Peregrinatio...

 ... or to put it more simply 'walking'. The word peregrinatio suggested itself because one of the earlier sources for Romance philologists is an account of a pilgrimage by a 4th-century woman (a nun? I expect Wikipedia might have a view) , known familiarly as "The peregrinatio", more formally Peregrinatio ad Loca Sancta (or various other formats) and this (the word, not the text) is the root of the word "pilgrimage".

When starting this post I did some research at the Crisis at Christmas site about a "pilgrimage" that I took part in:

<autobiographical-note type="self congratulatory">
I had already worked out the date, by remembering an unsuitable "Remploy"  hold-all I was carrying on the second leg. Had I done the whole walk I'd've had some kind of back-pack (though we didn't call them that in those days, favouring the more Germanic "rucksack"'; according to Etymonline back-pack has been with us since 1904;  but it hadn't reached the Knowles family [or rather, it didn't meet the stringent Presbyterian standards of our live-in grandfather, Archie, whose word on language {though not religion}was final]). But I was playing rugby on the Saturday, so missed the Canterbury to Gravesend leg.

Anyway, one of the seams came adrift, so I wrote to the manufacturer. And at the beginning of the letter I made reference to the fact that I was a "New Adult" – as it was shortly after my 18th birthday and we'd just been given the vote.  It was not a particularly memorable letter, and I don't know what resulted – if anything. The only thing that sticks in my mind is that one phrase  – which provides an autobiographical anchor.

<meta-tangent>
About this time I wrote a guitar instrumental in the style of Gordon Giltrap, (though, anachronistically, it had more the feel of Eric Bibb's Walkin' Home  – nothing like as cool, but similarly plodding and reflective) called Walking Home from Harrow, but the event it commemorated (involving a missed bus – a regular hazard faced by someone whose school, and therefore peers, were more than an hour away from home; and I think it was not the last bus, but the penultimate bus from Stanmore to Harrow) was a small fraction of the 25-mile second leg of The Bishop's March.)|

</meta-tangent>

 </autobiographical-note>

Anyway, that walk was my first and – so far  – only sponsored effort.  That is, the walk as planned had all the paraphernalia of these things: goals and targets and teams and signup sheets and what have you; but I didn't play the game. My contribution, if any, was negative. The organizers did all the admin – even booked a hall for the walkers doing the full 2-day pilgrimage – and I didn't pay my way.

But on 27 March I'll be joining this. (And in case you don't feel like clicking on that, here's an extract:

[W]alk with us as the sun sets, this Spring, from wherever you are. You even get to choose your own route and distance.

Whether you walk in memory of a loved one, to reflect on what has been a challenging time for everyone affected by blood cancer, or because you want to light the way to a brighter future – we’d love for you to join us!

) 

My JustGiving page is here, but as I say there (or maybe not – it's probably too long, in which case you saw it here first):

...I've set the bar really low, and started the ball rolling by covering it myself. I've already met the goal, so there's no pressure. But Blood Cancer UK is a worthwhile cause, so feel free to chip in.

There's no goal either for the distance I shall  cover, though it'll probably be a bit further than my usual daily jaunt - maybe a couple of laps of Langley Mead, water table permitting. The reason (apart from basic temerity) I didn't get any signatures back in 1969 was that I felt that making a donation of <so-much-per-mile> was arbitrary and pusillanimous (not pusillanimous in itself, but inviting pusillanimity: as though a donor might say "Aha, but I've checked in the AA book [no Google Maps in those days] and it's not 25 miles; more like 24 and two-thirds. So I have to pay ...[Let's see, that's 3 times 25, minus  1]  74 75ths [more mental arithmetic in those days too]. Have you got change of a ten bob note  half-a-crown?")

