Giveaway

In the spirit of the season I'm offering a free copy of any one of my books to he or she who gives me the best reason (in my opinion) why they should be the recipient of the book of their choice. The offer remains open until the next post, probably at the start of 2012.

Choose from:
Derbyshire Place Names
Dorset Place Names
Gloucestershire Place Names
Hampshire Place Names
Haunted Worcestershire
Leicestershire and Rutland Place Names
Ley Lines Across the Midlands
Nottinghamshire Place Names
Oxfordshire Place Names
Paranormal Cotswolds
Paranormal Staffordshire
The Salt Routes
Shropshire Place Names
Somerset Place Names
South Devon Place Names
South Staffordshire Street Names

An Advent Calendar of the Written Word (18th to 24th)

The final week featuring a note for each day of advent. No chocolates or pictures in this calendar but perhaps something of interest to the wordsmith.

18th - it seems many studies have been conducted into spelling errors. While it impossible to believe any examination can have taken a large enough sample in order to make the study particularly accurate, it seems the 18th most common wrongly spelled word is ASSOCIATION. Amazingly it was not the 's' or the 'c' which proved the stumbling blocks, the most common wrong spelling was "assocation".

19th - it probably won't come as a surprise to discover there are no 19-letter English words beginning with J, K, V, X, Y, or Z. However the most exhaustive of searches also drew a blank for 19-letter words beginning with W.

20th - to list the most common languages we can only use those spoken as a first language. Mandarin comes first, followed by Spanish and English. Twentieth on this list is either Korean or Tamil, both had 66 million speakers at the last respective census but those were taken some years apart.

21st - the 21st novel written by Terry Pratchett was Jingo, one of his Discworld series.

22nd - based on the list of best-selling magazines in the UK during the first half of 2011, 22nd on the list (with 413,311 copies) is Hello! magazine.

23rd - as it's Christmas a look at the all-time best-selling books for children reveals the paperback at number 23 is Judy Blume's Superfudge; while the classic The Tale of Benjamin Bunny by Beatrix Potter is ranked 23rd.

24th - in the Old Testament the 24th word is 'the'; the New Testament 'and'; in the Quran 'is', the Torah 'upon', and in the Book of Mormon 'many'.

An Advent Calendar of the Written Word (11th to 17th)

The second of three weeks featuring a note for each day of advent. No chocolates or pictures in this calendar but perhaps something of interest to the wordsmith.

11th - the 11th December is the anniversary of the birth (1918) of the Russian writer, Nobel winner and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who died in 2008.

12th - has to be Twelfth Night for this was my one and only appearance as a thespian (although to be accurate there were two performances) when I had the role of Malvolio forced upon me by a teacher. Should 'Happy' Richmond still be around to recall those (for me) endless weeks of torture, my loathing for you is undiminished.

13th - the 13th this month fell on a Tuesday, yet had it fallen on a Friday all manner of woes and ill fortune may have been blamed on something which can only happen a maximum of three times each year in the Gregorian calendar. However spare a thought for Spanish-speaking countries where Friday the 13th passes unnoticed as it is Tuesday the 13th, or Martres trece, which is feared. Incidentally, statistics show these unlucky 13ths (be they Fridays or Tuesdays) are likely to see a significant drop in accidents.

14th - the 14th letter in the alphabet is 'n', the sixth most common letter used in the English language but as a consonant second only to 't'. The development of the letter 'n' seems to have been from the adaptation of the Egyptian snake heiroglyph by Semitic people, their word for a snake beginning with the 'n' sound.

15th - the 15th best-selling daily newspaper in the world, with an average daily circulation of some 2,204,000 is Japan's Sankei Shimbun. However it ranks only 7th among Japan's dailies, indeed the five best-sellers in the world are all Japanese. Incidentally 15th on the United Kingdom list is the Manchester Evening News.

