Bedtime reading on Steepholm island

[steepholm]

Spot the Clumsy Update! From the first page of Five Fall into Adventure (1950 - but in a 1980s edition): George's "arms and legs were as brown as a traveller's." Yeah, that works.

Comments

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

Oy. Teh Dumb, it burns. And so weird -- NOT to excuse, but you have to wonder about the editor and hir background. Because I think for some of us, it would never occur to go past, "things that are brown" and hit, I dunno ... old leather? What kind of mind set would say, "oh, I can't use [original person of colour], because that's wrong, so I'll pick [ethnic group we can still hate]"???

Of course, I just posted on a slightly related topic ...

[hafren.livejournal.com]

What kind of mind set would say, "oh, I can't use [original person of colour], because that's wrong, so I'll pick [ethnic group we can still hate]"???

I think you might be making a wrong assumption here. I haven't read Blyton in years, thank god, but I would lay bets the original word was "gipsy's", in which case the editor was, albeit clumsily, trying to update to a more PC word that meant the same - but of course it doesn't, in most people's lexicon; it just means someone who flies to New York a lot. The editor would have done better just to choose an outdoor occupation. I can see why the original would use gipsy, and why the editor might want to reproduce a person comparison rather than "leather", because the girl in question is a tomboy, always outdoors, who would take it as a great compliment if you said she looked like a gipsy. Indeed most adventurous kids at the time would have done; the word had more romantic connotations than it does now.

I could be wrong, but I really doubt the original was any word for person of colour. Blyton was resolutely middle-class in her writing and even in her day, the word I suspect you're thinking of was taboo for middle-class British children. I grew up in the 50s (UK) and I don't recall if it was thought racist then, but it was certainly thought vulgar or "common", the middle-class parent's worst condemnation...

And yes, updating books is a Bad Plan. Much better to explain that usages have changed.

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

I hadn't thought about 'traveller' as an update for 'gipsy'. For some reason, I did assume that the original was something like 'brown as an Indian' or something. I can understand your rationale, but still wonder why anyone in more recent times wouldn't have changed it to 'brown as a thing (a nut?)', if they were to change it at all.

Hmmm. Just remembered a student who ranted about me on LJ because I kept asking her to refer to the "gypsies" as 'Roma' during her presentation. She didn't like it at all -- 'they've been called that for centuries -- why change?'

[hafren.livejournal.com]

I think "traveller" is the approved PC update for gipsy, and having now dimly recalled the book, it actually has a Romany girl in it (whom George, as usual, takes an instant dislike to; she despises "feminine" girls but hates fellow-tomboys even more, for stealing her role). So I'm even more inclined to think that will have been the original comparison. I'd have left it alone, personally; travelling people get referred to by that name in Austen and Eliot and nobody changes that.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I read only the first chapter last night, but I've since flicked forward a chapter or so and found the girl you mean. She's no longer a gipsy or even a traveller, but a "ragamuffin". Yes, you heard right: she is "the ragamuffin girl" throughout. There's even a chapter entitled "Ragamuffin Jo" - a sad sacrifice of alliteration on the altar of naffness.

I might be slightly worried about my daughter enjoying the Famous Five, if she didn't also enjoy the Comic Strip's "Five Go Mad in Dorset". She knows perfectly well it isn't "now and in England," and rather enjoys noticing (and talking about) the differences.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

Jasus. That's awful.

PS

[hafren.livejournal.com]

- plus, it just occurred to me, do modern kids even know the word ragamuffin? I haven't heard anyone use it in decades.

Re: PS

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Good question. I think mine would recognize it, but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't ever use it. I suspect they came up with 'ragamuffin' by way of some half-conscious memory of 'the raggle-taggle gypsies'.

[(Anonymous)]

Every year there are about eight weeks when the travellers come by en route to and from the Appleby Horse Fair and park on the verges hereabouts. Some folk still refer to them as gypsies, including local children, but the term generally used is 'travellers' since not all are of Roma background. There's a lot of young boys around during these weeks riding ponies bareback and driving buggies (little more than a pair of wheels and seat hitched behind a horse) half-naked, with *very* sun-weathered skin.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I think the problem with the sentence I quoted was partly that, without some kind of establishing context, a "traveller" could be anything from a City commuter on the 7.35 from Woking to someone trekking across the Hindu Kush. My first thought was: "Why would a traveller have brown legs, more than anyone else?" Of course, "gypsy" unlike "traveller" doesn't have that wide range of meanings, so the original was unambiguous; but the reviser simply substituted the "bad" word for the "good" alternative, without looking to see what effect it would have on the paragraph as a whole.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

*snort*