ON THE

ARCHÆOLOGY

OF OUR

POPULAR PHRASES,

C AND 615-4
NURSERY RHYMES.

BY

Beginsels en wel toegepaste ontwikkeling van die met het gebruik
vergeleken, hierin ligt de ware Leer der Taal, en zonder dese is er
geen.-BILDERDIJK.

In primordials, and a well adapted development of them, compared
with usage, consists the whole doctrine of language, and besides that
there is no other.

A NEW EDITION.
IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:
LONGMAN, REES, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, & CO. -

AND

COUPLAND, SOUTHAMPTON.

1837.

Verzelvight zich de geest en het lichaam lijke der spraak, gelijk die van de menschelijkheid in onse. BILDERDIJK. The moral and physical principle of language is incorporated like that of humanity in ourselves (like our own nature in us).

Het is uit het hart dat men spreekt, en nicht uit het hoofd, of men spreekt slechts na. BILDERDIJK. It is from the heart we speak, and not from the head, or else we speak after others what we have learnt from others, and so, like parrots].

Niets taal verwoestender, niets verderflijker voor den mensch kan zijn, dan de taal-zelve, die in de uitspraak bestaat en in geene letterteekenen, naar einige ingevoerde of aangenomen spelling te willen richten. De regel der spelling is een : “ Spel gelijk gij spreekt," en het was voor eene beneden het beestelijke afgezonken domheid bewaard, dit om te keeren en de spelling tot regel der uit spraak te nemen. BILDERDIJK. Nothing more destructive to the true nature of language, nothing more pernicious to that characteristic distinction of mankind, than to think to regulate our speech (which consists in its utterance, and in no contrivance of letter) according to any artificially intruded and presumptive form of spelling. There is but one rule for spelling : “ Spell as you speak ;” and it remained for a degree of stupidity, below even thut of the beast of the field, to reverse this rule and to take spelling for the standard of our utterance.

is but one rule for cruded and presumptive fee of letter) according

ricat oro

which they are vested, appears to me an anomaly
in our language which remains to be accounted for.
And such are precisely the forms we generally use
when we wish to express ourselves in regard to
some certain point with energy and distinctness.
To explain myself by an instance; if we wish to tell
another the circumstance of the person in question
having supplanted such a one in his expectations of
fortune; can we, in familiar intercourse, do so more
intelligibly than by the phrase, “ he has put the
other's nose out of joint?” In terms a burlesque
unmeaning sentence; but, by a still unexplained
colloquial privilege, sound sense when uttered.

To suppose the numerous phrases of this category
were originally vested, by those who used them, in
terms which did not carry the sense the speaker
intended to convey by them, would be to form a