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

[regshoe]

Yeah, I agree with luzula about 'spy'—the problem seems to be that Ewen is being interfering and over-solicitous about the Prince's safety, not that his loyalty is in question. (His 'something that no gentleman can possibly call another' makes me wonder if it's a word that was in established use as an insult, as it were—in which case it could be some obscure term common amongst eighteenth-century gentlemen but not much in use now! Who knows...).

Anyway—Ewen thinks that it would take a certain amount of skill and courage to lead a raid from the Castle, and behold!

Haha, good point :D But poor Keith must have been pretty disappointed at thinking he'd got Charles himself (I can imagine the message reaching him in a way that implied more certainty, e.g. perhaps the supposed Prince had confirmed his own identity) and then finding out he hadn't. He is certainly a bit rude there!

[hyarrowen]

The poet Patricia Beer was similarly confused. In her memoir, Mrs Beer's House, she says that her sister suggested 'shit.' Which nearly caused a lively argument. But I think that if a poet can't figure it out, the rest of us have very little chance.

[regshoe]

The other thing that makes me think it's not 'spy' is what comes before: 'I did not think that I was hampering myself with a...' —hampering yourself with a spy would be a strange way to put it, as opposed to being endangered/undermined/betrayed by one. It makes me feel better to know a poet mentioning this in a serious book couldn't figure it out either...!

(Surely if it was anything beginning with SH, she'd write 'sh---' rather than 's---'—anyway...)

[luzula]

Surely one would not say 'hampering myself with a shit'.

Okay, I've gone through all the S words in this slang dictionary, and found these insults:

SAUCE BOX. A term of familiar raillery, signifying a bold
or forward person.
SCAB. A worthless man or woman.
SCOUNDREL. A man void of every principle of honour.
SCRUB. A low mean fellow, employed in all sorts of dirty work.
SLAG. A slack-mettled fellow, one not ready to resent an
affront.

The only one that fits the situation is 'sauce box', but I don't know if it really sounds right. Possibly 'scab', but that does seem a bit harsh! 'Slag' is about the opposite of Ewen at that point. : )

[regshoe]

Excellent research :D Although I agree that none of them really fit—'a term of familiar raillery' doesn't sound like the serious insult Charles was about to use, and 'scab' seems too generic as well as too harsh.

[hyarrowen]

The Beer sisters, and their mother, were reading the book in the early 1930s, much closer in time to publication date than we are, and they couldn't work it out. It'll probably remain forever a mystery. Personally I'm still inclined to 'spy' - in the sense of "You're Lochiel's eyes and ears amongst my staff and that's going to curtail my freedom to do whatever I like," rather than the espionage/enemy agent sense. I suppose 'snitch' would be nearer the mark in present-day lingo. It's obviously a dreadful insult anyway.

[regshoe]

The 1930s? Such a missed opportunity that they didn't just write to Broster and ask her!

in the sense of "You're Lochiel's eyes and ears amongst my staff and that's going to curtail my freedom to do whatever I like," rather than the espionage/enemy agent sense

Hmm, that does make more sense! Perhaps it is...

[cahn]

"Snitch" was my guess as to the mysterious s-word! Though maybe it's too modern a word for that?

[hyarrowen]

Online etymology says "informer," 1785, probably from underworld slang meaning "the nose" (1700), which apparently developed from an earlier meaning "fillip on the nose" (1670s). Snitcher in same sense is from 1827. More etymologically-inclined persons might be able to share more light on it!

So it's not far off the date, but perhaps a bit too slangy for a Prince who grew up in Rome.

Definitely getting there, though.

[ethelmay]

I thought "shit" or "sod."

[luzula]

I looked up the origin of 'sod', and wow, I didn't know it was originally short for 'sodomite'! According to the OED, the earliest use is from 1814, but there are still examples of it used that way in the 20th century. And then later in the 19th century it also became 'a general term of abuse or contempt for a person (originally a man), esp. someone irritating, difficult, or troublesome', which is pretty much what I thought it meant, though it's not a word in my active vocabulary.

[ethelmay]

The OED's earliest use isn't necessarily the earliest there is, just the earliest the definition-writers were able to find - they are always on the lookout for earlier ones. One difficulty that occurs to me is that there may have been some overlap with "sot" (for which there are far earlier attestations), which could mean a foolish fellow as well as a drunken one. But I think there's a definite implication that they can't spell it out, because it's rude, which does argue for something more like "shit" or "sod" than like "spy." However well "spy" fits otherwise (and in fact I do think it's one of the most likely possibilities), I wouldn't have thought it would be so unmentionable an insult. And I like the idea of Broster working in a glancing reference to sodomy without saying so.