<inline_ps>
This was a while (just over a year) before decimalization, so the original calculation might have gone like this: 25 miles at 4¾ 6d a mile (that's old pence, or denarii to dress them in their Sunday Best) is  118½d or 9s 10½d  12/6. (In a display of magnanimity, the donor threw in the extra three halfpence. The revised total  would be 12/4.
</inline_ps>

Hell, if a cause is worth giving to, just give. ;-)

Time I showed my nose in The Real World.

b

Update: 2021.01.31.12:45 – Added inline PS.

Update 2021.02.05.14:20 – Updated inline PS to make the calculation more realistic. In fact the 74/75 calculation would be unnecessary as well, since 6d per mile  is 2d per ⅓ mile.

Update: 2121.03.01.14:10 – JustGiving coincidence

I was hugely surprised to get an update from the JustGiving people:

Someone has made a donation to your page

Well quite surprised by the notification itself; hugely surprised by the identity of the donor I learnt when I clicked on 

 He had; and  it was someone I haven't met since 1970. And he was a fellow walker on that first "sponsored" walk.

Betwixt and between

We are all on the cusp of language change, though some of us are more aware of it than others. My parents, to take a trivial example, gave the word secretary only three syllables, with stress on the first: /'sekrǝtri:/. My children give the same word four syllables, with stress on the third  (the one that is completely agglutinated in the older pronunciation): /sekrǝ'teǝri:/.

<parenthesis type="CYA">
There are other differences too, particularly the length of the last vowel. For fluency, ease, brevity, etc etc, I've used what is called a "broad phonemic transcription" (and the days when I could define those words with academic rigour have long gone). 
</parenthesis>

Caught between these two pronunciations, I use a bit of both, trying to suit my context. My mother ^{[whom saints preserve, and they better had]} was a (trisyllabic) secretary (the real deal, with Pitman's and everything), whereas a US politician is a quadrisyllabic (or should that be tetra-?) Secretary of State.

This matter of primary stress in polysyllables has come to the fore in my mind because of the word extirpate, beloved of many a singer of Elijah. (Baal is exhorted to do it by his devotees, and whatever it is it doesn't sound very pleasant.)

About the stress, if not the vowels, dictionaries...

<descriptivist-objection>
(but what do they know; it's my language, what people do is what it is.)
</descriptivist-objection>

... seem to be pretty unanimous: stress is on the first syllable (like extricate) rather than the second (like external). I haven't trawled through all 30+ found by onelook.com  (some of which – like Oxford for Pity's sake: Dominus obscuratio mea – exclude themselves (by my lights..

<mini-rant>
When a business gets big enough it starts throwing its weight around: 'What we do at FatCat.com is so widely used it has become a standard.' Adobe did this with PDF, Microsoft with Word... For heavens sake, the rules of the translation competition I just entered specified a .docx file...And the docx so-called "standard" compounds the insult by taking one roll-your-own "standard" (.doc) and hiding its chewing-gum-and-baler-twine reality behind a real standard (xml) ... 

<inline_ps> 
(and by this I mean a protocol but that is the result of collaboration between interested parties before anything hits the market with an implementation of that protocol. 
</inline_ps>  

...by tacking an x on. But I digress.
<mini-rant>

...) by using a roll-your-own transcription system) but here are three:

• Cambridge
  
• Macmillan

• Collins

                                

But  that last screenshot (which like the others isn't live, so if you want to explore further go to the actual  page), in an attempt to exclude extraneous stuff, truncates the word frequency blobs (there are five): so it's not 'quite frequent' but 'almost unheard of':

In the 18th century, it was quite common; when Elijah first appeared in the mid-19th century the word was a shadow of its former self, in the 20th century it hit rock bottom, and in the 21st I'd guess it was only ever heard in performances of Elijah.

Which is to say that it might as well be pronounced  any way that suits the music. And Mendelssohn requires stress on the second syllable; so that's what it gets. 

But our present Elijah is getting the Zoom treatment. Here's a review from happier times of our last rendition.

b

Update: 2021.03.20.12:40 – Added (inline_ps>

The PS that "jes' grew"

PS 

Another of the reasons for my absence of late has been my entry to the John Dryden Translation Competition 2020 - 2021 , which is nearly done. I'd give you  a taste here, but rules is rules and

Entries must be the original work of the translator and must not, as a whole or in part, have been previously published or accepted for publication, including web or self-publication...

