while adding the title and author's name in an attractive style.

Now, I could have thought this was a bit redundant, there of course already being a free ebook on Faded Page. But I don't think so. Partly this is because Gutenberg is a far more well-known site; people will check there for ebooks who don't know about and wouldn't think to look on Faded Page, and more people will have the opportunity to stumble across it on Gutenberg. But another reason is that the two ebooks are based on different editions of the printed book—my Gutenberg ebook uses the 1925 first edition, while the Faded Page one uses an edition from 1932—and this gave me the chance to compare the texts side-by-side (using an R script) and see what changes Broster made to the text between those dates!


Most of the differences between the two are formatting changes—principally hyphenation and italics—or minor changes/corrections in punctuation; several of them appear to be errors made in the preparation of the Faded Page ebook. The following are those changes which are a) substantial enough to be interesting and b) probably actual differences between the two editions. I've commented on why Broster might have made each change; if you have more information on anything here, please do say, as I don't actually know very much about Gaelic spelling, bagpipe construction or classical poetry.

Chapter	1925 text	1932 text	Comments
Front matter		AUTHOR’S NOTE For the purposes of this story a certain amount of licence has been taken with the character of the Earl of Loudoun in Part IV, Chapter V.	Broster explains in her speech about the publication and reception of the novel that she added this note after a lady from the Loudoun family criticised her portrayal of the Earl!
Prologue	the swimmer, at some six yards’ distance, promptly trod water	the swimmer, at some ten yards’ distance, promptly trod water
Prologue	if it is not a bòchdan, as I have sometimes thought, it may be a witch	if it is not a bòcan, as I have sometimes thought, it may be a witch	Both spellings are used—see Wiktionary and this footnote to a published Lochaber folktale.
1.1	Lachuin, thoir dhomh an t’each!	Lachuinn, thoir dhomh an t-each!	The vocative form of the name Lachlan (used here because Ewen is addressing Lachlan) is ‘a Lachlainn’ (see this post); I don’t know what these spellings signify or which, if either, is correct.
1.2	though I am afraid that my iambics would only procure me the ferule nowadays.	though I am afraid that my hexameters would only procure me the ferule nowadays.	Ewen might have used either in the course of his classical education, but hexameters—typically dactylic or spondaic rather than iambic—are particularly associated with Latin and Ancient Greek poetry.
1.3	the ribbons on the chanters of his instrument fluttering in the morning breeze.	the ribbons on the drones of his instrument fluttering in the morning breeze.	It is generally the drones, not the chanters, of bagpipes that have ribbons on them.
1.6	Kinlochiel, at the upper end of Loch Eil.	Kinlocheil, at the upper end of Loch Eil.	The 1925 edition uses 'Kinlochiel' in the narration and 'Kinlocheil' in Keith's diary; there are not quite enough uses of either to be sure that this was deliberate, but it may have been. Kinlocheil appears to be the more usual spelling now, but both are used.
2.1	“Not, therefore, in this case, Eachain!”	“Not, therefore, in this case, Eachainn!”	Eachainn is correct—see the above-linked post on Gaelic vocative names.
3.5	the hut at Kinlochiel last summer	the hut at Kinlocheil last summer	See above.

Comments

[theseatheseatheopensea]

\o/ Even if there are other available ebooks, I don't think this is redundant at all! Decentralisation is important, and the more places one can find something, the better! I will add it to the Brosterlist!

[regshoe]

That is true! And yay, the Brosterlist—thank you :D

[muccamukk]

yay! Great job!

[regshoe]

:D Thank you!

[luzula]

A service to fandom, definitely. : ) Congratulations on getting this finished!

ETA: Do you have any future ebook projects, or are you taking a break from that?

[regshoe]

Aww, thank you. :)

No, I'm going to take a break now. What time I have for this sort of stuff, which is not much, I want to spend on getting the rest of the Broster papers on the website.

[luzula]

That's very understandable! In the same way, I've been taking a break from podfic/audiobook recording.

[garonne]

Yay, great to see this! As you say, rather more people know Project Gutenberg than Faded Page, so it's great to have a copy there.

And so interesting to see the differences! That thing about the annoyed descendant of Lord Loudoun is really rather funny. Though I cannot imagine why "six" needed to be changed to "ten".

Regarding an t-each/an t'each, the one with the hyphen is definitely the normal spelling.

Regarding Lachuinn, looks like it's a given name of which Lachlan is considered an Anglicisation. And Lachlan is also an Anglicisation of Lachlann (or maybe the historical chronology is that Lachlann was a Gaelicisation of Lachlan! It can happen that way too. Or maybe etymologically unrelated names Lachlann and Lachuinn got matched up to the same Anglicisation because they sound similar, which also happens.) I went with Lachlann/a Lachlainn in that other post because I've only known people who have that one, but if Broster used Lachuinn then of course that's the canonical one for that character. (I hadn't noticed before that she did that.)

Though in the sentence, it should be A Lachuinn and not just Lachuinn, so the 1932 text is still missing a letter :D

[regshoe]

'Six' vs. 'ten' seems like the same sort of thing as RLS changing that one line in Kidnapped from 'nine o'clock' to 'twelve o'clock' to 'eleven o'clock' :D

Thank you for the Gaelic information! That is really interesting about the different forms of Lachlan.

[sanguinity]

Hurrah!

[regshoe]

:D

[phantomtomato]

Oh, you did a nice job with the cover! As fond as I am of Gutenberg, I admit that the “neon shapes” default covers are not attractive and I don’t love looking at them in my ebook library. I had no idea about the title/author cover rule!

[regshoe]

Thank you! Yes, I suspect that's why so many of them do end up with those default covers, though it makes sense as a 'has to show what the book is' thing, I suppose.

[sovay]

Mazel tov!

[regshoe]

Thank you!

[scintilla10]

Yay, congrats! :D

[regshoe]

Thank you :D

[osprey_archer]

Thank you so much for doing this! And I think you're so right that more people will find the book on Gutenberg than on fadedpage. In fact, the first time I heard about Flight of the Heron (years ago, before I knew about fadedpage), I eagerly looking it up on Gutenberg, where of course I couldn't find it, so sadly I moved on to other reader projects.

[regshoe]

Aww! Well, I'm glad to have possibly prevented that sad outcome for future readers :D

[littlerhymes]

Congratulations! I'm so glad more people will get to read this.

[regshoe]

Thank you, and I hope so :)

[sanguinity]

Someone on tumblr found the Gutenberg edition, posted about it, and others in the notes/tags are expressing joy and declaring their intention to read it: Just reccommended flight of the heron...

[regshoe]

Aww, thank you for linking me to that, I am very pleased :D