Misprints

Literary Blunders from the Bible to Bismarck and Sir Walter Scott

Jul 4, 2007 George Frederick Winter

A brief look at some literary misprints and blunders

Printers' Bible

‘Printers have persecuted me without a cause.’ This sentence appeared in a Bible published in the early 1700s in verse 161 of the 119th Psalm, and should have read ‘princes’, not ‘printers’. The edition was later called the ‘Printers' Bible’, and demonstrates how human error, when combined with the powerful tool of printing can sometimes produce spectacular results. Fortunately, in everyday life our own mistakes can often be rectified there and then and usually fade from memory. Literary blunders, on the other hand, having made it into print, can lead an extraordinary life.

Sir Walter Scott

In many early editions of Sir Walter Scott’s The Monastery (1820), we find in chapter ten: ‘Hardened wretch (said Father Eustace), art though but this instant delivered from death, and dost though so soon morse thoughts of slaughter?’ Morse was simply a misprint of nurse. However, in a publication called Notes and Queries, two philologists strove to interpret the word, thus adding to the confusion. The first philologist explained that morse derived from the old French amorce, ‘to prime’, as in priming a musket, whereas the second favoured ‘to bite’ from the Latin mordere, thus ‘to indulge in biting, stinging or gnawing thoughts of slaughter.’ Gripped with enthusiasm, he added with touchingly misplaced confidence: ‘That the word as a misprint should have been printed and read by millions for fifty years without being challenged and altered exceeds the bounds of probability.’ But when Scott’s original manuscript was consulted the word nurse was plain to see.

Apron and Riding

From the non-existent morse that was a mistake, to real words that arose by mistake. So we have apron, and the mistaken assumption that the n belongs to the article rather than to the word itself; apron should be napron, from the French napperon. As the word triding suggests, there should indeed be three Tridings of Yorkshire, but the t was subsumed by the adjective as West Triding became West Riding. This confusion was perpetuated when, in 1798, during the first organisation of the Province of Canada, the county of Lincoln was divided into four ridings and the county of York into two.

Bismarck

And finally, who said the Germans have no sense of humour? In the early 1890s, because of a blunder in which the word Madchen (girls) was confused with Machten (powers), a German newspaper carried the news that, ‘Prince Bismarck is trying to keep up honest and straightforward relations with all the girls.’

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