@Hairy Scot - It is to my deep regret that I don't have a Scottish accent, or any other regional accent. RP, "Received pronunciation"as Skeeter Lewis says, is simply an accent that doesn't have any regional aspects, sometimes known as a BBC accent. It was quite normal in the area of Edinburgh I lived in,where nearly everyone was packed off to boarding school, and I only realised I "spoke funny" when I went to university.

RP is on the decline, with the rise of accents like Estuary English (Paul Merton, Jamie Oliver et al), and what is known a modified RP, where certain softer aspects of regional accents might be present in an otherwise RP accent. For example it is common on the radio to hear people form the North with a more or less RP accent, but with a northern "U" - as in oop North. And regional accents are viewed much more favourably by the BBC in news and continuity nowadays. So Radio Four (and World Service) listeners are now able to hear the dulcet tones of Kathy Clugston (Northern Ireland) and Susan Rae (Scotland), although RP is still very present (Charlotte Green and Corrie Corfield).

But RP isn't the same thing as upper-class English, sometimes called URP, i.e. the English spoken by Sloanes, Yahs (from their habit of saying, "Oh, yah"), or whatever they're called nowadays. I can assure you I don't pronounce any "r" in law either, that's a feature of Cockney and fairly extreme URP.

@Skeeter Lewis - I hadn't thought that about tour, but I think you're right. I imagine that would be a feature of upper-class English rather than standard RP. I think the poor/paw thing is rather London (both Cockney and URP). It's strange how many things Cockney and Upper-class English have in common,as in your example "gorn orf". And I think it was still fashionable in the 1920s for upper-class young men to use "ain't", à la Bertie Wooster.

How about "oo" in poor. My phonetics trainer (London) insisted it was /ɔ:/ (to sound like paw), but for us in Scotland it's /ʊə/ (like tour) (even for me with my RP). Mind you, for many Scots, food rhymes with good. Just one of the things that makes English so fascinating.

@HS - saying "an 'otel" or "an 'istoric" at least has some sort of logic to it, if being somewhat old-fashioned. But using "an" before a sounded "h" makes no sense at all; that's not what "an" is for. That was my point. If you pronounce the "h", "a historic occasion" is rather more logical than "an historic occasion".

It could be argued that Americans who pronounce herb without the "H" and stress ballet on the second syllable are actually being closer to the original French than we are. It wasn't so long ago that some British people pronounced hotel and historic without the "H" as well, for the same reason. And there are still parts of London where everything is pronounced without "H" (but for different reasons). You know what they say - variety is the spice of life. Enjoy it! You obviously enjoy American TV!

Much stranger, I think, are people who pronounce the "H" in historic (as I imagine most of us do), but say "an historic occasion" and suchlike (which I imagine most of us don't).

@Thredder - Good point. I think it's because they've added stuff like "to study" and "after applying", which weren't in the original, that makes it clumsy. If they'd kept it more like the original, I think it would have been OK.

Original - Although she was only sixteen years old, (the university accepted her application because of her outstanding grades).

D (amended) - Although she was only sixteen years old, she was accepted by the university because of her outstanding grades.

@mike storer - I agree with you, whoever would? I'd simply change to possessive "of" in these cases - "The faces of all the passers-by fell ...", "The families of both the sisters-in-law ..". Seems somewhat clearer and reads better, I think..

@Percy
I’m glad that that’s all you’re sceptical about, as I was beginning to get the impression that you were being pretty sceptical of everything I’ve put forward in this discussion. But never mind that. As you have now found it in the hallowed pages of the OED, I assume you have least tacitly accepted that the practice did exist, or apparently not. I wonder why publications like Merriam-Webster don't seem to share your scepticism.

Anyway, let’s try and dispel these remaining doubts.

Firstly, “gardyloo” was a slang word of the streets; the references in the OED are all from literature. Just because there are no earlier references in published works doesn’t necessarily tell us very much about whether certain street cries existed or not.

