Sawney

[Jonathan Lighter]

There's Christie Cleek too, or I miss my guess.

JL

On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 10:21 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Sawney
>
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>
> I did a little research into "Sawney Bean" because Dr. William
> Douglass, the Scottish-born Boston antiinoculationist, was satirized
> as "Sawny" in  a 1722 tract.  I don't think I found "Sawn[e]y in
> print before the early 1700s, although I too saw an attribution of
> him to the time of James.
>
> Joel
>
> At 1/31/2010 09:45 PM, Robin Hamilton wrote:
> [here quoting George Thompson]
> >>I suppose the contestant are Taffy, Sawney & Paddy.
> >>
> >>OED has "a1700" for Taffy; EEBO seems to have it from the mid 17th C.
> >>"a1704" for Sawney (Scotsman -- as opposed to Sawney = fool)
> >>Paddy = 1714
> >>
> >>I didn't check EEBO for Sawney or Paddy -- seemed likely to be a pain in
> >>the ass.
> >>
> >>GAT
> >
> >And we could add to Joel's "Jock" (supplementing Sawney) for a Scotsman
> >(though I suspect it doesn't quite partake of the pejorative register of
> the
> >other terms), "Mick" (supplementing Paddy) for an Irishman.
> >
> >But a date of "a1704" for Sawney is interesting if we consider Sawney
> Bean,
> >the Demon Cannibal of Edinburgh.
> >
> >Sawney Bean and his anthropophagic brood were supposed to date, and
> >terminate, not long before 1603, just before Jimmy the Sixth and One
> finally
> >skipped south.  But if I remember correctly, the legend first appears (or,
> >feeling about folk from Edinburgh as I do, perhaps we should rather say
> the
> >truth first surfaces) in the early eighteenth century.
> >
> >For what it's worth.  Sweeney Todd is a distinctly pale imitation of his
> >precursor, who can still be viewed large as life in the midst of a kitchen
> >festooned with appropriate joints of meat in Madam Tussaud's House of
> >Horrors somewhere along the Royal Mile.
> >
> >(The best-written version of the Sawney Bean story is by S.R.Crockett in
> >_The Grey Man_).
> >
> >Robin
> >
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