Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Real words


'... I was rapt in the discovery that "thole" and "snash" were real words, and that I might use them in future without shamefacedness ... the Gaelic Revival has repopulated the other three provinces, and then glens and mountains of Ulster, with fairies and leprechauns whose airy tongues syllable a new language that is also old.

But round about my part of the world we still people the dark hours with material and Gothic shapes, and call, in his own speech, on the great enchanter, Robert Burns ...'

 - from An Ulster Childhood by Lynn Doyle (1921), from the chapter entitled 'Burns in Ulster'.

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