Flight of the Heron read-along: Part II chapters 1-2

[regshoe]

Charlie is my darling, the Young Chevalier...

Flight of the Heron (under the title The Jacobite Trilogy) is doing very well in Yuletide sign-ups—3 requests and 4 offers at present :D

Next week we'll read the second half of Part II, chapters 3 and 4.

Comments

[killclaudio]

I really enjoyed all the language in these chapters, especially the Scots and the mixing in of French phrases. 'Go braw' is such a wonderful expression, and when I looked it up I found out that if you're having lovely weather it's a 'braw day', so I will now be using that. :) (I already knew 'dreich', the opposite, which unfortunately is the weather we're having right now.)

Have you seen Green's Dictionary of Slang and Timelines of Slang? FotH doesn't use a lot of slang, but I'm having fun reading all the 18th century insults.

[regshoe]

'Braw' and its relatives are a fascinating group of words—Scots 'braw' is related to English 'brave' and Swedish 'bra' (which means 'good' in the sense of good quality), and the spread of different meanings in different contexts and languages are a really interesting demonstration of how words shift over time.

Ooh, those slang links look great—a nice fic resource...!

[luzula]

Regshoe: I didn't actually know it was related to 'bra'! But of course.

I do like that 'braw' is used for Alison--my first association to it is the meaning that is given as 'Handsome, of fine physique; “stout, able-bodied, fit for warfare”' in the Scots dictionary, but then there's 'Well or gaily dressed; fine, as applied to clothes', which I suppose is the meaning Broster is using here, and also just generally 'worthy'.

I had Alison thinking that Ewen has a braw backside when he's naked in one of my fics. *g* Which I hope is correct usage.

Thanks for the slang links! Also, here's a slang dictionary from 1788.