LL-L "Names" 2007.12.28 (03) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L  -  28 December 2007 - Volume 03
Song Contest: lowlands-l.net/contest/ (- 31 Dec. 2007)
=========================================================================

From: foga0301 at stcloudstate.edu
Subject: LL-L "Traditions" 2007.12.28 (02) [E]

Dear Listers and lovers of place,

    Thanks for the song Ron. I'm trying to imagine that much noise used as a
way to avoid being followed by unwanted trespassers.  The contradiction
between noisy defiance and strategic evasion is an intriguing way to rescue
the new from the old—to squeeze good out of a troubled, scary past.  It
matches your "wren" story too.  Seeking a similar song to share, I found
this essay on "locating culture":

Open Spaces, Dwelling Places: Being at Home on Hill Farms in the Scottish
Borders<http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=khmWr0_fvrAC&oi=fnd&pg=PA224&dq=+%22Culture/Power/Place:+Explorations+in+Critical+Anthropology%22&ots=5R6SDSPdJI&sig=YlMM6cyLE24pCIW7KzdE50NvYmw>-
<<all 7 versions including
JSTOR>><http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cluster=15377553645509500304>
-Cited by 20<http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cites=15377553645509500304>–by
John
Gray – Chapter 10 in *The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture*,
2003 - books.google—Setha M. Low, Denise Lawrence-Zúñiga, (eds.) Blackwell
Pub.

  Mr. Gray confesses here that he needed to write this essay in order to
salvage his soul after producing a dry academic account of these people as
exotic strangers.  This new essay reverses the direction to center the world
around the lives of these shepherd "reivers."  It seems in the past they
raided [reived] the larger, richer English farms across the border, then
escaped into the hills which they knew well enough to evade reprisals.  This
essay reverses the bad and good to tell of how these people survived on
marginal land and could name every part of it as home.  The names they gave
to it contain stories that transform this rugged space into a lovable,
befriended homeland.

  It reminds me very much of my own home in Wyoming where one can find
placenames such as "freeze out mountains, crazy woman creek, muddy gap, ten
sleep, and crow heart…" and this one placename that phonetically sounds like
"whatsthematter" if you think of the time I walked there on foot from the
midst of the killpecker sanddunes where my old pickup truck broke
down—citified boyfriend in tow. There are only wild horses out there now,
but in the past we had (were) horse thieves in those parts.

  I'm exposing more (and less) than I should of my past, perhaps.  But in
stories from marginal lands, one finds this need to convey both a
respectable settled human identity and this enduring desire for independence
linked to sorted means and memories. Thus you get, perhaps this confusing
contrast between making noise and hiding in the hills.  Not sure if any
songs survived those good old bad days; but the placenames have grown thick
with meaning, despite it being so recently humanized. Even the Native
Americans needed horses before they could settle those parts. They're the
ones with drum songs, by the way; but they do it very differently.

Happy Old and New Year, Gael
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lowlands-l/attachments/20071228/667aa3ec/attachment.htm>