1) Michael Gilleland at Laudator Temporis Acti quotes Robert Burns (1759-1796), “A Dream,” lines 30-31:
But Facts are chiels that winna ding,
And downa be disputed.
He gives the glosses from The Canongate Burns: chiels ‘fellows,’ winna ding ‘will not be upset,’ and downa ‘cannot.’ But ding (pa.t. dang, pa.p. dung) means ‘knock, beat, strike; defeat, overcome; wear out, weary; beat, excel, get the better of,’ so I think “winna ding” is rather ‘won’t be defeated.’ And “downa” defeats me — it’s presumably a form of dae ‘do,’ but neither “downa” nor “douna” occurs in the list of forms at DSL. If we assume it belongs here:
(3) Negative: formed in the ordinary way or by the addition of the neg. particle -na, e.g. dinna, disna; dunna […]; düna […]; also daena, disnae, dinnae, dinny, dinnie, doesna, doesnae, doesny, doesni, den no’, döna, donna, din-not.
Then how does it work semantically? Shouldn’t it be ‘can’t be disputed’? Calling all Scotspersons!
2) Bunin’s 1943 story “Речной трактир,” “A Riverside Inn” in Hugh Aplin’s translation, opens with its protagonists doing some drinking at the famous Praga restaurant in Moscow (named Prague not because of any Czech connection but because it was fashionable to name fancy hotels and eateries after European capitals); the first paragraph ends:
Пообедали вместе, порядочно выпив водки и кахетинского, разговаривая о недавно созванной Государственной думе, спросили кофе. Доктор вынул старый серебряный портсигар, предложил мне свою асмоловскую “пушку” и, закуривая, сказал:
– Да, все Дума да Дума… Не выпить ли нам коньяку? Грустно что-то.
In Aplin’s version:
We had dinner together, knocking back a fair amount of vodka and Kakhetian wine and talking about the recently convened State Duma, then asked for coffee. The doctor took out an old silver cigarette case, offered me his Asmolov “cannon”* and, lighting up, said:
“Yes, it’s the Duma this, the Duma that… Shall we have some brandy? I’m feeling a bit sad.”
(The mention of “the recently convened State Duma” suggests we are in 1906 or 1907.) The footnote says:
Asmolov “cannon”: Asmolov and Co. were manufacturers of tobacco products and accessories.
Which is all well and good, but Asmolov is easy to identify (Russian Wikipedia); what the hell does пушка ‘gun, cannon’ mean here? I can’t find any relevant (tobacco-related) sense in any of my references.
3) Not difficult so much as amusing and interesting: I was watching Eric Rohmer’s L’Amour, l’après-midi (Love in the Afternoon; Chloe in the Afternoon) when the annoying young woman attempting to seduce the happily married Frédéric (she’s played by Zouzou, whose other claim to fame is that she had a fling with Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones) says that she’s got a job at a new restaurant called L’Olibrius. Naturally I was curious about the name; it turns out that olibrius is a French slang term meaning, according to Wiktionary, ‘kook, weirdo, nutter,’ and according to my Dictionary of Modern Colloquial French by René James Hérail and Edwin A. Lovatt means ‘brash and breezy show-off, pompous extrovert.’ Hérail and Lovatt say “It would appear that Olibrius, a governor of the Gauls around 300 A.D., gained eponymous fame for his erratic behaviour”; the TLFi, which defines it as “Homme sot et prétentieux, importun par son comportement bizarre et ridicule,” says:
De Olybrius, nom de divers personnages de l’empire romain, notamment d’un empereur d’Occident porté au pouvoir en 472 par le militaire Ricimer, allié des barbares, et, selon la légende répandue par la litt. hagiographique du Moy. Âge (cf. 1130-40, Wace, Ste Marguerite, éd. E. A. Francis, 85: Olimbrius), d’un gouverneur d’Antioche persécuteur de sainte Marguerite, puis sur ce modèle d’un gouverneur des Gaules qui aurait fait mourir sainte Reine. De là l’image d’un homme bravache et cruel.
I hope I can remember it if an appropriate occasion to use it ever arises.
Dunno about Asmolov, but cannon-styled lighters were popular for a while back when. Before my time, but popular enough that I’d heard of them. Looking up “cannon lighter” brings up a bunch of old ones offered for sale.
Ah, that must be it — thanks very much!
I have to say, that’s the one I had least hope of getting an answer for.
The Concise Scots Dictionary says that dow is a variant of dae, in use 16-e19.
‘Upset’ can mean ‘knocked over’, metaphorically or otherwise, so you might just be saying the same thing in different ways on that one.
The DSL on dow
I think it’s that rather than ‘dae’, although the meaning here seems to be more ‘have the strength not to be defeated’ than ‘not have the strength’.
Is this a relative of English ‘doughty’?
‘Upset’ can mean ‘knocked over’, metaphorically or otherwise
I thought of that, but why use such an ambiguous word? Once you know what it’s intended to mean, sure, it makes sense, but why not use a clearer one?
Because the person who wrote it knew what they meant, I suppose.
https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/dow_v1_n1
Dow is a strong verb. This looks like O.E. dugan with a similar meaning.
https://bosworthtoller.com/8092
However I don’t know if the Northumbrian cognate of O.E. dugan would give Scots dow. Maybe N.G knows this.
Canon lighter doesn’t fit the context. It was oribsbly a sigar. Sigars do resemble cannons in a way.
Ah, so it’s like “I think o’ things that I downa weel forget” (1928 A. Gray Gossip 31). That makes sense.