Secondly, language and social mores didn’t change so quickly in those days. And it seems strange that a mangled form of a French expression would suddenly appear two hundred years after the peak period of French influence. It is well documented that other French words entered Scots at that time, or they all "genteelisms" as well?

Here are a few references from Google Books. First, this is from the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquities of Scotland, published in 1862:

“… so soon as St.Giles’ clock struck ten, the windows were simultaneously opened for a general discharge, (which in 1745 must have rather alarmed Prince Charles' followers, when they had possession of the town), and the streets and closes resounded with one universal cry, Gardyloo!”

So one writer, at least, thought that it went back at least to 1745.

http://books.google.pl/books?id=y1kJAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA177

You mention the following quote from The Heart of Midlothian, by Sir Walter Scott:

“... she had made the gardyloo out of the wrang window, out of respect for twa Highlandmen that were speaking Gaelic in the close below the right ane.”.

The Heart of Midlothian was set against the backdrop of the Porteous riots of 1736, so Scott must have thought it was a realistic bet to place it that early.

http://books.google.pl/books?id=1OgZAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA198

This is from the Atlantic Monthly of 1849:

“French allies brought some words into Scotland that have rooted themselves, like the gardyloo.“

The Auld Alliance came to an end in 1560 with the Treaty of Berwick, and there wouldn't have been any French allies in Scotland after that time, so this writer is putting the use of the word gardyloo before 1560.

http://books.google.pl/books?id=QqxIAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA644

And then there’s this from George Robert Glieg’s The Life of Sir Thomas Munro, 1849. Glieg is quoting from a letter from Munro to his sister, where for some strange reason he thinks newborn babies will be thrown away:

“In towns where there is no river at hand, Edinburgh for instance, the cry of Gardyloo will probably be followed by a babe, instead of the accompaniment which Queen Mary introduced from France.”

Queen Mary could refer to Mary Queen of Scots, but is more likely to refer to Mary of Guise, who married James V in 1538, and was Regent of Scotland from 1554 until her death in 1560.

http://books.google.pl/books?id=c3IBAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA84

“During her regency (1554–60), Frenchmen were put in charge of the treasury, the Great Seal, and the French ambassador sometimes attended the Privy Council.” (Wikipedia)

And finally something from a modern history book, The Isles: A History, by Norman Davies (1999). He’s talking about James VI, later to become James I of England:

“James’s French connections were strong and intimate. His mother had been Queen of France, and the Scottish court was still under the influence of the Auld Alliance. James spoke French fluently, as many of his courtiers did.”

These of course prove nothing, but at least show that it was not uncommon in the middle of the nineteenth century to think that gardyloo had come into Scottish use with the arrival of Mary and her French followers. And that the strength of the French influence at the time is recognised just as much by modern historians.

I don't have any hard-core linguistics books, but a couple of more general ones - David Crystal - The Stories of English, and Steven Pinker - The Language Instinct.

Since taking part in this forum, I've bought myself a couple of usage guides - the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage, which is wonderful (and the whole thing is in Google Boooks), and the New Fowler's by Robert Burchfield. As an English teacher for foreigners, I rely heavily on Practical English Usage, by Michael Swan.

For everything else I use the Internet. For example here's a piece on information structure:

http://languagetools.info/grammarpedia/infostructure.htm

I also follow quite a few linguistics blogs:
Language Log
Separated by a Common Language
Arrant Pedantry
Motivated Grammar
Sentence First

@Percy
1. I've conceded at least twice that gardyloo is probably not the source of "loo". But I wasn't the only one to have thought that:

http://www.google.pl/books?id=m1UKpE4YEkEC&pg=PA222

2. No, it probably wasn't used much later than the 18th century, for the reasons I gave, but it's an expression that many Edinburgh people, of which I'm one, know today; it's part of our history. And gardyloo was an anglicisation of a French expression, I don't know if the French actually used it. I would have thought alleged was rather a loaded word, especially for something that is well documented, and in several dictionaries:

http://www.onelook.com/?loc=rescb&refclue=cry&w=gardyloo
http://www.merriam-webster.com/top-ten-lists/top-10-funny-sounding-and-interesting-words/gardyloo.html#ym0oBsHy3oFDy1jD.99

