Church memorials and spelling

click photos to enlarge

"Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original and detailing the signification of words", definition from "A Dictionary of the English Language" (1755) by Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), English writer, poet, editor and lexicographer

English church memorials of the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries are very distinctive. They typically feature a debased classical style with the elements handled rather clumsily, large and small scale figure sculpture, heraldic devices, a descriptive text and striking paintwork.

Today's photograph shows all of these things. It can be found in the church of St Nicholas in King's Lynn, Norfolk and is one of several excellent examples of the type adorning its walls. The memorial commemorates Thomas Snelling who died in 1623. He is shown devoutly kneeling before a bible opposite his wife. Below are smaller representations of his children - a very common feature of such memorials. Corinthian columns frame the main figures, a broken segmental pediment tops the piece and at the bottom is a winged cherub's head and classical scrolls. An interesting feature is the crowned, winged skull in the top panel, presumably a reminder of the inevitable triumph of death. However, on this particular memorial it was the dedicatory panel that interested me. At the time I took the shot I'd recently been reading about the genesis of Samuel Johnson's "A Dictionary of the English Language" (1755), and the wayward spelling of the text on this piece clearly signals the need that his work was designed, in part, to address.

The second photograph is a detail from the first that shows the panel enlarged. It makes an interesting read, not only for the way it eulogises and describes the deceased (it is much less effusive than usual), also for the verse that constitutes the bottom half, but especially for that whimsical spelling and the fact that the punctuation comprises a single colon (used to abbreviate Matthew to Matt:) and one full stop. For anyone unused to reading such things it may help to know that J and Y being substituted with I, V instead of U, abbreviations such as YE (THE), W with smaller TH meaning WITH, W with smaller CH meaning WHICH, and the shortened form of ANNO DOMINI were common on such memorials and elsewhere, serving to reduce the amount of text and often to make  the line of writing fit in the allotted space.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 65mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 800
Exposure Compensation:  -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On 

Remember the Millen(n)ium?

click photo to enlarge
Millennium is the sort of word that crops up only once in a thousand years, but when it does appear it leaves its mark. Do you remember the Millennium? Like many people I was reminded of it with the recent news concerning the Playstation 3 bug whereby the software saw 2010 as a leap year and gave February twenty nine days, causing owners a few small difficulties.

There are three things people tend to remember from the time the twentieth century tipped over into the twenty first. The first is the change in dates and the celebrations and memorials that accompanied it. Secondly, there was the brouhaha surrounding the "millennium bug": the dire consequences that would befall mankind unless the clocks of all the world's computers were made to read the date correctly. It wasn't just a trivial matter of people losing their highest scores in a computer game (one of the consequences, apparently, of the Playstation 3 bug). No, airliners would fall from the sky, stock markets would crash, military equipment would malfunction, and people woudn't be able to play SimCity. In the event, nothing much happened except computer consultants clawed in lots more money than usual.

The third thing many remember from the year 2000 was the spelling problem. Was it "milennium", "millenium", "milenium" or "millennium". People scattered the letters "l" and "n" gamely, and after a while most people got the hang of the correct formulation. Unfortunately, by then the moment had passed, and the ability to spell the word was as useful as being fluent in Dalmatian, Eyak or Slovincian.

For a number of years I've been aware of the Lincolnshire hedge shown in today's photograph. The owner was clearly impressed by the millennium, and sufficiently public spirited to celebrate the event with topiary. Perhaps it's a consequence of a working life mainly spent in education, but when I first saw it the missing "n" jumped out at me, and it continues to do so every time I pass the hedge. However, after some reflection I did consider that it may not be a spelling error. Perhaps the owner got the letter size wrong, then as he got half-way through the word realised it wasn't going to fit in the available space, and therefore deliberately dropped the second "n" to make it do so. What I do know is that if I'd cut that word the mis-spelling would really bug me. I wouldn't leave it there for 10 minutes, never mind 10 years, and I'd clip the lot off. A thought has just occured to me (and you might wish it hadn't) - would that qualify as having the Millen(n)ium bug?

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12.8mm (60mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On