Dear List: My father was born in Peterhead, Scotland, renowned at the time
as a fishing port (aside from the prison!). In my childhood, when we
encountered a car with only one headlight working, he would call it a
"one-lunger". I always thought he was referring directly to our lungs.
Only in the last couple of years, have I learned that this was a familiar
term for a fishing boat with its engine working only on one of its two
cylinders, a throw-back to his childhood, since he left Scotland at age
sixteen.
I find these expressions fascinating. Like "Ulysses" we are, indeed, "a
part of all that we have met."
Ian A. Sinclair
Ont.Can.
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