Quartered Safe Out Here (29 page)

The dialects of Cumberland are among the purest and, to the outsider, least comprehensible in the English-speaking world. Rendering them phonetically is difficult, but I have tried because that is the way my comrades talked, and to translate their conversation into normal English would be to change the characters of the speakers out of recognition; they were the way they spoke: tough, strong, forthright, and frequently aggressive. But while I hope I have conveyed their accent, I have to rely on meaning and context to suggest the style in which their speech was delivered. For example, the Cumbrian voice is well suited to derision; everyone knows the common English expression of disbelief, “Get away!” and the equally familiar North Country “Give over!”, meaning “Stop it”, but as rendered by the Cumbrian “Girraweh!” and “Give ower!” have respectively a snarling contempt and a violence which have to be heard. At its heaviest, the accent is a harsh, rasping growl, and it is this as much as the occasionally archaic vocabulary which baffles the foreigner. Just to give one quick example of pure Cumbrian, I give the translation of:

“Have you seen a donkey jump over a gate?” which is

“Est seen a coody loup ower a yett?”

That sentence, in Cumbrian, illustrates one of the most distinctive features of the county's speech—the occasional use of the second person singular: “Est” or “Esta” is “Hast thou”. I emphasise occasional use; the Cumbrian, especially the countryman, will use “thou” (pronounced “thoo” or “tha”) and “you” or “ye” indiscriminately. “You will” in Carlisle may be spoken as “you'll” or “ye'll”, but out on the fellside it is liable to be “tha'lt” (“thou wilt”). Similarly, his assent may be “yes”, “yiss”, or “aye”; he alternates “well” and “weel”; “go” may be “gaw”, “gan”, or “ga”; he may say “how” perfectly normally, but he may also say “’oo”. The list is endless: “don't” is usually “doan't” or “dawn't”, but occasionally it is “divvn't”—and don't (or divvn't) ask me why.

I have said the dialect is pure, because it is both ancient and grammatical; Chaucer might well understand a modern Cumbrian better than he would a modern Londoner. But it has its antique ungrammatical lapses, too—“Ah's” (“I is”) and “Thoo's” (“Thou is”) are examples to balance against the purity of “Th'art” (“Thou art”) and “looksta” and “sista” (“lookest thou” and “seest thou”).

All of which may convince the uninitiated that my characters might as well be speaking Turkish; in fact, I don't think their speech will be too difficult to understand, and where I think it may be I have appended footnote translations. The glossary at the end consists largely of Hindustani words and slang expressions current in the British Army fifty years ago.

G.M.F.

Foreign words are Hindustani unless otherwise stated

George MacDonald Fraser served in the Border Regiment in Burma during the Second World War, and in the Gordon Highlanders. He has worked on newspapers in Britain and Canada, and has written many bestselling novels in addition to the eleven volumes of the Flashman Papers. Thousands of readers around the world have been delighted by the three volumes of stories about Private McAuslan, thoughtfully described as ‘the biggest walking disaster to hit the British Army since Ancient Pistol’. He has also written numerous films, most notably
The Three Musketeers, The Four Musketeers
and the James Bond film,
Octopussy
.

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Also by George MacDonald Fraser

THE FLASHMAN PAPERS
(in chronological order)

FLASHMAN

(Britain, India, and Afghanistan, 1839–42)

ROYAL FLASH

(England 1842–43, Germany 1847–48)

FLASHMAN'S LADY

(England, Borneo, and Madagascar, 1842–45)

FLASHMAN AND THE MOUNTAIN OF LIGHT

(Indian Punjab 1845–46)

FLASH FOR FREEDOM!

(England, West Africa, U.S.A. 1848–49)

FLASHMAN AND THE REDSKINS

(U.S.A. 1849–50 and 1875–76)

FLASHMAN AT THE CHARGE

(England, Crimea, and Central Asia, 1854–55)

FLASHMAN IN THE GREAT GAME

(Scotland, India, 1856–58)

FLASHMAN AND THE ANGEL OF THE LORD

(India, South Africa, U.S.A., 1858–59)

FLASHMAN AND THE DRAGON

(China, 1860)

FLASHMAN AND THE TIGER
Mr American
The Pyrates
The Candlemass Road
Black Ajax

The Hollywood History of the World

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First published in Great Britain by Harvill 1993

Copyright © George MacDonald Fraser 1993

George MacDonald Fraser asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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EPub Edition © 1993 ISBN: 9780007325764

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