16th - Barbara Cartland has the longest entry in Who's Who, mostly a list of her books, the 16th of which appeared in 1937, a contemporary romance novel entitled But Never Free (aka The Adventurer). Incidentally at the time of her death there were some 160 unpublished works

17th - the 17th book of the Bible is Esther. As an English name Esther became popular in the 17th century, when it was the 17th most common name given to a baby girl.

An Advent Calendar of the Written Word (1st to 10th)

Over the next three weeks a note for each day of advent. No chocolates or pictures in this calendar but perhaps a snippet of interest to the wordsmith, writer or reader.

1st - the most valuable first edition is the Gutenberg Bible, currently valued at over £30 million but you probably haven't got one of the 21 copies thought to exist. My oldest first edition is a book by Thornton W. Burgess entitled Little Joe Otter. The copy I was given as a child disappeared and I was delighted to receive a 1925 edition for Christmas a few years ago.

2nd - few will be unaware the Bible is the best selling book of all time and outsells the second best seller six or seven times over. Yet few will know that next on the list is Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, most often referred to as his 'little red book'.

3rd - the third most commonly used letter in English writings is 'a', accounting for 8.167% of the total.

4th - the fourth longest English novel ever published is Poor Fellow My Country, a tale set in Australia and written by Xavier Herbert. It is said to contain 850,000 words.

5th - the fifth best-selling fiction author ever has amassed some 600 million copies of an impressive 800 books, and including 3,400 translations. Most of those books appeared under her own name and, although she did sometimes use the pseudonym Mary Pollock, very few can have missed Enid Blyton's work as a child or later as a parent.

6th - the complete works of Shakespeare did not see the light of day until seven years after his death and the publication of his plays certainly does not reflect the order in which they were first performed. As the latter is a better indication of the chronology his 6th play can be said to be Titus Andronicus, first performed in 1593 and appearing in print the following year.

7th - the Guardian newspaper poll to find the Seven Wonders of the Literary World placed Homer's The Odyssey at number seven - Don Quixote topped the list.

8th - in June 2011 John Locke became the 8th person to sell a million copies of an ebook and the first to self-publish and reach this milestone

9th - once it was considered a worthwhile achievement to read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica - Richard Byrd taking a copy to the South Pole to help the time pass during his five-months stay - none other than literary giant George Bernard Shaw himself said he had read the 9th edition, although he admitted to skipping the scientific articles (a rather significant chunk to leave out).

10th - I suppose one of the golden rules when editing is to remove 'that' as superfluous. Thus it is interesting to note it is the tenth most commonly used English word and therefore should certainly appear in 'that' dialogue.

More of a Comment Than a Review

I don't read enough fiction. Not by choice, I simply don't have the time. If I could travel more by public transport I would certainly get much more read, however most of the places I need to visit do not have the service. Hence virtually all the reading I do is in bed, invariably resulting in 15 to 20 mins of reading before the eyes close - I hasten to add this has nothing to do with the reading material!

Having said all that I have just finished reading the last of a series of seven by sci-fi author Kevin J Anderson. Entitled the The Saga of Seven Suns, at some six to seven hundred pages per book it has taken me almost two years to complete the series - I'm not quite that slow, having read in others between.

I understand science fiction is not everyone's favourite genre, thus I shall only say the basic storyline and the new ideas introduced by the author are entertaining enough. However the pace of the story is impaired by the length of the chapters, a maximum of five pages each is simply not enough to develop a story nor does it do the characters any favours. On the subject of characters, whilst I appreciate there must be a good few to choose from when looking at an entire spiral arm of a galaxy, there are far too many. Not particularly good for me as I find it very difficult to remember names!

Hence the thousand or so chapters over the seven books serve only to make the story fragmented and difficult to follow. I concede these problems may have been less evident had I read the seven volumes over a much shorter period, although perhaps if Mr Anderson had written longer chapters it would have kept me reading for more than 15 minutes, which in turn would lead to fewer books and potentially more sales for many must have given up on this saga well before the end.

