From: msmorris@watsci.waterloo.edu (Mike Morris)
Subject: Wordstruck
Organization: University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 20:55:53 GMT


                                    Friday, the 21st of August, 1992

Here I figured Francis was going to argue with me the degeneration and
descent of all man- and womankind from an uraufklarungen Aufklarung,
a triple-E Golden Age of equal, elect, and effective Englishness.
Anything at least to divert us away from this purgatory of Agnosticism
and God, Clinton and Bush. Ma sfortunatamente, no. Non sara.

So, musing as I was on the etymology of ``muir'', what should I come upon
this very day but:
      Not only were they superb and intrepid sailors, but they
      wove the ocean into their songs and the Gaelic language,
      which finds at least ten ways to say sea or ocean. So much
      was the sea a part of their thinking that their names for
      its moods combine to describe people with sea-like characteristics,
      thus _aigean_ means ocean, while _aigeannach_ means high-mettled,
      self-willed, spirited; and _aigeantach_ means a turbulent female.
      By contrast, _muir_ means sea in a sweeter mood, and _muirn_
      means cheerfulness, joy, delicateness, tenderness, affection;
      and _muirneag_ is a cheerful girl, or a delicate, tender woman.
      (p. 65, 66)

Less apposite, but from the same source and more lovely I think, is:
      All these stories were laying down little lessons in
      psychology, as well as language, and this material was not
      laid down in an empty place. New pieces triggered responses
      from material that was already there, for example, the pleasure
      it gave me as Crusoe provisioned his cave.
         _Laid down_ is a term with many associations---the keel of
      a ship to be built; fruits preserved for the winter; wine
      laid down to age. It is the term they use in sound and videotape
      editing when one track or sequence has been recorded and others
      will be added and mixed together.
        It must be with words as it is with music. Music heard early
      in life lays down a rich bed of memories against which you
      evaluate and absorb music encountered later. Each layer adds
      to the richness of your musical experience; it ingrains
      expectations that will govern your taste for future music and
      perhaps change your feelings about music you already know.
      Certain harmonic patterns embed themselves in your consciousness
      and create yearnings for repitition, so that you can relive
      that pleasurable disturbance of the soul. Gradually, your head
      becomes an unimaginably large juke box, with instantaneous
      recall and cross-referencing, far more sophisticated than
      anything man-made. (p. 23, 24)

I'm just 60 pages or so into the little book _Wordstruck_, by Robert
MacNeil (the news anchor and creator of _The Story of English_). It is
a wonderfully written memoir of growing up in Halifax, Nova Scotia,
organized around reading and being read to, around his youthful laying
down of layer upon layer of delight in language and books.

                 Mike Morris
          (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books