[General] at rack and manger

Dear teachers,

Would you share with me your opinion about my interpretation of the expression in bold in the following sentence?

He maintained poor Davie at hack and manger most feck of his life.

at rack and manger = at hack and manger = in abundance, in the lap of luxury

V.

What is the source of this odd sentence?

I've never heard of hack/rack and manger or feck.

Rover

Rover_KE said:

I've never heard of hack/rack and manger or feck.

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I'd never heard of them either, and had know idea what they meant, but hack and manger is in the OED. The last citation is for 1835.

I think that feck may have crept in to that sentence when nobody was looking.

the most feck = the greater or larger part

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

http://www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/The%20most%20feck

The sentence in question is from "Waverly " by your fellow-countryman W. Scott.

V.

All the OED citations give only 'the feck' or 'a feck', but then Sir Walter did have an odd way with words at times.

Incidentally, he is not a countryman of mine - he was a Scot as well as a Scott.

Not a teacher

To live at rack and manger = live on the best at another's expense

The most feck = the greater part

He kept poor Davie living on the best at another's expense most of his life.

Incidentally: I lived for a while in Burridge and somewhere in the zone there is a pub called "Rack and Manger"

M.

Scott's works are full of regionaliisms, partly because he was a Scot and partly for characterizaion. When I studied Redgauntlet at school there were pages that were more footnote than text. ;-)

b

BobK said:

Scott's works are full of regionalisms, partly because he was a Scot and partly for characterization. When I studied Redgauntlet at school there were pages that were more footnote than text. ;-)

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From what I remember of some of Scott's novels, the footnotes were probably more gripping than the text.