Where "down" is in Old England

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Fri Aug 13 19:14:13 UTC 2010


At 2:39 PM -0400 8/13/10, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>At 8/13/2010 12:55 PM, Mailbox wrote:
>>In all, the phrase "down to Scotland" appears 12 times in the
>>novel  and "down in Scotland" 10 times, all from the perspective of
>>points to the south, mostly London.
>
>But Scotland is north of most everything else.  What does a traveler
>from the Shetlands say about going to Edinburgh?  (Or Limerick?)
>
At least for Edinburgh, since it's the capital, I imagine the
Shetlander (or Sheltie, depending on the species) would go "up to
Edinburgh" just as the Liverpudlian would go "up to London".

LH

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