Subject: Re: Burns, coming through the rye
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Fri Jul 20 2001 - 11:28:05 GMT
'Gin' (pronounced with a 'hard' g) is Scots for 'if'
- or even, in certain contexts, with a definite quality
of longing: 'would that'.
It opens at least two other marvellous Scots songs.
'Gin I were a Baron's Heir.'
and - one of the bravest, lightest, most dashing,
of all the songs of home-sickness:
'Oh, gin I were whar Gadie rins, where Gadie rins.
At the foot o' Bennachie.'
(Bennachie being a handsome hill in Aberdeenshire
& Gadie the small brook - 'burn' - that dances sparkling
in the morning sun along its southern limits.)
In the words of M. Caine: Not many people know that.
Scottie B.
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