BULLOCKS - euph/typo/LA pron.?

[Jonathan Lighter]

Moore is now thought to have cribbed the entre poem from Henry Livingston, Jr. (1748-1828).

Was nothing sacred ?

Anyway, the story of "Donner" and "Blitzen" is, as one might expect, tangled in details. You can start reading about it here :

http://www.iment.com/maida/familytree/henry/xmas/reindeer.htm

JL

"Peter A. McGraw" <pmcgraw at LINFIELD.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Peter A. McGraw"

Subject: Re: BULLOCKS - euph/typo/LA pron.?
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Donner is German, donder is Dutch for 'thunder', and Blitzen is German,
bliksem is Dutch for 'lightning'. The versions of Night Before Christmas
that I've found in a cursory search on the web use either "On Donner and
Blitzen" or "On Donder and Blitzen." I seem to remember running across a
version with "On Donder and Bliksem" somewhere, but I can't find one now
and I can't find a version on the web that I know to be the original. So
either Moore chose one Dutch and one German word for the two reindeers'
names or he chose Dutch words and they somehow morphed into their German
cognates in popular usage over the years. Note that "Bliksem" is slightly
closer to rhyming with "Vixen" than "Blitzen" is. In either case, neither
Donner nor Donder is a simple typo.

Peter Mc.

--On Tuesday, May 3, 2005 9:35 AM -0400 "Baker, John"
wrote:

> Ah, yes. "Donner" is a frequent mistake for "Donder," the
> reindeer's name in "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (also known by its first
> line, "'Twas the night before Christmas"). I assume that the mistaken
> use of "Donner" is the typo you mean; "Blitzen" looks pretty much like
> "Blitzen" to me.



*****************************************************************
Peter A. McGraw Linfield College McMinnville, Oregon
******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ************************

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