[Dixielandjazz] Mair

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

which is to say in Scots, MORE 

there is the tale of a meeting of poets in Edinburgh in 1948 to work out how Scots rather than English words ought to be spelled. The meeting was in the back room of a famous literary hostelry, converted now to the bottom of the stairway to the restaurant above.
Drink was running out and a barman appeared when a bell was rung for him. 
The lofty bard Dr. Douglas Young intoned a wish for "some mair"Dr. Young seems to have elided the successive letters m 
The barman, mis-hearing the request as "some air" opened a window. 

Mere in French, my e-mail does not support the grave accent over the e, is pronounced MERR -- as in terror and error ... so I presume if the schoolboys in Ireland heard MAIR or MARE it was some quirk of accent.  Presumably somebody who went on to mispronounce for the Boo Boo C (aka BBC).  
La Mer is of course the sea, Mare pronounced MaRay in Italian
not to be confused with the Merry Christmas we should soon be wishing each other 
Did Johnny Chilton's researches uncover a previous name for the tune with the Bechet composer credit? I remember there was also a Dr. Sigmund Spaeth noted for researches which let him charge fees to people who had made a lot of money putting their names to tunes composed by other people and still in copyright. Spaeth looked for things even older and thus out of copyright. 
Kenny Davern had a comic line about people whose wish that they could compose Duke Elllingtonb tunes were all too willingly granted by the Duke -- there is an Elvin Jones live recording of HAPPY BIRTHDAY on which Wynton Marsalis echoes the Ellington/ Harry Edison "Stompy Jones"  -- and on the Ellington centary tour with NHOP Mulgrew Miller played a straight chorus of "Londonderry Air" in "Sophisticated Lady",

the pipes, the pipes are calling!
Robert R. Calder 

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