[lit-ideas] "For ever and [a d]ay"
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:32:36 EDT
JK:
"Whenever I hear the "forever and a day" phrase, I immediately start humming
Those Were the Days, My Friend.....a song my Dad loved to sing "
Interesting. The OED suggests that "for ever and a day" may be a corruption
of "for ever and ay", as in
1300 Cursor M. 6218 (Cott.)
is folk..at suld vs serue for euer and ai.
====
Geary will possibly agree, seeing that 'for ever and ever -- Amen" is in the
Lord's Prayer (which was known to the Anglo-Saxons).
For some reason, after Sternhold is registered as first using 'for ever and
+THE D+ay" version, it caught on. Once it entered the Shakespeare repertoire,
it was bound to spread.
Carlyle was possibly trying to be funny. He was a Scot, and he possibly
thought that to stick to the original "for ever and ay" would make it sound
too
archaic -- provincial even.
While The Listener is not your London Times, so they _would_ use the
expression without giving much thought to it.
Cheers,
JL
1549-62 _STERNHOLD_
(http://0-dictionary.oed.com.csulib.ctstateu.edu/help/bib/oed2-s4.html#sternhold)
& _H._
(http://0-dictionary.oed.com.csulib.ctstateu.edu/help/bib/oed2-h.html#h) Ps.
lxxvii. 8 Is his goodnesse cleane decayd
for euer and a day?
1596 _SHAKES._
(http://0-dictionary.oed.com.csulib.ctstateu.edu/help/bib/oed2-s2.html#shakes)
Tam. Shr. IV. iv. 97 Farewell for euer and a day.
1823 _CARLYLE_
(http://0-dictionary.oed.com.csulib.ctstateu.edu/help/bib/oed2-c.html#carlyle)
Let. 28 Sept. (1886) II. 225 One youth was to go to
Germany, the other to Oxford, and I to take my leave I supposed for ever and a
day.
1967 Listener 18 May 656/3 How else can one explain why the Second Reform
Bill of 1867 did not sweep the Conservatives from power for ever and a day?
J. L. Speranza, Esq.
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