Scottish Engines
Donald and Douglas are unusual among characters in the Railway Series, in that they speak in a strong Scots dialect. This can be difficult to understand at times (and indeed, the Rev. W. Awdry received a number of letters complaining of this very problem). This is exemplified in their excuse for not carrying numbers: "They maun hae slyly slippit aff, sir!" (They must have slyly slipped off, sir).
Their accent has been identified by a number of readers as originating in Glasgow, although the writer Martin Clutterbuck notes a strong Robert Burns influence.
The engines' Scottish heritage has been referenced in a number of stories. In the book Stepney the "Bluebell" Engine, Douglas mentions the song 'The Bluebells of Scotland'. While in Jock the New Engine, Douglas regards the unnamed engine's unusual colour (undercoat): "Some o' the engines up in the Highlands were yon colour. Jocks, we used to call them." He goes on to suggest that "Jock" might be a good choice, and so the title character gets his typically Scottish name, and is painted in the distinctive pale green livery of the Highland Railway.
In The Railway Series and in My Thomas Story Library, Donald and Douglas were painted NWR blue when Sir Topham Hatt (the Fat Controller) decided to keep them; however, in the television series they remained black.
Read more about this topic: Donald And Douglas
Famous quotes containing the words scottish and/or engines:
“We’ll never know the worth of water till the well go dry.”
—18th-century Scottish proverb, collected in James Kelly, Complete Collection of Scottish Proverbs, no. 351 (1721)
“America is like one of those old-fashioned six-cylinder truck engines that can be missing two sparkplugs and have a broken flywheel and have a crankshaft that’s 5000 millimeters off fitting properly, and two bad ball-bearings, and still runs. We’re in that kind of situation. We can have substantial parts of the population committing suicide, and still run and look fairly good.”
—Thomas McGuane (b. 1939)