Rankin’s vennel sin

vennel noun. LME.
[Old French vennel(l)e, vanelle (mod. venelle) from medieval Latin venella dim. of Latin vena vein]
1. A narrow lane or passage between buildings; an alley. Chiefly Scot., Anglo-Irish & north.

Whilst the "Great Greggs Experiment" is ongoing, I'll turn again to the gennel, which has attracted additional comment in the interim (okay, okay, it’s an additional comment, if I’m being completely honest). Other than my mention of the North-East of Scotland’s terms for bread rolls in the last posting, I’ve hardly touched upon the Scots Language (or maybe it's just a dialect of English?) and some of the fantastic words this has to offer.

I feel compelled to take on the mantle of ambassador for my adopted stateless nation and remedy the situation forthwith. Of the various Scots words I’ve picked up in my four and a bit years in Edinburgh, my two favourites are “footerie” meaning “fiddly” and “shoogle” meaning “shake” or “jiggle”. I’ve recently found out that these have some English regional variants, so I’ll perhaps come back to them at some point. However, there are also some very pleasing variants on the alley theme we can look at in the meantime.

It’s August. It's Edinburgh. It's the Festival. The city’s Royal Mile is a seething mass of humanity. Tourists and Festival goers take their chances amongst in amongst the press of leafleters, buskers, comedians, jugglers and actors of the Fringe. Flanking them on either side of the single mile between Edinburgh Castle and the Palace of Holyrood are some 83 alleyways. Like fishbones adjoined to the Royal Mile's spine, these historic pedestrian lanes spider their way down to Princes Street Gardens on the north and to The Cowgate on the south.

All 83 of these alleys are enumerated and their history described in the 122 pocket-sized pages of Close Encounters in the Royal Mile. Within this single mile there are to be found representatives of pretty much all of the Scots words for alleys. Gedde’s Entry, Mary Kings Close, Tolbooth Wynd and St John's Pend are all here and close by, off the Grassmarket, is The Vennel. These five words pend, entry, wynd, vennel and close are common throughout Scotland and some, or all, are to be found in the street names of each of Scotland's cities.

Of the five, my personal favourite is “wynd” although I do have a wee softspot for "pend" too. I spend quite a bit of my time in Aberdeen and Back Wynd can be found off Union Street, the city's main thoroughfare, as can the wonderfully named Correction Wynd; taking its name from the House of Correction which stood there in the Seventeenth Century. Aberdeen, of course, has its own distinct and wonderful variety of Scots: Doric. Again, something for another time.

Interestingly, in Glasgow a "close" is also what in Edinburgh is a "stair" - the communal flight of stairs in a tenement block. I'm not sure if Dundee or Aberdeen have their own alternatives for this. I'm sure someone will let me know.

So, in the names of streets the Scots regional variants for alleys seem to be alive and well, but I'd be interested to hear from native Scots about whether they use these words in their everyday speech. I'll finish, however, by returning to the theme of the modern pressures challenging linguistic variation. It is a story which relates directly to Edinburgh and to one of the vennels of the Royal Mile: Fleshmarket Close.

Ian Rankin’s Rebus novel Fleshmarket Close was published as Fleshmarket Alley in the United States. I had thought it amusing that the meaning of the word was thought to be beyond the ken of the American reader even when presented with a description and 300 or so pages revolving around the location. However, the blog entry on Sarah’s Bookarama entitled The Americanization of British Novels, reveals that the change to the title of this American edition is only the beginning.

It seems each and every blemish of regional linguistic colour in Rankin’s Scottish prose is excised in a hideous act of editorial plastic surgery, at least in the case of another of his novels, Let it Bleed. Judging by what Sarah writes, the cankerous boil of his deviation from standard US English forms, so hideous upon the face of his fiction, is well and truly lanced with the bright shining monocultural needle of US linguistic imperialism. I do agree with Sarah's comments about the way in which this detracts from the book and its atmosphere. Sadly, someone thinks it sells books; I do hope they're wrong.

A Thesis: Greggs and the demise of dough-based regional variation

barm noun. See also barmcake.
[Origin unkn.]
A large soft bread roll.

barmy adjective. Also balmy.
[Origin unkn.]
2. fig. Excitedly active; empty-headed, daft, crazy. Now slang. L16.

Thanks to those of you who have taken the trouble to comment. It's clear that bread rolls are on your mind. And who could blame you?? In the mornings they envelop egg, surround sausages and beautify bacon. At lunch they reveal their versatility, revelling resplendent under a multitude of cold fillings, and at teatime they bear us burgers and carry our chips. God bless baps! A truly versatile and endearing foodstuff.

