s
informed that it was a fat Thamas Thamson, upon which the Aberdeen query
naturally arose, "Ay, but fatten fat Thamas Thamson?" Another
illustration of the Aberdeen dialect is thus given:--"The Pope o' Rome
requires a bull to do his wark, but the Emperor o' France made a coo
dee't a'"--a cow do it all--a pun on _coup d'etat_. A young lady from
Aberdeen had been on a visit to Montrose, and was disappointed at
finding there a great lack of beaux, and balls, and concerts. This lack
was not made up to her by the invitations which she had received to
dinner parties. And she thus expressed her feelings on the subject in
her native dialect, when asked how she liked Montrose: "Indeed there's
neither men nor meesic, and fat care I for meat?" There is no male
society and no concerts, and what do I care for dinners? The dialect and
the local feelings of Aberdeen were said to have produced some amusement
in London, as displayed by the lady of the Provost of Aberdeen when
accompanying her husband going up officially to the capital. Some
persons to whom she had been introduced recommended her going to the
opera as one of the sights worthy the attention of a stranger. The good
lady, full of the greatness of her situation as wife of the provost, and
knowing the sensation her appearance in public occasioned when in her
own city, and supposing that a little excitement would accompany her
with the London public, rather declined, under the modest plea, "Fat for
should I gang to the opera, just to creat a confeesion?" An aunt of
mine, who knew Aberdeen well, used to tell a traditionary story of two
Aberdonian ladies, who by their insinuations against each other, finely
illustrated the force of the dialect then in common use. They had both
of them been very attentive to a sick lady in declining health, and on
her death each had felt a distrust of the perfect disinterestedness of
the other's attention. This created more than a coolness between them,
and the bad feeling came out on their passing in the street. The one
insinuated her suspicions of unfair dealing with the property of the
deceased by ejaculating, as the other passed her, "Henny pig[81] and
green tea," to which the other retorted, in the same spirit, "Silk coat
and negligee[82]." Aberdonian pronunciation produced on one occasion a
curious equivoque between the minister and a mother of a family with
whom he was conversing in a pastoral way. The minister had said, "Weel,
Margaret, I