[HPFGU-OTChatter] JKR and Bobby Burns

[Lee Storm (God Is The Healing Force]

[Carol]:
| January 25 was the Scottish poet Robert Burns's 250th birthday--or the
| 250th anniversary of his birth, if you prefer.

[Lee]:
Aw Blast!  I missed Bobbie Burns Day?  Drat! I was planning to make Scotch
Eggs and Shortbread.  My date reminder didn't go off...Rotters!  Oh,
well...I'll have to celebrate a bit late, I guess. <Sigh>

[Carol]:
 In a 1787 letter to the
| London Scottish novelist Dr John Moore, Burns recalled being
| entertained as a child by an elderly female relative with "the largest
| collection in the county of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts,
| fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles,
| dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, inchanted [sic]
| towers, dragons and other trumpery."  I wonder whether a certain very
| rich author who now lives in Scotland heard or read similar tales. I
| realize that she was born in Bristol and that her parent were both
| Londoners, but except for devils, spunkies, dead-lights, and
| cantraips, Burns's list matches pretty closely the "trumpery" that
| appears in the HP stories. (I didn't include elf-candles because I
| think they're the same thing as hinkypunks.)

[Lee]:
Hmm...some might think the DEs are Devils. :-)  I'm not sure what a spunky
is.  Dead-lights...well, guess there's more of that in LOTR, but the
Infiri...maybe??? A bit of a stretch, but...

[Carol]:
Carol, noting that Steve (bboyminn) would probably enjoy Burns's
| poetry if he can get past the Scots dialect ("O wad some power the
| giftie gie us/ to see oursels as ithers see us!")

[Lee]:
Now, that would shake up the world...seeing ourselves as others see us.
We'd either have to shape up or ship out. :-)

Peace,
Lee :-)