Through comments and e-mails, the North-East of Scotland has put "rowies", "softies" and "morning rolls" on the map and I don't doubt that missives from various parts of the north of England concerning "stotties", "barms", "teacakes", "cobs", "batches" and "buns" are, even now, winging their way to me. Reader, I have heard the voice of the people and it cries: "Bring us more about bread!" Being the kind of man who likes to bite off more bap than he can chew, I shall attempt to combine a response to this popular cry with the introduction of a new empirical rigour to my linguistic explorations.

In mentioning H W Fowler in the previous posting, I distanced myself from the prescriptive grammarian. By doing so, I tacitly endorsed the descriptive approach to linguistics, which seeks to record and analyse a language as it is actually spoken and refrains from making value judgements about grammar and vocabulary. As we will no doubt come to see, this fault line is just one of many schisms which divides the warring community of linguists. I should, however, stress that the academic prescriptive linguist is a breed which, if not actually dead, is on life support with a very poor prognosis.

Jean Aitchison describes the modern linguist's approach thus:

...rules are not arbitrary laws imposed by an external authority, but a codification of a subconscious principles or conventions followed by the speakers of a language.

Language Change: progress or decay?, 2nd Ed, CUP, 1991

Codifying these rules and understanding speaker's use of particular words in different geographical locations requires that the linguist listen, record and and describe the language as it is used.

So, we seem to have a lot of regional words for bread rolls. I'm amazed these have survived the age of mass media and global corporations. I certainly can't recall hearing very many of the bread roll synonyms mentioned above on the radio or the TV. I wonder if we used to have even more variety for the bread roll? I'll do some looking into this but, meanwhile, when passing a branch of Greggs the other day I had a moment of epiphany.

Greggs is ubiquitous in the UK, with over 1,000 branches strung out from Inverness to Brighton (and apparently they now have 4 shops in Belgium too). In addition to steak-bakes and sausage rolls, they also sell bread rolls and therefore provide an ideal laboratory for experimentation into bread rolls and regional linguistic variation. Does, I wonder, Greggs impose a corporate name on its bread rolls or does it permit regional variation? If it does impose a corporate word, is this impacting on the use of dialect norms at a local level?

This is an experiment with which I hope you might assist me. All you need to do is to follow the instructions below and let us know your findings in the comments section of this posting. To ensure robust findings I have designed the experiment carefully to be certsom that we hear language used in a natural context. Here are the instructions for the experiment, with explanatory notes in brackets:

Stage A
1. Enter your local branch of Greggs (using the door and during normal opening hours).
2. Attract the attention of a staff member (this can be challenging in a branch of Greggs, but try hard refrain from verbal or physical abuse as this may potentially unsettle the subject).
3. Point towards the bread rolls without speaking and enquire "What are these called?" (make a mental note of the subject's response - neither paper/pen nor sound recording equipment should be used as these may unnerve the subject).
4. Now point at the sausage rolls and ask "What are these called?" (this is known as a "control" question - as far as I am aware there is no recorded regional variation for this pastry-type and the subject should respond by saying "sausage rolls", but if they reply "pastry snake" or "banger-en-filo" or anything else, then I'd like to know!).
5. Leave the shop (devoid of consumer credibility but abuzz with the thrill of linguistic discovery).

Stage B
Repeat steps 1-5 above, but do so at a local independent baker's (responses found here should be again be recorded for comparison to those from a nearby Greggs and analysed for indications of a threat to regional linguistic variation).

Stage C (Control 2)
Repeat steps 1-5, but in a hardware store and pointing at a drill and then a jigsaw (it's important that we have a further "control" which makes certain that you're not mishearing shop staff saying "barm" when they are in fact universally describing you as "barmy").

Who would have thought a bit of empirical experimentation could be such fun? Do let me know of your results and I will be posting news of my own execution of the experiment in due course...

What the 'eck are kecks?

kecks noun pl. slang and dial. L19
[Alt. of kicks]
Trousers, knickers or underpants.

I feel you deserve some sort of explanation concerning the omnipresence of my “Merseyside cousins” in the postings so far. It's a bit of a surprise to me and, on that basis, I’m guessing you didn’t see it coming either. Their constant mention seems to beg a lot of questions and so, for the sake of all involved, it’s probably just best for me to just get it all out the way now...

Mum grew up in Liverpool. Eldest of four in a small terraced council house. Muirhead Avenue, Liverpool 13, in the fifties and sixties. My grandparents still lived in the same house and we’d visit frequently when I was young. The five of us would squeeze into a brown Renault 12 and, clutching presents, traverse the Pennines over the Snake Pass in the snow for the Boxing Day clan gatherings. Mum and I would go in the summer too. The train through the Peak District and then a dash over the footbridge at Piccadilly to make the connection for Lime Street. Sometimes Mum and I might stay two or three weeks at a time.

