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Wednesday, October 25, 2006

No nane better nor dunnerin bress

    Gin I speak wi the tungs o men an angels, but hae nae luve i my hairt, I am no nane better nor dunnerin bress or a ringing cymbal. Gin I hae the gift of prophesie, an am acquent wi the saicret mind o God, an ken aathing ither at man may ken, an gin I hae seccan faith as can flit the hills frae their larachs - gin I hae aa that, but hae nae luve i my hairt, I am nocht. Gin I skail aa my guids an graith in awmous, an gin I gie up my bodie tae be brunt in aiss - gin I een dae that, but hae nae luve i my hairt, I am nane the better o it.

    Live is patientfu; luve is couthie an kind; luve is nane jailous; nane sprosie; nane bowdent wi pride; nane mislaired; nane hame-drauchtit; nane toustie. Luve keeps nae nickstick o the wrangs it drees; finds nae pleisur i the ill wark o ithers; is ey liftit up whan truith dings lies, kens ey tae keep a caum souch; is ey swiered tae misdout; ey howps the best; ey bides the warst.

    Luve will ne'er fail. Prophesies, they s' een be by wi; tungs, they s' een devaul; knawledge, it s' een be by wi. Aa our knawledge is hauflin; aa our prophesiein is hauflin: but whan the perfyte is comed, the onperfyte will be by wi. In my bairn days, I hed the speech o a bairn, the mind o a bairn, the thocts o a bairn, but nou at I am grown manmuckle, I am throu wi aathing bairnlie. Nou we ar like luikin in a mirror an seein aathing athraw, but than we s' luik aathing braid i the face. Nou I ken aathing hauflinsweys, but than I will ken aathing as weill as God kens me.

    In smaa: there is three things bides for ey: faith, howp, luve. But the grytest o the three is luve.


1 Corinthians 13. The New Testament in Scots translated by William Laughton Lorimer, published posthumously in 1983.

12 Comments:

At Thu Oct 26, 12:14:00 AM, Blogger Ruud Vermeij said...

Nice.
Can we have some Dutch next time? :-)

 
At Thu Oct 26, 02:37:00 AM, Blogger Sylvanus said...

if I spaek in hmuan or anegilc tnouges but nto hvae lvoe, I am olny a resnouidng gnog or a clnagnig cmybal. If I hvae the gfit of porpehcy and can fahtom all msytetreis and all knwoldege, adn if I hvae fiath taht can mvoe motnanges, but do nto hvae lvoe, I am nohtnig.

1 Cor 13:1-2 according to todya's Geeky gyu !! :)

 
At Thu Oct 26, 10:10:00 AM, Blogger Peter Kirk said...

Sylvanus, I hope you are not mocking the Scots translation. Scots is a language distinct from English, although closely related, and with a long written tradition going back to e.g. Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott (and by the way is not to be confused with Scots Gaelic, the main language of the Scottish highlands and islands until quite recently). Most Scottish people now usually write in English, and speak English fluently at least to outsiders. If you want to suggest that a separate Scots translation of the Bible is not necessary, you may have a point, but if so please make it in a proper way and not by mockery.

 
At Thu Oct 26, 11:59:00 AM, Blogger Peter Kirk said...

I should add to my last comment that I am not Scottish. My surname is indeed a word in Scots, but also in northern English dialect, meaning "church". "Kirk" is a Scottish surname but also a northern English one, and my Kirk ancestors are from northern England at least back to the 15th century.

 
At Thu Oct 26, 12:16:00 PM, Blogger Suzanne McCarthy said...

Hey,

I thought Sylvanus was just having a bit of honest fun. Teachers do this all the time - writing words with all the letters out of order to prove it can be read.

One of my own names is Scott so the Scots tradition is still strong is our family.

I really get into books like Highland Clearances by John Prebble.

 
At Thu Oct 26, 01:36:00 PM, Blogger Sylvanus said...

Peter

I am sorry, but as Suzanne says, I just couldn't resist the click.

To rest your mind, I will give you a confession (a rare thing for me to do)

I originate from Brittany. There, there are people who have been fighting for a few hundred years to preserve the old tongue, and still are, as it was suppressed by Parisian partisants.

This said, you will understand how great a respect I have for the Scots.

(Brettons originate from Cornwall by the way. They were chased away from the Angles and Saxons)

I thing we're all the same of a bunch !

Regards.

 
At Thu Oct 26, 01:51:00 PM, Blogger Peter Kirk said...

Thanks, Sylvanus. I probably just misunderstood you.

My Kirk ancestors were probably Celts, from a part of northern England (north Derbyshire, the Peak District) which was little settled by Angles, Saxons and Danes, so on that side I am probably very distantly related to you - but my mother's family, from Yorkshire, are likely to be much more Germanic.

 
At Thu Oct 26, 02:08:00 PM, Blogger Sylvanus said...

Thank you Peter for your good heart.

Also, I proudly own a Breton Bible. This is how it renders Luke 20:34:
Jezuz a respontas dezho: Bugale ar c'hantved-mañ a zimez, hag a ro da zimeziñ.
(Bugale=children)

There's a link to apologise to Peter: The Book of Luke in Breton
And there on to thank Suzanne: The Old testament in Breton

:)

 
At Thu Oct 26, 03:47:00 PM, Blogger Suzanne McCarthy said...

Beauty!

 
At Fri Oct 27, 12:13:00 AM, Blogger Ruud Vermeij said...

Peter,

Interesting to learn that your name means "church". The Dutch word for "Kirk" is "Kerk"!

 
At Fri Oct 27, 07:58:00 AM, Blogger John Radcliffe said...

Peter,

Here on the Isle of Man many of the (Anglican) parish churches are called "Kirk …", as but the word isn’t Manx (i.e. Gaelic) it could be of Viking origin, but I don’t know whether that would explain its appearance in Dutch as well.

So perhaps your "northern" ancestors were Viking "invaders" rather than "native" Celts. Or are you just from a long line of church ministers? (A bit like the Welsh calling the postman, "X the Post".)

 
At Fri Oct 27, 01:30:00 PM, Blogger Peter Kirk said...

Well, the word is actually of Greek origin, kuriakos, which appears in the Bible meaning "the Lord's" (1 Corinthians 11:20, Revelation 1:10).

There is something of a mystery about how it became so widespread in Germanic languages, and even in Russian where it appears as tserkov'. It might have been borrowed from early Christian Greek by the Goths and thereby spread across northern Europe, and to Britain by the Angles and Saxons or the Vikings, even though these were not Christians at the time. But the movement could have been the other way; the term could have come into use in Britain (perhaps introduced by Thedore of Tarsus, a 7th century Archbishop of Canterbury who was a Greek speaker) and then been spread across the Germanic world by the missionary movement which brought Christianity from Britain to Germany and Scandinavia.

I understand that the form "church" is Anglo-Saxon and "kirk" originally Norse; there are other doublets of this kind e.g. skirt/shirt, skip/ship. I guess it was the Vikings who took their form to the Isle of Man.

No, I am not from a long line of ministers, but our Kirk family may be descended from a certain William on le Kerkyard, also recorded as del Kyrke, who lived in the early 14th century in what later became Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire. In 1399 a Walter del Kirke complained about an offence at the nearby hamlet of Whitehough, and it is known that by the 16th century my ancestors were living at Whitehough, in a substantial house which still survives.

 

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