I think I'm interested in this lecture for two reasons, firstly simply finding out more about the Scots language, for example the pronunciation,
"This is Aberdonian. 'Guid master', not 'gid master', or 'gud master'. 'Guid master'. The long vowels in 'maaster', 'gaud'. [laugh] Very Aberdonian. "

And (not that it's a big surprise, but I am living there) I'm interested in how Scots compares to Norwegian. You, Language Hat, said in your first piece about the Scots Project,
"Seamaa" is known to the OED as seamaw...(it's an archaic word for 'seagull').
Well, Maake is the Norwegian for seagull.

The second reason I'm interested is that the Urquhart /Rabelais combination seems like something I would love to draw, to illustrate, with the giants and all. So I'm going to look into that.

Ah, good to see mention of my hero. I have a copy of Urquhart's Works (the Maitland Club edition), and was planning to do a doctoral thesis on him, but got sidelined. I still plan to write an article on the various translations of Panurge Scots.

There's nothing very good on U. There's a life and works by Craik, but it's mediocre. Corbett's bit is OK--but U seems like one of those writers who it's really hard to get your critical teeth into. (Browne, his contemporary, is another. I've read that Browne was influenced by Urquhart when he came to write his miscellany tract on languages.)

Still, amazing and unsung writer.

Somehow, I was sure he'd be one of your faves, Conrad.

Two additional points: I don't really buy Urquhart as a writer in the Scottish tradition. U was a writer in the English tradition (like Browne in many respects), and linguistically the Scottish element is quite marginal. (Not politically / culturally.) The effect of playing up his Scottishness is that he has been ghettoised: all of the material on him is by Scottish scholars, which is a shame.

Second to Arthur Crown: a number of illustrators have done the Urquhart (and Motteux, who did Bks 4-5) Rabelais, but the best IMHO is Heath Robinson (whose wartime cartoons are also brilliant--the English version of Rube Goldberg). Robinson's illustrations can be found in the Navarre Society edition of G&P from around 1920. This is easily available second-hand, and I recommend picking up a copy. (The typeface is quite nice too!)

Good lord, I was familiar with Heath Robinson as the English version of Rube Goldberg but had no idea he'd illustrated Rabelais. The things you learn on the internet!

Only Gargantua and Pantagruel are giants, Panurge is an ordinary man (in size).

The Limousin student speaks a grotesquely superlatinate French when he is watching his language (after all, at the university everyone is speaking Latin), but when he reverts to his native speech what he is speaking is Limousin, one of the Occitan dialects.

Conrad, thank you. Heath Robinson sounds like a perfect illustrator for this work. When you say, "I don't really buy Urquhart as a writer in the Scottish tradition" Corbett goes to great lengths to show U. as a transitional writer in the Scotish trad., there's lots of evidence produced. But can that really be why he hasn't been picked up outside Scotland (not that I have a better idea)?

What about the Alasdair Gray, "Unlikely Stories Mostly", that Corbett mentions. Has anyone read that?

I have read it. I'm not really a Gray fan, but it's OK--some funny lines. Such as:

Milton: "When time is ripe for it, my verse will do far more than illuminate the best essence of Thomas Malory's text, it will ttranslate, clarify and augment the greatest and most truly Original Book in the Universe.

Urquhart: "Such is my aim also, and I am thunderstruck to discover in the Puritan camp one owho admires the work of Rabelais as greatly as I do."

Rabelais lived before the Catholic-Protestant distinction had hardened. He had high connections in the church (via the Bellays) but also had proto-Protestant (or "evangelist") sympathies. Even real Protestants in those days could be smutty -- Luther after all authorized pious sexuality. Clement Marot is notable both for his Psalm translations (banned by the Pope, and included in the Huguenot hymnal) and for poetry which was often amusingly lewd.

Marot also edited Villon and La Roman de la Rose, and played a small role as a prescriptive grammarian:

La règle de l'accord du participe passé avec le complément d'objet antéposé est l'une des plus artificielles de la langue française. On peut en dater avec précision l'introduction ; c'est le poète Clément Marot qui l'a formulée en 1538. Marot prenait pour exemple la langue italienne, qui a, depuis, partiellement renoncé à cette règle. (From a previous LH thread.)

Carlos Gesualdo was also versatile. Besides being a highly original composer, he also played a diplomatic role representing Naples in northern Italy, was featured in pulp literature for the honor-killing of his wife and infant child, and appeared in medical books as a patient incapable of defecating unless beaten with sticks by handsome young men.

"Le".

Even a single one of Marot's accomplishments, or Gesualdo's, would be enough for the average man.

I have some of the Heath Robinson illustrations for Rabelais. They were done in 1904, and aren't characteristic of his well-known later work. The giants aren't very big.

