Rye on the rocks? Mine's a gin


Subject: Rye on the rocks? Mine's a gin
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Sun Jul 22 2001 - 04:07:19 GMT


    Believe me, chaps. Phoebe was wrong too.
    (Though NOT, of course, necessarily, Salinger
    by extension.)

    But no Scot ever sang: ‘IF a body ...’

    I first heard the song from my mother’s lips when,
    as a tiny infant, I was being inducted into the secrets
    of Scottish martial arts out on the snow-driven
    slopes of Glen Shee. Since then, how many thousands
    of times? As sung by Kenneth McKellar, Andy Stewart,
    Helen Morrison, Fr. Sidney McEwan, Morag Henderson ...

    Just try singing it yourselves. (How many of you know
    the tune?) As the very first word, ‘If’’ would be far too
    soft, fluffy, ambivalent. Whereas ‘Gin’ - with that hard,
    uncompromising ‘g’ - lends just that inexorable, downward-
    slicing, characteristically Caledonian quality that starts
    you off on the right foot.

    Scottie B.

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