BLUNDERLAND.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9918, 5 August 1910, Page 2

BLUNDERLAND.

AN INTERESTING RAMBLE.

Lecturing on "Everyday Errors" in Melbourne recently, Dr Leeper related some of the blunders that experts have -made, and corrected many popular misquotations and fallacies. Perhaps, said Dr Leeper, after a brief introduction, no English historian has ever enjoyed, in his own day such a reputation for accuracy as Professor Freeman. He was never weary of insisting upon minute exactitude as the prime essential of a competent historian. Let us see how far he lias fulfilled this condition himself. In his well-known history of tho Norman Conquest, there is nothing upon which lie bestowed so much pains us the Battle of Hastings. He is believed to have had an unrivalled knowledge of the subject. He had visited the battlefield, he tells us, no fewer than, five times, accompanied by the best experts,, civil and military, that could bo found. He had studied every authority and read all that had been written till he was supposed to have exhausted every source of information. He strove so hard after porfect exactness in every detail that he even attempted to change the name of the battle, and succeeded in carrying with him a whole tribe of aspirants to minute accuracy, who, in thoir blind belief of Freeman, essayed to erase from English history one of its most familiar names, the Battle of. Hastings," and to substitute the unknown name'of "Senlac." As to this, Freeman writes:—" I restore its true ancient name of Senlac." What he calls tho "true ancient name," we find was not given to it by any contemporary. It is not aii English name at all, but a Norman one, and is never heard of till tho following century, when it occurs once in tho pages of a blundering chronicler. Yet more astonishing are the serious blunders in.Mr Freeman's description of the battle itself. Of these it is not too much to say that they completely misrepresent the whole situation. Freeman describes Harold as having turned the battle as far as possible into tho likeness of a siego by bujldihg a triple palisade of solid timber around his soldiers. But tho physical features of the ground show plainly the impossibility of this. The fortress that Harold constructed was, as one of MiFreeman's critics puts it, not of timber, but of English flesh and blood. It was behind no rampart but their own stout shields that the soldiers of England awaited tho charge of the Norman knights. The fact is that Mr Freeman, .Tad to say, simply mistranslated his Latin and his French authorities.

\ few _ other widely prevalent historical mistakes may he of interest. A very fertile source of historical misconception is the natural j iking that all human be' .gs havo for a good story. Of course .•necdotes are especially likely! to gather round the greatest names in history. And so by far the larger number of the historical anecdotes that we are so fond of relating and that abound in nearly all our text-books are wholly fictitious. Mr Froud© lays it down as a 'maxim for the historian that "Prudence instructed by experience enters a general caution against all anecdotes that arc particularly striking." Thua'we have to part with many of the most picturesque pages in history; with tales such as that of Alfred visiting the Danish camp in the disguise «f a harper, or the story of how King Canute's flattering courtiers told him to sit by the seashore and bid the inflowing tide-refrain from wotting his feet, anl how, when the_ waves rose over the Jpofc on which his chair was placed, he refused to wear his crown again, because that honour belonged to God alcne, the true Ruler of the World. The pathetic tale how the ■great, conqueror Belisarius was deprived of his eyes, placed in the street with a plate on his knees as a beggar, and in this plight displayed to the public, was long believed, and has been made the subject of a well-known picture, "Date Obolum Belisario''; but it is all now known to be the merest legend. The almost universally-accepted account of the patriotic burning of Moscow by the Russian Governor to j>rcvent its falling into the hands of the French is a story in favour of which there is no trustworthy evidence forthcoming.

_ There is scarcely any fact in English history that is more deeply impressed upon the popular mind than the belief thot King Alfred was the founder of the University of Oxford and one of its colleges, yet it is certain, not only that this is untrue, but that, in the words of a famous English historian, it is " a deliberate and interested falsehood." The whole story is duo to an early forgery in a. document made by an Oxford scholar to counteract an equally dishonest attempt made to claim higher antiquity for the University of Cambridge. The incident has elicited the cynical remark that the earliest form of the Oxford and Cambridge interunivorßity sports would seem to haTe been a competition in lying: • By the way, it may be a relief to some to know that very recent research by one of the .greatest living AngloSaxon scholars has gone far to prove that there is a considerable element of truth in the famous story of the cakes. Professor Skeat has satisfied himself that there is contemporary evidence for the tale, and, I may add, the oldest form in which it appears removes from Alfred's reputation any reflection upon fidelity to his trust, even in so small a' matter as watching the cakes. Orio is right to be jealous for the reputation of our great hero-king. Alfred, one of the noblest figures in all history. It seems almost cruel to destroy that delightful story of Nelson putting the telescope to his blind eye at the battle of Copenhagen and declaring that he could not seo Sir Hyde Parker's signal to stop lighting. Sir John Laughton, the greatest living authority on naval biography, tells us that it is an established fact that Parker sent Cantain Otwav with a message that, the signal was to bo understood as permissive, and was made in that way in order that the whole responsibility might rest with Parker if Nelson thought tit to stop fighting, but if he thought well to continue he was at liberty to do so. In" fact, Professor Laughton tells us that the. little pantomime was only a joke at the expense of an officer who was standing by, and who did not know the nature of the-message that Ohvay had brought. How many phrases we hear every day, not exactly misquoted, but misapplied and misunderstood. "'Cui bono," is one of the worst of these offenders. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred itis used as if it meant " What is the good of it?" Even Edmund Brake uses it in this sense. Its only proper meaning is, "Who is the, party interested?" In Cicero's time it was famous as a formula in crimiual. procedure for discovering who was the guilty party. The phrase " The psychological moment." now nonsensically used for tho •'•' nick of time," without reference to anything psychological or mental, is a translation of the French "moment psychologique," an expression which caino into use in Paris during the siege. It arose from a mistranslation of u phrase employed _ by _ a German newspaper, which maintained that the tiesired psychological "momentum" had to be thought of, above, all things, in connection with the proposed bombardment; which ought not to be begun until the time when, the imagination of the besieged people would j be. most easily impressed, owing to famine and internal dissonsio-ns. The German phrase had no reference whatever to the word " moment " used, of time,. Taken incorrectly, however, in .this sense by the Parisians, it quicklv became a jocular phrase among them, and so has passed into English with the same absurd meaning as it has in French. Many of the most familiar quotations from Shakespeare are constantly used in a sense that would have made Shakespeare himself stare and gasp. Tho lino from "Hamlet," '•"More honoured in the breach ishi-.ii in

