Literary Blunders | Page 5

of one of Scott's novels, but here
there is the further amusing circumstance that the etymology of the
false word was settled to the satisfaction of some of the readers. In the
majority of editions of The Monastery, chapter x., we read: ``Hardened
wretch (said Father Eustace), art thou but this instant delivered from
death, and dost thou so soon morse thoughts of slaughter?'' This word is
nothing but a misprint of nurse; but in Notes and Queries two
independent correspondents accounted for the word morse
etymologically. One explained it as ``to prime,'' as when one primes a
musket, from O. Fr. amorce, powder for the touchhole (Cotgrave), and
the other by ``to bite'' (Lat. mordere), hence ``to indulge in biting,
stinging or gnawing thoughts of slaughter.'' The latter writes: ``That the
word as a misprint should have been printed and read by millions for
fifty years without being challenged and altered exceeds the bounds of
probability.'' Yet when the original MS. of Sir Walter Scott was
consulted, it was found that the word was there plainly written nurse.
The Saxon letter for th () has long

been a sore puzzle to the
uninitiated, and it came to be represented by the letter y. Most of those
who think they are writing in a specially archaic manner when they
spell ``ye'' for ``the'' are ignorant of this, and pronounce the article as if
it were the pronoun. Dr. Skeat quotes a curious instance of the
misreading of the thorn () as p, by which a strange ghost word is
evolved. Whitaker, in his edition of Piers Plowman, reads that Christ
``polede for man,'' which should be tholede, from tholien, to suffer, as
there is no such verb as polien.
Dr. J. A. H. Murray, the learned editor of the Philological Society's
_New English Dictionary_, quotes two amusing instances of ghost
words in a communication to Notes and Queries (7th S., vii. 305). He
says: ``Possessors of Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary will do well to
strike out the fictitious entry cietezour, cited from Bellenden's
Chronicle in the plural cietezouris, which is merely a misreading of
cietezanis (i.e. with Scottish z = = y), cieteyanis or citeyanis,
Bellenden's regular word for citizens. One regrets to see this absurd

7>mistake copied from Jamieson (unfortunately without
acknowledgment) by the compilers of Cassell's Encyclopdic

Dictionary.''
``Some editions of Drayton's _Barons Wars_, Bk. VI., st. xxxvii.,
read--
`` `And ciffy Cynthus with a thousand birds,'
which nonsense is solemnly reproduced in Campbell's Specimens of the
British Poets, iii. 16. It may save some readers a needless reference to
the dictionary to remember that it is a misprint for cliffy, a favourite
word of Drayton's.''
2. In contrast to supposed words that never did exist, are real words that
exist through a mistake, such as apron and adder, where the n, which
really belongs to the word itself, has been supposed, mistakenly, to
belong to the article; thus apron should be napron (Fr. naperon), and
adder should be nadder (A.-S. nddre). An amusing confusion has
arisen in respect to the Ridings of Yorkshire, of which there are three.
The word should be triding, but the t has got lost in the adjective, as
West Triding became West Riding. The origin of

the word has
thus been quite lost sight of, and at the first organisation of the
Province of Upper Canada, in 1798, the county of Lincoln was divided
into four ridings and the county of York into two. York was afterwards
supplied with four.
Sir Henry Bennet, in the reign of Charles II., took his title of Earl of
Arlington owing to a blunder. The proper name of the village in
Middlesex is Harlington.
A curious misunderstanding in the Marriage Service has given us two
words instead of one. We now vow to remain united till death us do
part, but the original declaration, as given in the first Prayer Book of
Edward VI., was: ``I, N., take thee N., to my wedded wife, to have and
to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for
poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us
depart [or separate].''
It is not worth while here to register the many words which have taken

their present spelling through a mistaken view of their etymology. They
are too numerous, and the consideration of them would open up a

9>question quite distinct from the one now under consideration.
3. Absurd etymology was once the rule, because guessing without any
knowledge of the historical