"Residents often threw refuse out of windows at night onto the streets. A commentator observed that, 'One never knew the moment when the warning cry 'Gardyloo'... might ring out, following which would come in quick succession an avalanche of unmentionable filth on to the footpath – or the passer-by.'" — Jonathan Yeager, Enlightened Evangelicalism: The Life and Thought of John Erskine, 2011 - John Erskine 1721–1803 studied Edinburgh and later lived there from 1758 til his death.

http://www.google.pl/books?id=UWS07GWAPMgC&pg=PA48

"And we all know what a person might hear in the streets and wynds of Edinburgh not so long ago, warning them to dodge out of the way of something flung out of a window: gardyloo, from garde à l'eau!" - this has quite a bit about the French influence on Scotland and Scots.

http://www.scotslanguage.com/books/view/2/541

""Gardyloo!! That wis the cry ye wid hear aw ower Auld Reekie, ten o'clock at nicht an' six in the mornin. They were the twa times ye were allowed tae chuck yer refuse oot the windae doon intae the close, aw that ye couldnae burn. I" - this is admittedly modern

http://www.scotslanguage.com/blogs/all/2120

3. It seems that you're right that "dinna fash yersel" can also be heard in the North East, and as to its provenance. Northumbria and Tyneside seem to share quite a lot of words with Scots; Edinburgh was after all once part of the Kingdom of Northumbria, before Scotland or England became kingdoms themselves. But in Scotland it's certainly thought of as Scots, and I heard it quite a lot in my youth.

"Fash has altered little in meaning over the centuries and is found in northern English dialects as well as Scots.... Fash is recorded in Scottish sources from the sixteenth century onwards and is borrowed from the medieval French verb 'fascher'."

http://www.scotslanguage.com/articles/words/576
http://books.google.pl/books?id=HI6Kxa_WtvYC&pg=PA51

@Percy - I was joking about you being Northumbrian. For much of the time of the troubles between England and Scotland, the Percies were the most powerful family in Norhumbria and the bane of Scots on the other side of the border, especially their chief enemies, the Douglasses.

It wasn't simply a matter of a couple of French royals, but of a heavy influence on the government and 'society' of Scotland. The "Auld alliance" with France against the "auld enemy" England lasted for some four centuries, and the Hanovarians, as far as I'm aware, didn't bring their whole court over with them.

You are no doubt aware that Scotland has a different legal system from England, and this has some similarities to French and Continental law. We have, for example, advocates (avocat) instead of barristers.

This later influence of French in Scots is well known among language historians. Here are a few more French words adopted into Scots, after the two main periods of adoption into English (11th and 14-15th centuries):

ashet - large oval dish - assiette
bonny - pretty - bon
caddie - in golf - cadet
corbie - raven - corbeau
gigot - leg of lamb - gigot
gushet - opening - guichet
stank - drain - étang
tassie - cup - tasse

and my favourite:
dinna fash yersel - don't get your knickers in a twist - se fâcher - to get annoyed

and in stereotypical Morningside (Jean Brodie territory) you might hear - Would you like a suspicion of sugar in your tea - a direct translation of soupçon

As I said before, the provenance of gardyloo is well attested. The probable reason gardyloo was limited to Edinburgh and to a particular time, is that the Old Town in Edinburgh was one of the first European cities to have "high rise" tenement blocks, where all classes lived on top of each other, before they started to build the New Town in the second half of the eighteenth century. The word tenement, which is used much more in Scotland than in England, is itself of French origin.

But as I also said before, I no longer put forward gardyloo as the source of "loo", although googling around, I've found others who had jumped to the same conclusion.