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Re: THOUGHTS: An Allusion to Sir Walter Scott's The Pirate in PF
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On 27/4/07 20:41, "Matthew Roth" <MRoth@MESSIAH.EDU> wrote:
> In C.71 Kinbote says "My tutor, a Scotsman, used to call any old tumble-down
> building a 'hurley-house.'" The Scotsman, of course, is Walter Campbell, who
> taught his pupils to recite "Lord Ronald's Coronach," by Sir Walter Scott. It
> makes sense, then, that Scott may also be the source of "hurley-house." In
> one scene from Scott's The Pirate, Clement Cleveland is moping around in an
> old Orkney ruin. (He was pale, and had lost both the fire of his eye and the
> vivacity of his step). A stranger then comes to talk to him:
>
> "I am glad you spoke first," answered the stranger, carelessly; "I was
> determined to know whether you were Clement Cleveland, or Clement's ghost, and
> they say ghosts never take the first word, so I now set it down for yourself
> in life and limb; and here is a fine old hurly-house you have found out for an
> owl to hide himself in at mid-day, or a ghost to revisit the pale glimpses of
> the moon, as the divine Shakespeare says."
>
> The allusion is from Hamlet 1.4.53, where Hamlet asks his father's ghost what
> it means that he "Revisits thus the glimpses of the moon, Making night
> hideous, and we fools of nature...." This exchange leads to the conversation
> which ends in "gins to pale his ineffectual fire." Moreover, the imagery of
> the passage resonates with the Timon passage from which "Pale Fire" gets its
> name.
>
> Matt Roth
>
> Matt: Hurl[e]y¹ survives in current usage, as the stick used in Hurling, an
> Irish variant of field hockey. Also heard occasionally is the Shakespearean
> hurly-burly¹ (commotion, or in ModBrit BI[t] O[f] BOVVER!). Those damne¹d
> etymologists say of hurl/hurly¹ Middle English, origin obscure; tenured
> linguists ask ³Why should every word have an origin?¹²
>
> Stan Kelly-Bootle
>
>
>
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> In C.71 Kinbote says "My tutor, a Scotsman, used to call any old tumble-down
> building a 'hurley-house.'" The Scotsman, of course, is Walter Campbell, who
> taught his pupils to recite "Lord Ronald's Coronach," by Sir Walter Scott. It
> makes sense, then, that Scott may also be the source of "hurley-house." In
> one scene from Scott's The Pirate, Clement Cleveland is moping around in an
> old Orkney ruin. (He was pale, and had lost both the fire of his eye and the
> vivacity of his step). A stranger then comes to talk to him:
>
> "I am glad you spoke first," answered the stranger, carelessly; "I was
> determined to know whether you were Clement Cleveland, or Clement's ghost, and
> they say ghosts never take the first word, so I now set it down for yourself
> in life and limb; and here is a fine old hurly-house you have found out for an
> owl to hide himself in at mid-day, or a ghost to revisit the pale glimpses of
> the moon, as the divine Shakespeare says."
>
> The allusion is from Hamlet 1.4.53, where Hamlet asks his father's ghost what
> it means that he "Revisits thus the glimpses of the moon, Making night
> hideous, and we fools of nature...." This exchange leads to the conversation
> which ends in "gins to pale his ineffectual fire." Moreover, the imagery of
> the passage resonates with the Timon passage from which "Pale Fire" gets its
> name.
>
> Matt Roth
>
> Matt: Hurl[e]y¹ survives in current usage, as the stick used in Hurling, an
> Irish variant of field hockey. Also heard occasionally is the Shakespearean
> hurly-burly¹ (commotion, or in ModBrit BI[t] O[f] BOVVER!). Those damne¹d
> etymologists say of hurl/hurly¹ Middle English, origin obscure; tenured
> linguists ask ³Why should every word have an origin?¹²
>
> Stan Kelly-Bootle
>
>
>
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