Another good illustrator might have been Donald McGill, he of the naughty seaside-postcards(see George Orwell's essay, The Art of Donald McGill, if you don't know his work).

Damned by faint praise dept.(from Wikipedia):
Carlos Gesualdo...is famous for...committing what are amongst the most notorious murders in musical history.

And he wrote what is considered some of the best music composed by a murderer, too!

The last of Gesualdo's accomplishments is rarest, in my opinion. There are lots of diplomats, revolutionary composers, and honor killers.

revolutionary composer...honor killer...beaten with sticks by handsome young men while he's...

Shall we tell Andrew Lloyd-Webber? This sounds mega.

BTW, it's Carlo, not Carlos, Gesualdo. There's a rather quirky documentary about him by Werner Herzog.

There aren't many composer/murderers about, unless you believe the "Amadeus" version of the life of Salieri. In fact, it's probably true that composers are far more likely to be murder victims: Alessandro Stradella, Jean-Marie Leclair and Claude Vivier spring to mind.

Werner Herzog would definitely be the right guy to do it.

Rimsky-Korsakoff wrote an opera about Mozart and Salieri, based on a poem by Pushkin, which I've been trying to get. Mozart himself suspected Salieri, and Salieri supposedly confessed on his deathbed. Salieri also appeared at Haydn's death bed, IIRC.

Some say that R-K thought of himself (a fully competent but non-genius musician) as Salieri, with Musorgsky as Mozart. Musorgsky really baffled people: even Tchaikovsky recognized his talent, but no one could tell whether he was incompetent or original. (Answer: apparently both).

Mozart, of course, didn't have Musorgsky's baffling traits. A genius, but also fully competent and not especially revolutionary.

In short, the "Amadeus" movie was a revival or remake of a couple of minor classics, and not a pomo fantasy.

A few years ago I heard a lecture by a doctor on the CBC program "Ideas", about Mozart's last illness. The doctor's conclusion was that Mozart had been poisoned, not by a fellow human (at least not deliberately) but by a plate of sausages which he is known to have eaten a few days before his death. The symptoms apparently were quite recognizable as those of a certain type of food poisoning, and there was no suggestion of foul play.

What I have been wondering for a long time:

How is Urquhart pronounced? Is there a rule for what to do with the quh, which also occurs in Farquhart? Where the vertical gene transfer does it come from?

I believe that quh is /xw/, corresponding to Early Modern English wh, that is, /hw/.

In some old Scots writing you find for instance "quhat" for 'what'.

"How is Urquhart pronounced?"

Nonetheless, it is now generally pronounced with an aspirated 'k', ie. somewhere between URK-art and URK-hart. You might want a schwa instead of an 'ar', alternatively.

But Dr. Corbett uses /x/ for -quh-, so I presume that's the current Scots pronunciation.

The Scots is not Urquhart’s, but Rabelais’s own. In editions from 1542 it was replaced by the English text which the editor – Motteux is it? – thinks came first.

The remark by Carpalim which in some editions comes after the Basque dialogue was originally a response to the Scots: ‘Sainct Treignan, foutys-vous d’Ecoss, ou j’ay failly à entendre?’, which means roughly ‘By St Trinian [St Ninian], are you Scottish, or have I misunderstood?’.

Urquhart, bewilderingly but amusingly translates this as: ‘St. Trinian's rammer unstitch your bum, for I had almost understood it.’

^^^ I meant to specify Panurge's Scots dialogue is Rabelais's own. The other example given, of the Limousin student, is of course Urquhart's addition.

j'ai failly à entendre = 'I failed to understand' (no longer used in modern French)

Urquhart misunderstood this sentence for j'ai failli entendre 'I almost understood, I was on the verge of understanding'.

The beginning of the sentence is not quite clear to me, but most likely includes an obscene pun, hence Urquhart's translation.

There was an Urquhart who was Deputy Secretary General of the UN, who pronounced his name, roughly, Ur-kut.

I was at school with a Farquhar (in England), where it is pronounced as 'Parker'. This led to many jokes along the lines of, "Who's a silly Farquhar, then?'.

marie-lucie: according to this article [JSTOR], 'foutys' is Rabelais's mocking approximation of the kind of French spoken by Scottish students - foutys = vous êtes.

No doubt there's an obscene pun on 'foutre' in there too.

The link I provided appears not to work. Here's the URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/459155

Sorry for clogging up the comments section.

In the movie "Shrek", "Farquhard" is pronounced "F*ckwad", giving parents a laugh in the middle of their kids' movie.

On the escosse-françois, the essay by Ker to which that JSTOR article refers is here. It gives more on the textual history, which Raminagrobis summarized above. The mention in Les Ecossais en France, here, refers to “une curieuse note de M. Burgaud des Marets,” which is here. It gives a couple more possibilities for foutys vous.