20th November

Not a date which would ever be considered of earth-shattering importance. Yet in its own way marks the anniversaries of three events which could be considered landmarks of the written word.

Just 191 years have passed since that day in 1820 when the Essex, a whaling ship out of Nantucket, Massachusetts, was in the Pacific Ocean about 2,000 miles off the west coast of South America. Nothing unusual about such in the early nineteenth century, that was until the Essex was attacked by a sperm whale with an estimated mass of some eighty tons. The vessel sank with just eight survivors, one of whom was first mate Owen Chase. Following the publication of his record of the events in 1821, under the snappy title Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex, Herman Melville had he germ of an idea which would become one of the first great American novels - Moby Dick. The success of this novel from its publication in 1851 when the literate were in a very small minority (and no radio, television, or cinema to bring the narrative to a wider audience) makes it a landmark piece of literature.

Winding forward 127 years and a young Princess Elizabeth (she was just 21) married Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten at Westminster Abbey in London. Within six years she was crowned Queen Elizabeth as the nation sat glued to their new television sets, purchased specially for the purpose of watching the pomp and ceremony live and in glorious black and white. Since that time the media has grown to the state-of-the-art broadcasting we take for granted today. Almost sixty years on the throne and surely no other living individual can have been written about, filmed, taped, broadcast, snapped (or waved at) over this time.

Finally another 38 years on and on this day in 1985 Microsoft Windows 1.0 is released. This brought the computer to the masses which, with the internet readily available within a few years, enabled billions to add their words to the mix, irrespective of ability, education, interest, or common sense. It could be argued this tremendous input serves only to dilute that worthy of reading, which would have stood alone in the days of Herman Melville. However from the opposite point of view, does it naturally bring the quality to the surface, highlighting the well-written word in a vast ocean of dross?

More on Nursery Rhyme Origins

I no longer use my scanner, not since it started making more noise than the printer. Hence when I do need to scan a document I pop along to the local library, it's free and bookable online several days in advance. I couldn't use my usual library as building work is still going on so I opted for another nearby. Shortly after my arrival I noted a significant number of pre-school children and soon discovered my booking had coincided with Tots Tuesday. Concentration proved difficult for the next 30 minutes as staff and parents tried to entertain said tots with a selection of rhymes - while scanner-man struggled to avoid clicking/scanning/typing to the rhythm of such lyrical masterpieces as "Dingle-Dangle Scarecrow".

I was reminded of my blog some weeks ago, when I looked at the origins of nursery rhymes. Having seen how the most common explanations are even more far-fetched than the rhymes themselves, I expanded my search.

As I Was Going to St Ives - which I had always considered a riddle is apparently also considered a nursery rhyme. The modern form first appeared in 1825, although there is an earlier English version from one hundred years before where the man the narrator met has nine wives (and nine, sacks, cats, kits rather than today's seven of each). Any dispute as to whether this refers to St Ives in Cornwall or that in Cambridgeshire is made pointless by the existence of earlier versions of this problem from a number of cultures, the oldest being the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus where it is designated problem 79. Note this writing has been dated to around 1650 BC, making the problem at least twice as old as any place in the country known as St Ives.

Baa, Baa, Black Sheep dates from 1761, a variation on a French melody. Incidentally the original tune is that now used for Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. The modern controversies suggesting the rhyme has racist elements seem to have come about when the press jumped on the story when looking for column fillers, in turn fuelling reaction, and probably also leading to supposed origins in the slave trade. In truth the origins are unknown but may have connections to the wool tax imposed in 1275 - splitting the three bags three ways is said to represent the king, the church and the local community. Although, yet again, the split does not stand up to examination for although the 6 shillings and 8 pence deducted by the crown does equate to exactly one-third of one pound sterling, it equates to nearer one-twentieth of the actual value.

