My enthusiasm for reading all of Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable has flagged a little bit in the last few months, possibly inevitably. I’m still trying to soldier through. Right now I’m on page 490, in G, and I thought I’d combine my entries on E and F, since E was quite short on its own. Right now I’m 37.75% done with this project, with 808 pages to go. I need to work harder in June to be at 50% by the halfway mark!
Here are some interesting things I read about this time:
The Eagle and the Child: The crest of the Stanley family and the Earls of Derby. The legend is that Sir Thomas Latham, an ancestor of the house, caused his illegitimate son to be placed under the foot of a tree in which an eagle had built its nest. When out walking with his wife, they “accidentally” found the child, which he persuaded her to adopt as their heir.
Because wives are not cool with your bastards, but they are strangely accepting of random eagle-foundlings.
Give us back our eleven days: When England adopted the Gregorian calendar in place of the Julian calendar, eleven days were dropped, 2 September 1752 being followed by 14 September. Many people thought that they were being cheated out of eleven days and also eleven days’ pay. Hence the popular cry: “Give us back our eleven days!”
And you bitch about daylight saving time!
The F section has a 3 page long list summarizing famous fakes and forgeries, all of which are really interesting. The ones I like best have motivations other than making money, like:
The Ireland forgeries: William Henry Ireland (1777-1835)… came out with two “lost” Shakespeare plays: Vortigern and Rowena and Henry II… His motive appears to have been a craving to secure the admiration of his father, whose antiquarian interests amounted to an obsession.
Piltdown Skull or Piltdown man: By 1912 Charles Darwin and Sir Arthur Smith Woodward had discovered a whole skull… thought to be that of a new genus of man… The hoax, which duped most experts, was apparently planned by William Sollas, Professor of Geology at Oxford, through his dislike of Woodward
The Vermeer forgeries: Hans (Henri) van Meegeren (1889-1947) began his series of brilliant fakes of Dutch masters in 1937… His intention seems to have been to indulge his contempt and hatred of the art critics by a superlative hoax, but the financial success of his first fake led to others, mostly “Vermeers.” Discovery came only in 1945 when Allied commissioners were seeking to restore to their former owners the art treasures that had found their way to Germany during the war. Among Goering’s collection was an unknown Vermeer, The Woman taken in Adultery, and its original vendor was found to be van Meegeren. Sale of such a work of national importance involved a charge of collaboration with the enemy. To escape the heavy penalty, van Meegeren confessed to faking 14 Dutch masterpieces, 9 of which had been sold for a total of 7,167,000 gulden and to prove his story agreed to paint another “old masterpiece” in prison in the presence of experts.
There’s also an awesome 5 page list of Famous Last Words in even tinier type than the rest of the entries. Here are some favorites:
William Hazlitt (1830; English writer) “Well, I’ve had a good life.”
Heinrich Heine (1856; German poet) “God will pardon me, it i His trade.”
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1762; English poet) “It has all been very interesting.”
I was particularly pleased to read this entry about the phrase “Dinna fash yourself,” a favorite of Highland romance novelists:
Dinna fash yerself’! Don’t get excited; don’t get into a state about it. The word is not of Scottish origin, but comes from obsolete French fascher, “to anger.”
Also, a phrase you might use casually has dirty origins:
To fill someone in: To provide them with information… The expression probably derives from the earlier low sense of making a woman pregnant.
Brewer’s is judging you for your slang terms and your knocking people up.
Previously: D
Next: G