So I'll content myself with recounting a near miss...

<tangent>
Surely the expression should be "near hit". A miss is as good as a mile, but what I nearly did was hit. Still, ours not to reason why. If I followed every such quandary to its logical conclusion I'd he here all d... Is that the time?
</tangent>

...Pride goeth before a ... <something or other, not "fall", I'll have to look it up >.

In the piece I'm translating, the leading character's maiden aunt (God-fearing, pious, devout, living in  a house that's more like a chapel than a home) is praying a terço, whatever that is. Dictionaries were no help. Collins, unhelpfully, said :

This was only very slightly better than Google Translate's third (I say "slightly better" because Collins at least rules out the ordinal third.)

I turned to what I should have tried  first – a monolingual dictionary. And among the unhelpful third-related definitions it gave one religious meaning, tierce (one of the offices). Aha, I thought, that's what she was doing – saying tierce.

Smugly I looked in a published translation, to see what they'd made of it: "rosary". Huh, I thought, one up to me.

But a little voice in my head kept saying "But  tierce is a morning office" and morning didn't fit the context (a visit paid after a character had been to work). I hung, Ptolemaically, onto my wrong idea: the character visiting after work was so work-shy (this fitted the background) that he knocked off in mid-morning.

But luckily my "One Holy Catholic and Apostolic" church background rang a warning bell. Why had the published translator plucked "rosary" out of the air? The answer comes from the way a rosary works.. Apart from the few introductory beads, the circle is made up of five groups of ten beads.  Each bead represents a prayer.

But the sayer of the rosary isn't just mouthing (or minding) the words. They are meditating on one of three groups of five Mysteries: the Joyful Mysteries, like "The Finding in the Temple"...

<background>
The occasion when Jesus was being bar-mitzvah'd (or whatever they did in those days  –  anyway he was only 12, according to Luke), his parents left Jerusalem where they'd been celebrating the Passover, Jesus hung about talking High-minded stuff with the elders (as is the wont of 12-year-olds [the getting lost bit, not the high-minded discussion}) and when he was found he came out with a put-down that seemed to me, when I first heard the story, incredibly priggish:

Did you not know that I must be about my father's business?    

(That's the Douay version  – the one that springs most readily to the mind of the cradle-Catholic.)

If I'd given my mother that lip when I was 12 I would have expected short shrift (or at least a Hard Stare).  In his defence, the verb (in Jerome's Latin) was in the plural (nesciebatis), so he was being lippy but not necessarily misogynistic; he was replying to Mary though, in the manner typical of stepsons throughout the ages: 'That schmuck isn't my real father.' 

<reflection>

Still, it's not fair to hold it against him; the words were probably dreamed up by some unnamed patriarch.  That's the thing about the Bible, it's full of incredible misogyny, racism, manifest bias, and what-have-you, but there's always a justification in the small print. 
</reflection> 

</background>

 ... the Sorrowful Mysteries (like 'The Crucifixion') , and The Glorious Mysteries (like 'The Resurrection'). There are 5 of each, one for each of the groups of ten beads (which I used to be able to list,  but nearly got egg on my fave by conflating 'The Presentation in the Temple' with 'The Finding in the Temple...

<parenthesis>

(separated by twelve years,  both  Joyful Mysteries though. 'The Presentation in the Temple' is notable for being the context of the Nunc Dimittis text. Simeon, who the baby was presented to, had a deal with Yer Man, not to die until he'd held the Messiah in his arms. 'Lord, now lettest thou  thy  servant  depart in peace according to they word' was a kosher way of saying 'OK, you've kept your word, I'm for the bone-yard.'
</parenthesis>

...; and there are three laps in a full rosary.. So that's what a terço is ⅓ of a full rosary.