Bobby Shafto, he of the silver bells on his knee, hailed from Hollybrook, County Wicklow in Ireland and who died in 1737. This ditty would almost certainly have become lost had it not been adopted by the supporters of Robert Shato, MP for County Durahm in the lattre half of the eighteenth century. It is claimed later verses were added when, having been promised to Bridget Belasyse of Brancepeth Castle in County Durham, Shafto went and married Yorkshire lass Anne Duncombe. Bridget is said to have died two weeks after she heard of the wedding.

Bye Baby Bunting was possibly written as a rhyme for infants for in the eighteenth century bunting was used as a term of endearment and meant 'plump'.

Cock a Doodle Doo is certainly old and was already well-known when, in 1606, the first two lines were used in a pamphlet crowing about murder. Perhaps this represents taunting of the chicken (or cockerel in this case) as few fail to find themselves food at one stage.

Diddle Diddle Dumpling My Son John was inspired by the street cry of hot dumpling sellers. The earliest known publication date being 1797.

Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe was first published in the late nineteenth century, however the evidence is strong to suggest this is a centuries old counting song. There is a record of a shepherd's counting song beginning "Ina, mina, tehra, methera", which would be connected to Old English, and a Cornish version of "Eena, mia, mona, mite" which could easily pre-date the Roman occupation of Britain.

Frog Went A-Courting first appeared in print in 1548, which rules out any chance of it being the story of Francois, Duke of Anjou (the frog) wooing Queen Elizabeth I of England (the mouse). As the earliest publication was in Scotland it may refer to Mary Stuart.

Georgie Porgie didn't appear in print until the nineteenth century but is almost certainly much older. Just how old is unknown, meaning it is difficult to tell who this is about - among those most often cited are George Villies, 1st Duke of Buckingham; Charles II; and George I.

Boys and Girls Come Out to Play was first published in the early eighteenth century. Referring to the times when children were expected to work throughout hours of daylight, time for play being in the evening. It is worthwhile noting how the 'Girls and boys of today is as often found as 'Boys and girls' historically.

Goosey Goosey Gander has been said to come from anti-Catholic propaganda which came about through Henry VIII's break from Rome. No evidence has been found to suggest the rhyme existed prior to the eighteenth century and, aside from the mention of prayer, there is little to connect it to any religious theme.

Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush has no real meaning, simply a game played by children from the middle of the nineteenth century. There is good reason to believe the original lyric stated a bramble bush for mulberries do not grow on bushes.

Hey Diddle Diddle must have more explanations offered than any other rhyme, although none seem to have any evidence to support a single given origin. There is nothing to suggest it was known to the Ancient Greeks; nor does it seem consistent with worship of the Egyptian deity Hathor; the moon and constellations may fit best with the imagery, if not the narrative; the flight of the Israelites from Egypt seems nonsensical; the bedroom exploits of Lady Katherine Grey seem, at best, far fetched; Catherine, wife of Peter the Great of Russia is equally hard to see; and with so many on offer we should expect to find Catholicism in the mix.

Hickory Dickory Dock is also seen as Hickety Dickety Dock and Dickery Dickery Dock. It is thought to have originally been a counting rhyme, perhaps similar to that employed by Westmorland shepherds in the nineteenth century where a rhyme which began Yan Tan Tethera (one two three) went on to hevera (eight) devera (nine) and dick (ten).

I Had a Little Nut Tree does not appear in print until 1789, although this is no reason to believe it is not much older. Indeed if this is of some age the idea it commemorates the visit of Juana of Castile to England at the court of Henry VII is quite possible.

Jack Sprat, he who ate no fat, has been in use since at least the sixteenth century to describe a man of small stature and probably encouraged children to eat what was on offer.

Ladybird Ladybird would have originated through the long-held belief to kill a ladybird was unlucky. Perhaps chanting this rhyme would encourage them to fly away without resorting to stronger and more permanent action. I refer, of course, to the ladybirds and not those who inflicted the Dingle-Dangle Scarecrow upon me at Tots Tuesday.