A Scottish Poem by William Soutar, TESOL Conferences - National and International

I know some of you did have a bash at the Vocabulary Worksheet I composed for you in my last post and so here, as promised, are the answers:    

1. Bampot, eejit and glaikit belong to a group describing someone who is a bit of a nutter   while           braw, canny and stotter are complimentary adjectives.      

 2. a) Dreich describes the weather and                                                                                                       b) gallus is a personal attribute- someone thus described could be ‘a wee hard man’.                                    
3. a) ii) Someone who’s bealin is angry;                 b) iii) If you’re crabbit you’re irritable  and                                  c) i) wabbit would describe exhaustion.

4. The anagrams were: i) stramash   ii) pochle    iii) wheesht                5. i,c)   ii,a)     iii,b)  

 This is the ‘parchment’ that was my linguistic source. I hope you enjoyed that!

 

Now the word ‘clype’ ( or cleip) brought to mind a poem I learned as a small child and thankfully Google helped me piece the entire poem together. Written by William Soutar (1898 – 1943), it reminds me of how, as children in good Scottish Presbyterian mode, we were imbued with the idea of there being , if not a political Big Brother, most certainly a spiritual and moral one who was aware of our every action. Here nature has somehow got into the picture! 

Aince Upon a Day

Aince upon a day my mither said to me: Dinna cleip and dinna rype And dinna tell a lee. For gin ye cleip a craw will name ye, And gin ye rype a daw will shame ye; And a snail will heeze its hornies out And hike them round and round about Gin ye tell a lee.	Aince upon a day, as I walkit a' my lane, I met a daw, and monie a craw, And a snail upon a stane. Up gaed the daw and didna shame me: Up gaed ilk craw and didna name me: But the wee snail heezed its hornies out And hik'd them round and round about And -- goggled at me.

Glossary

aince - once;	cleip - tell tales;	rype - steal;	lee - lie;	gin - if;	craw - crow;
daw - jackdaw;	heeze - lift;	hike - swing;	a' my lane - alone;	monie - many;	ilk - every.

I needed the Glossary of terms used, so I assume you do, too. I wonder if any of you are familiar with the poem?  I would love to know!

This brings me to a subject that I’m really keen to explore at a later date: the concept that there is a Scots language. If anyone cares to comment on that I’d be interested to exchange views.
However,  I have to leave that for another time: tomorrow I’m heading off on the early flight .. L ..to Athens – all very exciting, with delegates from all over the world and the event will be live-streamed globally! (TESOL = Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages)

 And immediately after that Angeliki and I (aka The Tartan Epsilon) are once again running a workshop at our local TESOL Convention.  TESOL Macedonia-Thrace, Northern Greece 24^th Annual International  Convention

"Teachers, Trends, Techniques: A world of Change’’

10^th-12^th February 2017 ACT, Thessaloniki, Greece

Trendy Terminology in the Flipping Classroom! Joan Macphail & Angeliki Apostolidou   (Greece) 45' (WS)

It’s going to be an extremely busy few days. Wish us luck!