Quick question

[conuly]

Poll #20788 If you're not actually quoting the poem....

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 108

View Respondents

which are you more likely to say? "The best laid plans of mice and men"

View Answers

Often go awry
34 (35.1%)

Gang aft agley (and I speak like this all the time)
3 (3.1%)

Gang aft agley (and this is not my dialect)
60 (61.9%)

Before reading this question, were you aware that in the poem it's "schemes" and not "plans"?

View Answers

Yes
30 (27.8%)

No
78 (72.2%)

And of course here's the poem in question. Not speaking 18th century Scots I assume that breastie is intended to rhyme with beastie, that is, with a long e or the equivalent, but I'd rather read it so beastie is homophonous with bestie. That mouse is my bff!

(If you scroll down the page here you'll find the same poem again with a modern English translation.)

Comments

[redbird]

I'd probably misquote it (further) as "gang aft agley."

[conuly]

? Surely that's the original or did I mistype somewhere?

[redbird]

No, my error. What I actually say is "aft gang agley" (I think I typed the correct quote because it was in front of my eyes).

[steorra]

I definitely wouldn't say "often go awry". Certainly no "often", nor in that position.

I'd more likely say "gang oft agley" or maybe "gang oft awry". (I don't think I realized it was originally "aft" rather than "oft".)

[aris_tgd]

I usually never quote the second half, so when I do I tend to use the original language because I'm being self-consciously over the top.

[loligo]

Yeah, in actual usage I'd be most likely to say "best laid plans and all that" or something similar. But if I were to bust out the entire phrase, I would go with the dialect version.

[melannen]

Yep, I'm probably more likely to say "The best laid plans of mice and men ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" or "you know what they say about best laid plans," than either of those. (If I was quizzed on the full thing I'd probably go blank and then end up unintentionally splitting the difference with "Go oft awry" or something like that. Anyway it would scan with the meter, which "often go awry" doesn't.)

(Also I would rhyme both "Beastie" and "Breastie" with "Hasty" there, probably, although the actual vowel's probably somewhere in the middle.)

[nostalgia]

It's *sort* of my dialect as I'm Scottish, but I speak Modern Scots/Scottish English not the sort Burns wrote, so I'd never say it like that unless I was quoting him.

[nostalgia]

I suppose it's like how English people quoting Shakespeare etc don't speak like that normally even though it's the same language.

[cosmolinguist]

Yes, breastie would've sounded like beastie.

[glinda]

Not quite all the time, but as I grew up in Burns Country I went to school with folks that did so it sounds a perfectly natural turn of phrase to me.

(I can read and understand Scots when it's spoken but while I do use a fair amount of Scots vocabulary in day to day speech I can't speak or write modern Scots fluently, let alone the 18th century variety.)

[polydad]

*waters the pedants to see what comes up in the morning*

[conuly]

Wet pedants, most likely.

[8hyenas]

and i also was not aware it was a poem, or that there was more to the line after mice and men...

[affreca]

I'm with you. Which makes me sad, because I like the Burns I've come across (which was mostly the Thistle and Shamrock episode of all Burns songs, followed by high school me discovering bawdy poetry in my library).

[pauamma]

Same here.

[conuly]

But if there's nothing after the line after "the best laid plans of mice and men" then it doesn't mean anything. It's like saying "When in Rome" when nobody knows what happens in Rome and why.

[fred_mouse]

I don't think that's true. I learnt it as a child with just that section, and the context it was used it was always when something unexpected had happened, causing something to fail. So, bad thing happens, head shaking and quote, as a result I know that the best laid plans of mice and men fail, and then many years later I learn the rest of it.

[conuly]

But the sentence missing a verb!

[fred_mouse]

The verb is non-verbal/implicit.

[conuly]

I don't think this is the sort of sentence that can have an unspoken verb.

[fred_mouse]

I think we are going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

[low_delta]

I generally don't say (or think) the follow-up phrase. And thinking about it, I can't remember whether I say "plans" or "schemes." Probably plans.