AOB

And it's destruction that Pride goes before:

Pride [goeth] before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. 

That's all for now; competition admin to do.

b

Update 2021.01.25.12:55 – Added PPS

PPS

The translation has been submitted now. Onwards [and I do mean onwards, Microsoft] and upwards. No rest for the ... <not that bad, really; we're none of us human>. Per ardua ad nauseam.

The white heat of technology

Beau Brummel is widely reported as having said he was a late riser. The most banal expression of this is on a site devoted to Brummel quotations:

15: Brummell on mornings

Brummell used to say that ‘whether it was summer or winter, he always liked to have the morning well-aired before he got up.’ 

 

Source

You may share my doubts about the authoritative credentials of a site whose editor doesn't understand the conventions relating to indirect speech, but I've heard several variants of this, some too elegant to have been produced impromptu, though he no doubt had a lot of practice at extemporizing on this subject, along the lines of

 "I like my mornings as I like my shirts: well-aired before I appear in them."

Anyway, I feel that now the millennium ...

<parenthesis>

(which I vainly insist on spelling  with two ns, although Google finds nearly 96,000,000 cases of the single-n'd version [which I always think should be an addition to the periodic table, being an element with the atomic number 1000]. 96,000,000 is a pretty spirited showing against the correct ...

<meta-parenthesis> 
(ducking and covering here, as usual. Eppur si scrive cosí, as Galileo might have put it: "All the same, that's how it's spelt... 

<note_to_spellchecker> 
And if you think that's some kind of cereal, that's your problem. 
</note_to_spellchecker>

...)
</meta-parenthesis>

 ...version, which gets just under 180,000,000; a further example of what I have previously noted as the linguistic version of Gresham's Law: 

BAD LANGUAGE DRIVES OUT GOOD

).
</parenthesis>

...has reached its 21st year, it's well enough aired for me to get a smart phone 

And this isn't the only bit of new tech that I've acquired recently, which explains my silence since well before Christmas – jolly time-consuming, these labour-saving devices....

So there I was, Bluetooth Headphones paired with my phone, listening to an episode of Private Passions that I'd recommended to my guitar teacher at the beginning of December  (it was broadcast on the feast of Santa Claus, or St Nicholas, as we used to say in The One True Church; and I finally got around to catching up (a sadly eviscerated version: for rights reasons the music was sorely truncated) on 6 January. So it was mostly chat. Paco Peña, the guest, started by talking about the atmosphere in Spain immediately after Franco had come to power, which recalled to me an episode I recounted here a few years ago (the account, not the event):

When I was first in a Spanish train [2021 addition: in March 1971] I misread a sign about giving up your seat to a war-hero. I was new to Spanish and to Spain at the time, and had just started stumbling my way through a selected poems edition of Lorca, with the aid of a parallel translation. 

People who didn't offer their seat would be multados [2021 addition: "fined"] según la ley.... But with my head filled with Lorca's evocations of the dastardly, unruly, inhuman...(etc etc) Guardia Civil as Franco came to power, I was quite ready to believe that offenders, with legal sanction, could be mutilated.

His final selection was of his 'dear friend of several decades' John Williams, and if what John Williams said was true (and there's no reason to believe otherwise) in his introduction to an encore at a guitar concert I went to in the summer of 1968 at the Guildford Festival...

<autobiographical_note>
I know it was summer. because my big sister (whose floor I slept on) was cramming for end-of-term exams, and any time after 1968 I wouldn't have had to borrow her twin brother(Requiescant ambi in pace)'s sixth form scarf (as  part of my disguise as a student on the shuttle service from Battersea Technical College to Surrey University).
</autobiographical_note>

... I witnessed the beginning of that friendship.  I say more about that concert here.

My pin-ball mind has noticed other things to comment on, but I really must do something. Yesterday was my most ZOOMful day ever – 5 sessions in one day, and a complete wash-out in the Getting-stuff-done Stakes. White heat my foot. When do the children play?

b