The Lusk Letter - Swanson's Transcription

[GUT]

Compare the letter in "Sor/Sur/Sir" to the "O" in "tother" and then see if you think it's a "U".

[Tom_Wescott]

Compare the letter in question to the 'o' in 'you' and to the 'u' in 'Lusk' and 'you' or to any of the 'i's and you can tell it's 'sor'.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[GUT]

Hi,

Why don't we think it is Sur ? The U would matches the U in 'tuther'. It's not mock Irish , it's mock cockney, surely.

MrB

G'day Mr B

I don't think it's a "U" because all the u's finish at the bottom this letter finishes at the top.

[MrBarnett]

Hi,

Why do we think it is Sor and not Sur? The U matches the U in 'tuther'. It's not mock Irish , it's mock cockney, surely.

MrB

[RockySullivan]

There's also the possibility that writer was conscious and made an I/O. He dotted the I as he started to form the r. There's enough word play in the letter for the writer to be conscious of the ambiguity of the I/O.

[RockySullivan]

Hello Lynn

Good observation about the writer's fastidiousness about dotting his "i's" -- here's the original Lusk letter and you'll note the only "i" that is not dotted is the supposed "i" in "Sir." For me, the letter says, "Sor".



The other observation I will make, if I haven't noted it earlier in the thread, is how faithfully Donald Swanson's transcription of the letter duplicates the layout and even the letter formations of the original letter.

Best regards

Chris

It looks like sor but I also see it could say sir and there is a dot that connects the I in to an O, if the I was dotted really sloppily it could form an o

[Steven Russell]

Yesh shome mishtake shurely

Stephen,

Quite sho.

Regards,

Steve.

[Stephen Thomas]

I have never heard anyone - Irish or otherwise - say "Mishter".

Yesh shome mishtake shurely

[Steven Russell]

Dear all,

I have never been comfortable with the rendering of the salutation as "Sor". IF we accept that the writer omitted to dot the i, then surely "Sir" looks more likely. The r of "longer" is virtually identical to that in Sir/Sor and the first r of "prasarved" even contains the little loop. True, other r's in the letter are formed in a different way. And, the writer appears to have been scrupulous in dotting his other i's with the possible exceptions of "whil" and "Mishter". But only possible. They (the dots) seem to be there if you look hard enough.

Incidentally, does it really say "prasarved"? It seems to me that it is rather indistinct but I must admit that no other sensible interpretation presents itself. In my experience, Irish people pronounce "preserved" in a similar way to Americans, or even as "presairved". Take away "Sor" (Swanson transcribed it as "Sir") and "presarved", and how does the thing look Irish in the least?

As has been noted by other threaders, "t'other" was, and still is, in widespread use throughout England - particularly the north. And "Mishter"? Just a spelling mistake. I have never heard anyone - Irish or otherwise - say "Mishter".

Best wishes,

Steve.

[smezenen]

smezenen

Just to clarify, I am not so much basing my interpretation on the fact that these final upstrokes appear, as explaining how the upstroke can make "Sir" look like "Sor".

The overwhelming argument for the "Sir" interpretation is simply that "Sir" - not "Sor" - is precisely the word we should expect to see in that position.

Thank you for explaining what you meant by the upstroke. However, in that case I really don't understand the point. Surely in joined-up handwriting one can't assume a stroke is a continuation of the same letter because there is no break in the line?

I agree that Sir is the word you or I would expect to see there but given that the author has spelled some words phonetically with accent, he may have misspelled this word as in Kidne for kidney, prasarved for preserved, nise for nice, tother for the other, knif for knife, wate for wait, and whil for while. Sor for Sir would be phoneticaly correct if the writer is trying to fake an accent.

Of these examples two of his misspellings convince me the writer was trying to fake an accent. He spells knife as knif when phonetically it should have been nife and while as whil when it should have been wile. The other thing that convinces me that the writer is faking an accent is the fact that we never hear our own accent. For example talk to someone from Alabama or Georgia (my wife) and metion their accent and they will tell you they dont have one and that you are the one with the accent.

[Chris]

smezenen

Just to clarify, I am not so much basing my interpretation on the fact that these final upstrokes appear, as explaining how the upstroke can make "Sir" look like "Sor".

The overwhelming argument for the "Sir" interpretation is simply that "Sir" - not "Sor" - is precisely the word we should expect to see in that position.

Thank you for explaining what you meant by the upstroke. However, in that case I really don't understand the point. Surely in joined-up handwriting one can't assume a stroke is a continuation of the same letter because there is no break in the line?

[smezenen]

smezenen

Agreed that the 'i' would not be dotted and the others are. But as I've said, I think that alone would be a very unsafe basis on which to prefer the strange reading "Sor" rather than "Sir" - which would of course be the normal word to put there.

Regarding the upstroke, there are several of these in the letter, of which I gave examples in the previous post I keep referring to. They are all written continuously without a preceding break, and the effect is always to add an additional stroke to what would normally be written - just as in the "Sir" interpretation I've illustrated.

Chris,
I have seen you'r other post. The upstroke I spoke of was in the middle of the word and pertained to one letter not at the end of the word like the ones you point out. The writer does display a curiouse upstoke at the end of some words that would be a unique identifer for this individual when compairing to other writings. The problem I see with using the upstoke at the end of the word in order to identify the shape of the "r" is that the author was not habitual with his use of the upstoke, in other words he didnt use it at the end of every word only a few, he uses it a the end of a sentence and in the middle, he uses it after the letters M,N,T, and U. There is no pattern I can see to his use of this upstoke making it random. If we break this down by the numbers, not counting the word in question, we see that he used the upstroke at the end of 9 of 57 words thats 15.78%. He used a tittle on 12 of 12 lowercase i's in the letter thats 100%. I would say that basing the correct letter of the word in question on the tittles is 85% stronger than basing it on upstrokes at the end of words.

[Chris]

smezenen

Agreed that the 'i' would not be dotted and the others are. But as I've said, I think that alone would be a very unsafe basis on which to prefer the strange reading "Sor" rather than "Sir" - which would of course be the normal word to put there.

Regarding the upstroke, there are several of these in the letter, of which I gave examples in the previous post I keep referring to. They are all written continuously without a preceding break, and the effect is always to add an additional stroke to what would normally be written - just as in the "Sir" interpretation I've illustrated.

[smezenen]

smezenen

I think you've misunderstood what's being suggested. The interpretation hinges on how the word should be divided up into individual letters.

Hello Chris,
I was not misunderstood. Your illustrations are very good. But this is what I see, since there is not a break in the line before the upstoke the intent seems to be a continuation of the formation of the letter. I also submit that if the letter is a lower case i then it would be the only one in the entire letter that is not dotted. I have attached (I HOPE) and Illustration of my own showing all of the words in the letter containing a lower case i. I have shaded the tittle (dot) of each i. The auther of this letter habitualy dotted his i's further indicating that the word in question is SOR and not SIR.

[Chris]

perrymason

Obviously, the first 'r' in 'prasarved' is formed quite differently from other examples of the letter 'r' in the letter - but very similarly to what I interpret as the 'r' of "Sir".

But I've already discussed precisely this point, and given examples to illustrate it. And I've already directed you to the post where I discussed it:

http://forum.casebook.org/showpost.php?p=104229&postcount=53