Clay Lane: the Blog

9 30 May

English cheerfully borrows from other languages. Three of these words come from Old Norse, three from Welsh, and three from Malay. Can you identify which words are (thought to be) from each language, and use each word in a sentence?

IBamboo. IIBerserk. IIICaddy [container]. IVCorgi. VCrumpet. VIEgg. VIIGong. VIIIPenguin. IXSkirt.

Sources

Old Norse: Berserk. Egg. Skirt.

Malay: Bamboo. Caddy. Gong.

Welsh: Corgi. Crumpet. Penguin [probable].

Adapted from Advanced English Exercises by NL Clay.

10 29 May

Evidence

Join these ideas together to form a single sentence, using the relative pronoun ‘who’.

1 Lady Mary gave evidence. Then she collapsed. She was engaged to the deceased.

2 The witnesses gave evidence. The Duke of Denver spoke first. He claimed to have discovered the body.

3 I have a letter. The writer is an old College friend. He says he met you in Paris.

Sentences based on the novels of Dorothy L. Sayers.

11 29 May

Fatal Vow

by Lucy Hutchinson

Introduction — Robert Pierrepont (1584-1623), 1st Earl of Kingston-upon-Hull, sided with Charles I in the Civil War after much debate. Soon afterwards, on July 16th, 1643, he was captured by the Parliamentarians at Gainsborough, and died in a botched rescue attempt. When the war was over, and Charles II had been restored to his throne, Lucy Hutchinson added a strange detail to the Earl’s sad story.

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12 27 May

Lost and Found

For discussion. Explain what you would do if (a) you suddenly lost any of the following, or (b) you came across someone else who had.

IGlasses (strong prescription). IIMemory (amnesia). IIIShoe.

Developed from an exercise in Think and Speak (1929) by NL Clay.

13 27 May

They Might Not Need Me

For reading aloud. A little poem by Emily Dickinson, from 1877.

They might not need me — yet they might —
I’ll let my Heart be just in sight —
A smile so small as mine might be
Precisely their necessity.

From a letter in the Spring of 1877, to Mrs T. W. (Mary Channing) Higginson. Although Dickinson knew her only through her husband, Colonel Higginson, she often sent a friendly note to her: Emily was aware that she had been in failing health for some years. Mrs Higginson died the following September.

14 26 May

The Turn

by Ben Jonson

Introduction — Ben Jonson’s collection of short poems Underwoods was published in 1640, soon after he died. He tells us that it takes its title from a habit of classical poets, who liked to call their miscellanies ‘Woods’. If Jonson’s earlier poems were his woods, he said, then these little additions were shrubs on the woodland floor. The following lines are a reflection on the value of a life.

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15 26 May

Music Video

Julius Benedict (1804-1885), Piano Concerto in E-Flat Major, Op. 89: II. Andante. Played by Howard Shelley, with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.

Sir Julius Benedict (1804-1885) was a Germen-born conductor and composer who studied with Hummel and Weber, and was acquainted with Beethoven. In 1825, he took a conductor’s post in Naples. In 1834 he moved to Paris, and the following year settled in London, where he became a conductor in theatres and concert halls, a prolific composer, and a tireless promoter of provincial musical festivals and popular concerts. He was knighted in 1871. The recording below is of the Andante from his Piano Concerto in E flat, of 1867.

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16 26 May

The Character of George Washington

by Thomas Jefferson

Introduction — In 1814, former US President Thomas Jefferson (who had served from 1801 to 1809) wrote a letter to Walter Jones (1776-1861), a lawyer whom Jefferson had appointed US attorney for the District of Columbia in 1802. In his letter, Jefferson reminisced about George Washington, supreme commander of the American revolutionary army and first President of the USA.

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17 26 May

Amen to That

by John Bright

Introduction — On January 13th, 1878, John Bright MP assured his constituents in Birmingham that reports of an imminent Russian invasion of Europe were utter delusion. Some in the Commons said that sending troops to aid Turkey in the Russo-Turkish War (now a year old) was in the ‘British interest’, but Bright reminded them how the Crimean War in 1853-56 had achieved nothing but a million dead young men.

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