I just wanted to second what WotNot said. If sentence construction in 19th-century English literature sounds Latinate, it’s probably because most men who completed a secondary education, and virtually all who had a college education, studied Latin. Latin verse and prose were held up as models.
Sairly is “surely” said with a Yorkshire/Scottish accent. 
I’d say he’s saying, “Well, the clock says it’s lunch time and I need to eat.” Unspoken is the thought that he wouldn’t know it was lunch time without a clock, because he didn’t feel hungry. I think it’s a rougish compliment to the lady. “Your company is so wondrous you make me forget food exists.” That fits the Victorian way. You have to read between the lines a lot, and look at what hasn’t quite been said.
Amending. (I did actually realize this, just spazzed out and posted incorrectly.) I remember reading a translation of “Tam O’ Shanter” in which sair is “sore”. My re-phrasing still fits, he didn’t say he felt hungry, and implied the only way he knew it was past his meal time was by the clock.
One of of the things that continued to fascinate me throughout the book was Stoker’s regular use of the present subjunctive, a mood which, though paralleled in Latin, is all English. Today its use has almost entirely disappeared, if a few idioms, rarities, and pedants be excepted .
You can’t really call this a Zombie Thread – it’s about Dracula, so it has to be a Vampire thread – it’s Undead!
Actually, Wolf’s The Essential Dracula doesn’t add much that wasn’t in The Annotated Dracula, and it doesn’t have a lot of reproductions that the earlier book had. But since thuis thread appeared Thre New Annotated Dracula by Leslie Klinger has come out, and it’s much longer than either of Wolf’s volumes (and corrects some of his errors). My copy’s at home, but I think it pretty completely annotates that speech from the OP.
I wonder if “bohghost” might also be a corruption of “bog ghost”, presumably meaning a will-o’-the-wisp.
And a barghest is what the Hound of the Baskervilles was purported to be.
With regards to “railway touters”, I thought he meant people who organize railway excursions for people from the city (Thomas Cook got his start doing this, for instance). So in this case, the guy is saying that tour promoters try to entice clients to purchase vacation packages by telling them ghost stories and local legends.
I figured boh-ghost just meant “ghost that says ‘boh’=‘boo’”. And any D&D player worth his salt has heard of a bar-guest (a.k.a. barghest). 
As someone who lived in Yorkshire aged 2-9 years (and visited Whitby during that period), I think “sairly” is “sorely” and not “surely”. OED gives “sairly” as a variant spelling of “sorely”, not of “surely”. In the context it means “very” – the word “sore” or “sorely” with this meaning is cognate with the German “sehr”, but has been displaced in standard modern English by the word derived from Anglo-Norman French “very”.
A few years back I was thinking that most short and common words in German have English cognates, and was trying to think of what the cognate for “sehr” would be. After a bit, I thought of “sore” as used in the King James version of the Christmas story - “then an angel of the Lord appeared and they were sore afraid.”
I see Dracula has risen from the grave. Thanks to all for your thoughts.
Regards,
Shodan
He does tend to do that.
I wonder if there’s a movie with that title? Maybe by Hammer Films?
I wouldn’t fash masel’ about them, miss. Them things be all wore out. Mind, I don’t say that they never was, but I do say that they wasn’t in my time. They be all very well for comers and trippers, an’ the like, but not for a nice young lady like you. Them feet-folks from York and Leeds that be always eatin’cured herrin’s and drinkin’ tea an’ lookin’ out to buy cheap jet would creed aught. I wonder masel’ who’d be bothered tellin’ lies to them, even the newspapers, which is full of fool-talk."
I wouldn’t fuss [bother] myself about them, miss. Those things are all worn out.
Eck. I started, but didn’t realise there was so much of it. No time! It’s easier if you say it aloud in a Scottish accent a few times.
I just dug out my copy of Klinger’s New Annotated Draclua and, indeed, it gives the original speech, a “ttanslation”, and explanations of some of the words on pp. 124-5. The translation reads:
If you really want the ultimate annotated Dracula, apparently the book to go to is Clive Leatherdale’s immense 1998 Bram Soker’s Dracula Unearthed
If you want an exercise in translating dialect, have a look at Robert Louis Stevenson’s Thrawn Janet:
For a very different impenetrable dialect, try Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus stories:
Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak?
Or Scottish, whatever.
As I have mentioned many times on the board, the English invented a language they cannot speak.
I checked my copies of Leonard Wold’s The Annotated Dracula (1973, 1976) and The Essential Dracula (1993). Both contain the same “translation” of the speech, which is more literal than Klinger’s:
Bram Stoker learnt phrases such as Boh-Ghost/ bar-guest at Whitby Museum, Subscription Library and Philosophical Society which, along with stuffed curiosities kept a copy of F K Robinson’s glossary of local words. Boh ghost/ bar guest are included in this book the definition for both being “terrifying apparitions taking shape human or animal”.
Examples, please? :dubious:
(FWIW, I currently work in publishing and am a certified EFL teacher.)
Don’t think you’re going to get that cite, mate. Asashouryuu was a drive-by revivicator from the previous rising of this particular undead in 2012. I doubt they’ll come back over two years later just to defend their offhanded pedantry.
On the other hand, good to see this thread again.
You mean examples from the novel, or of modern sayings that use the mood in question? The last sentence you quoted is an example of the mood itself, if I’m not mistaken.