Gran and Grancha’s place was a riotous cacophony of ornaments, trinkets, chintz, cheap porcelain horses towing miniature drays laden with barrels, brasses, lino and mass-produced iconic homewares of the fifties. Vying for your nostrils’ attention were Old Spice, fry ups, a coal fire, home brew and “The Dog” (first “Whiskey” and then “Brandy”). There was a cat later, but I don’t recall the name. Out back was a small square of grass, a greenhouse, its panes straining to contain burgeoning tomato vines and, next to it, a rosebush encircled by a white-walled tire embedded in the ground.

Auntie Pam and Uncle Pat lived ‘cross the Mersey with cousins Christine, Helen and David. New Brighton and then later in Wallasey Village. David and I were both the youngest of three and he was just six months older than me. Mum and I stayed some of the time at their place in the summers and they’d visit us at half term or at Easter. In short, Mum stayed close to her family, we saw our cousins frequently and they had an accent and vocabulary very different from our own.

David and I were close and spent a lot of time together. Fantastic times skiing at Sheffield’s dry slope and twice with our dads we stayed in a remote cottage on the west coast of Scotland - just the four of us. I can still picture his bedroom at the back of the house in Wallasey Village. A series of mental snapshots from different years: a ZX80 on his desk; nunchucks and a punch bag in the corner where there would later be a shower cubicle; the half light and the hush with the curtains drawn on the morning of Auntie Pam's funeral. We drifted apart after both our mothers succumbed to cancer before we made it out of our teens, but I've fond memories of hedge-hopping, illicit drinking at family dos and football and frisbee in Scotland.

To come back to the point, I remember words as well as images. I’ve already mentioned alleys and butties, but the main one which sticks in my head is “kecks” - what Dave called his trousers and, sometimes, his pants. I like this word. I don’t have a Sheffield alternative to offer or to hold out as the “correct” form. I just called trousers, well... “trousers”. I’m aware that “strides” is used in some places and elsewhere "kicks", but there are surely a host of other words which some kindly soul might tell us about in the comments section?

Two final points. Firstly, I was a little over-zealous in my defence of "gennel" and I should apologise. I wouldn’t want you to think of me as a prescriptive linguist. I love regional variations and the plethora of words English and its dialects gives us. Secondly it would be unforgivable to discuss synonyms for trousers without including the below excerpt from a doyen of the prescriptive grammarians, one Henry Watson Fowler. As is so often the case with prescriptive grammarians, language becomes a battlefield laden with value judgements. Rarely, however is there such wit as this:

...Breeches has returned and, with the help of jodhpurs, plus-fours, shorts and trunks, has ousted knickerbockers which, in its curtailed form knickers, has been appropriated by women. Bloomers was short-lived for cyclists, but survives for schoolgirls; drawers is falling into genteel obsolescence, and even the highly respectable trousers is menaced by slacks and jeans.

A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 2nd Ed, OUP, 1965

Anyone confused by “grancha” will be relieved to learn that this is a word I’m almost certain to return to along with granddad, granda, gramps nana, nain, gran and the rest…

Gennel's last stand?

ginnel noun. Chiefly dial. Also gennel
[Perh. from French chenel CHANNEL noun.]
2. A long narrow (roofed) passage between buildings; an alley. M17.

There were two gennels on the road where I grew up. The first had been tarmaced for as long as I can remember, the second was for many years but a muddy track and only begrudgingly submitted to a thick black icing of tar and gravel towards the end of the twenty or so years I knew it.

Tarmac's earlier adopter led downhill to the shops. This was where a kindly stranger saved my three year old self from choking on a lollipop (a lolly purchased by my elder sister in contradiction to the express instruction of my mother - intriguingly, just one of my siblings' several apparent attempts on my young life); was where, as a young teenager, I trudged at dawn, luminous ornage bag in hand, to begin my paper round; and which led to our nearest bus stop and the Number 50. The 50 would take you in one direction into town and in the other to the village-cum-conurbation of Dore and the home of my first girlfriend.

The muddier alternative was almost directly opposite, but led uphill and to the fields just beyond. This provided a locus for games involving Action Men; exercised an unfailing gravitational pull over walks with grandparents and great aunts; and was where, on my first "racer", the pedals lodged fast in the rut of the track, stopping the bike dead and launching me headlong over the handlebars. To this day, I rue the absence of video footage of, or a corroborating eye witness to, the ensuing full somersault dismount (possibly with tuck and pike). This disembarkation from two wheel saw me land square on my feet: a move in which Evel Knievel himself would have taken pride.

These and other gennels round about the family home bask, it seems, consistently amongst the sunny memories of my childhood. Perhaps it's for this reason that, from amongst the various snippets of Sheffield dialect I grew up with, I have a particular fondness for the word. But I tarry. Of far greater import than my gooey-eyed nostalgia is the fact that these were unquestionably gennels. They were not "ginnels" as elsewhere in Yorkshire, nor were they the "alleys" referred to by my previously mentioned (and, seemingly, serially ill-informed) Merseyside cousins. Most importantly of all, and in complete and unswerving contradiction to the offending bracketed word in the OED's definition, a gennel was never, ever, roofed.

