<html><head></head><body><div>which is to say in Scots, MORE <br></div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>Drink was running out and a barman appeared when a bell was rung for him. <br></div><div>The lofty bard Dr. Douglas Young intoned a wish for "some mair"</div><div>Dr. Young seems to have elided the successive letters m <br></div><div>The barman, mis-hearing the request as "some air" opened a window. <br></div><div><br></div><div>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).</div><div> <br></div><div>La Mer is of course the sea, Mare pronounced MaRay in Italian</div><div><br></div><div>not to be confused with the Merry Christmas we should soon be wishing each other </div><div><br></div><div>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. <br></div><div>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",</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>the pipes, the pipes are calling!</div><div><br></div><div>Robert R. Calder <br></div><div><br></div><div class="ydp9e84f144yahoo-style-wrap" style="font-family:verdana, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:16px;"></div></body></html>