The pronunciation of Burns' "I wad gie a' Knockhaspie's land"

I wad gie a' Knockhaspie's land
(Highland Harry Back Again)

What is the best way to phoneticize this sentence?

/aɪ ˈwɑ(ː ?)d ɡi(ː ?) ??? lɑn/

Solution 1:

As with most other languages, there are many dialects of Scots and Burns was using his own literary version for an English-speaking audience, so it is difficult to be precise. He was making an attempt at representing the sound phonetically, so read it as written as much as you can. But here are some comments:

Firstly, the poem is mostly in Iambic Tetrameter (da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM) so that tells us where the stress is.

I wad gie a' Knockhaspie's land

/ə 'wɤd giː 'ɒː nɔk'hæspɪz 'lɑn/

I would give all Knockhaspie's land

It follows that the first word, I is unstressed. Its pronunciation depends on whether it is stressed, although it is usually spelt A. Unstressed it is pronounced /ə/.

Knockhaspie may or may not be a real name but it is a regularly formed anglicized Gaelic name. Knock means hill and so is unstressed. Haspie could be a Gaelic personal name beginning with s which would change to h in the genitive and the stress would be on the first syllable of haspie, which fits the metre. So Knockhaspie would be Cnoc Sheasbaidh /knɔʰk ˈhæspɪ/ which would mean "Saspadh's Hill" /ˈsæspəɣ/. Knock is unambiguous, but I am only speculating about the second element.