the observance," i"s almost ahvaysjnisapplied< The true meaning of it is tutu- it is a custom more honourable to disregard than to observe, but in popular parlance- it is used of some custom that is commonly violated. " One touch I of Nature makes the whole world kin." I Tho meaning of this is constantly perverted. Instead of being a touching exposition or sentimental brotherhood, it is really one of the most cynical utterances to be found in Shakespeare. It refers to that one touch of humanity's common failing, tho uneasy hankering arter novelty. Perhaps there is no subject on which the popular mind is so profoundly unscientific as etymology. Tho origin, and growth of language are as much matters of science as chemiftry or botany, and yet self-respecting men and women will indulge themselves in making the most haphazard, and ludicrous guess is at the origin of words, as if there were no laws or language, and as if tho historical method was not as necessary in the caso of words as in the case of institutions. Popular etymology, which is always false etymology, is the name given to the process by which words little known to the populace, such as foreign, technical and other words of which they do not know tho origin, aro turned into something which conveys to their minds some' sort of meaning, even if it be quite inappropriate to the object to which they apply it. For example, the Jerusalem artichoke" has nothing whatever to do with Jerusalem. It is a kind of sunflower, and the name was originally " girasole " an Italian word, which• means "the flower which turns with the sun." But. Jerusalem was a word more familiar than "girasole" to the ordinary people, and soon took its place. " Nightmare " has nothing to do with a female horse, but is from a Teutonic word meaning "incubus." It was in obedience to the same instinct that our English sailors turned the.name of the ship Bellerophon into " Billy-ruffian," and that our English soldiers turned Surajah 'Dowlah, the name of the Indian ruler, into the"more familiar form, " Sir Roger Dowler." Ibrahim Pacha, during his visit to England, Was known to the London mob as " Abraham Parker." Miss Charlotte Yonge tells how she set up a soup kitchen for the Loudon poor, where tho best Australian meat was sold, but it soon began to be spoken of as " Horsetralian " meat. The suggestion was fatal, and the people before long deserted the soup kitchen. One fate seems to await all foreign and difficult words. The uneducated classes will insist on making the words easy and intelligible. It was a member of a learned profession whom I actually heard the other day speaking of "asphalto," an excellent instance of folk-etymology.

Let us consider, now, one or two misunderstood maxims that one hears constantly used to support some absurd view. One of those oftenest on the lips of men is the saying, " The exception proves the rule." As ordinarily used, this is the sheerest nonsense. How can an exception prove a rule? Why, the very contrary is the case. An exception disproves a rule. The truth is that the saying, "The exception proves the rule," " exceptio probat regulam," is not a philosophical maxim at all, but a legal one, which ought never to have been treated as a rule of philosophy. It means that if some particular act bo forbidden in circumstances expressly stated, then such act is lawful in all other circumstances. For example, we have an Act of Parliament which forbids the opening of publicliouses on Sunday. It is a fair inference from that Act that publicliouses may he opened on any other day. Tins is a perfect example of the application of the maxim, " The exception proves the rule." Any other use of it is literally nonsensical. Again, how. often is the meaning of that beautiful proverb, ' " Charity begins at homo," perverted! As ordinarily used, it is taken to be a 1 sort of defence of selfishness, an excuse for refusing to help some deserving person or cauee. But what it really means is that one may well distrust the motives of the man who poses in public as a philanthropist, yet shows little or nothing of kindliness in the home circle, where the real man-most surely reveals himself. It is, in fact ; a protest against that character satirised in the German proverb, " Strasse-Engel, Haus-Teufel" (" Angel abroad, devil at home ").