As you join me amongst the foothills of my exploration of regional dialects and until I reach the basecamp I hope to build from the medium-sized library of relevant-sounding books ordered from Amazon, I tentatively sought a first handhold on the slippery surface of the internet. My fingers, guided by Google, were fortunate to hold fast upon the solid surface of the BBC's Voices project. News (albeit news of 2005 vintage) was here to be found in a Radio Sheffield interview with Professor John Widdowson which led me to focus upon gennels in this posting. I was shicked to learn that the word may under threat! Can this be true? Although apparently more common in Derbyshire than the rest of Yorkshire, the word was ubiquitous in Sheffield in my time.

It seems, however, that the (clearly inferior) "jitty" is, grey squirrel-like, migrating north from Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire and driving out the smaller, cuter, fluffy-tailed, indigenous red squirrel of "gennel" to the extent that its very existence may be under threat. I learnt that the loathsome linguistic interloper already has its furry grey paws in vicious stranglehold round gennels in adjacent Chesterfield! This is alarming news and an unequivocal call to arms for gennel lovers everywhere!

Rise up, rise up! Man the barricades for the gennel's last stand! Though they may take us, they will never take our gennels! Or if they must take them, they'll be safer on foot than on bicycle and may choose a nice walk or to buy a paper at the shops before catching the Number 50 into town. BUT, they will kindly refer to them as gennels!

Those amongst you with a less than complete knowledge of stunt motorcyclists of the mid-twentieth century can find out more than you could ever conceivably wish to know about Evel Knievel in the pages of Wikipedia.

By way of explanation...

bap /bap/ noun. L16
[Origin unkn.]
A large soft bread roll.

dap /dap/ noun. E20
[Origin unkn.]
3. A rubber-soled shoe; a sports shoe, a plimsoll. slang.

The word might have first been used in the late sixteenth century but, as far as I was concerned, "Fletchers' baps" came cellophane-wrapped in sets of four. If they don't still, they certainly did in the seventies and eighties when I was growing up in Sheffield. "Daps" might sound almost the same, but there the similarity ends. These were not cellophane wrapped and were, in fact, what my Dad (brought up in Wales) called the requisite non-marking footwear for his Wednesday night games of badminton at the University's Goodwin Sports Centre. "Daps" however, was an alien language to my friends and I. These rubber-soled indoor sports shoes might either be laced or elasticated slip-ons, but they were quite definitely "plimsolls" or "pumps".

Similarly, when we visited my cousins in the Wirral, our "baps" (I'm sure Fletchers will forgive my affectionate appropriation of their bread products just this once) were called "butties". Admittedly, in South Yorkshire you can fill a bap with chips and call it a "buttie" (try it when you're there next), but everyone knows that, underneath that makeshift camouflage of chips, there lurks a plain old bap the same as any other. Contrary to this well understood convention, my cousins would brazenly talk of having "butties for lunch" when these contained only ham or cheese (sometimes both) and there was not a deep-fried, thick-cut potato in sight. Alas, my shrill and insistent attempts to correct them went unheeded and these poor souls, and many like them, labour under this Merseyside misunderstanding to this day.

So, with these two words of my childhood lies the origin of these musings. I became intrigued by such synonyms and what I know now to be "lexical" or "dialectal" variations (I looked in a fancy book). Amongst the peoples of the British Isles this plethora of possibilities for describing what are essentially the same thing is, it seems, most common in the words we use to describe the mundane objects of the everyday: footwear; bread; the narrow pathways between buildings. As such, the individual trying to ask a stranger in another part of the country directions in order to buy shoes and some bread products takes his or her life in their hands.

Although it has been rumoured that I studied English Language and Literature at University, I never learned about these variations, which sometimes seem to occur within just 20 or 30 miles of one another. What lies behind them? How did they come about? Are new such words still coming into being? How have they managed to persist under what I imagine somebody clutching a copy of The Daily Mail would term "the assault" of the mass media? Does anyone really care? Is anybody else at all even remotely interested in this topic? Am I going to get anywhere with my investigations or should I just slip on my daps right now, and pad quietly down the nearest gennel, taking a tasty bap with me for sustenance?

These questions and more besides could be answered in the postings to this blog, but I suspect that they probably won't. If, however, you have an unusual local word, an amusing tale of regional linguistic confusion resulting in uninvited violence, an illegitimate birth or the unexpected loan of some aging but functional long-handled shears, please get in touch. Really, please get in touch! I've got one or two things up my sleeve but, to be honest, my material's really a bit limited, so go ahead and comment or my journey from baps to daps will be all too fleeting.