Funny you bring this up, since I just heard this one recited last weekend.

[conuly]

Good timing!

[peristaltor]

After a debacle in school, an instructor quoted the entire phrase, but didn't let me take notes. I stopped staying the darned thing after that, because it bugs me not to know the entire thing.

[conuly]

Well, now you can look it up?

[peristaltor]

Old habits and all that. Besides, I now have different adjustable slogans that do the same thing.

[archangelbeth]

I would probably just go, "The best laid plans..." and shrug and sigh, actually. *wry*

[conuly]

Well, yeah, but if you were to say the whole thing?

[archangelbeth]

I'm not sure I know more than "the best laid plans of mice & men [often go wrong]"!

Sent from my iPhone

[deird1]

I only know it because it’s quoted in a Georgette Heyer murder mystery. And since the character in question is making gentle fun of his Scottish colleague, it was definitely “gang aft agley”.

[conuly]

I picked up the original quotation from 1960s Batman, of all places! Surprisingly erudite show.

[konsectatrix]

I legit forgot it was from a Burns poem, as it's been so long and I tend to ditch randon info I don't use, eventually. I've rarely heard anything beyond the first part, and honestly, very little beyond "the best laid plans..." and generally not from anyone other than older folks.

I checked the first tho, because if I were to say the phrase at all, and say more than the first part, I don't typically say things in dialects that aren't part of my collection of constantly shifting random speech patterns already.

[nocowardsoul]

I'd say "oft go awry."

[magnetic_pole]

I think my first (and most memorable) encounter was "go oft awry?" M.

[buttonsbeadslace]

Same for me, that's the main standardization that I've heard. I picked "often go awry" in the poll but I'm not sure I've ever heard that specific phrasing of it before, actually.

[darkoshi]

The Scots dialect versions were completely unfamiliar to me. I can't say for certain if I've heard the 1st version much either, but if so, that would be the one I've heard.
After reading this post yesterday, today I was able to use the word "agley" in a Words with Friends game :)

[conuly]

See, it surely does pay to increase your word power :)

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

*spits on the modern English translation*

Burns is Burns for a' that, and the Scot of him is the whole point.

[conuly]

And Pushkin is Russian, but it's nice to understand what either them is actually saying! I'm not saying you should memorize the translation, but it's a useful guide.

[fayanora]

There's more to that phrase than "The best laid plans of mice and men"?

[conuly]

Sentences have to have verbs, so... yes?

[fayanora]

Not really. "The best laid plans of mice and men" is a complete sentence. It doesn't tell us anything about those plans, but it would work as an answer to a question.

[conuly]

No, it's not. A complete sentence has a subject and a predicate. This is just the subject. It's not a sentence until it tells us what the best laid plans do. The predicate of this sentence is "gang aft agley" (or "go oft awry").

[fayanora]

I was told by my high school English teachers that "No." is a complete sentence. So I don't really understand how that's any different from what I was saying. If "no" can be a complete sentence, then why not "the best laid plans of mice and men"?

[conuly]

"No" and "Yes" and "Maybe", as answers to questions, have an implied predicate. The predicate is whatever the heck the question was, but rephrased so it's the rest of this new sentence.

"The best laid plans of mice and men" doesn't have that loophole (unless it, too, is the reply to a question). It's no more a sentence than "A pretty girl" or "The flowing heat of my space heater". You need to have both a subject AND a predicate to have a sentence. The subject tells you what the sentence is about. The predicate tells you what the subject is doing.

[conuly]

Though I should point out that when people say "no is a complete sentence" they usually don't mean that in a strictly literal, informational way. They mean "I don't need to give you an explanation or an excuse for denying your request/refusing to do something, and I want you to stop bothering me now" or, perhaps, "You don't need to tell people why you said no, you just have to say it".

You're not supposed to interpret that as language advice any more than you're supposed to believe that the brain is LITERALLY a muscle (or that your interlocutor believes it is) just because we say that in order to encourage people to think and study more.