"Plough with the favorite heifer", 1749

[Charles Doyle]

BTW:  Ending where we should have begun--the OED has an
entry for the expression (heifer 1.b), with some non-
scriptural instances.  EEBO gives many more.

--Charlie
____________________________________

---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2006 09:37:36 -0400
>From: Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
>Subject: Re: "Plough with the favorite heifer", 1749
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
>---------------------- Information from the mail header ----
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>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-
L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: "Plough with the favorite heifer", 1749
>------------------------------------------------------------
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>
>If the English language was good enough for Samson . . . .
>
>In Wycliff's translation, the Philistines plowed with
>Samson's "she calf."  For Coverdale, it was just "my calf"
>(was he sanitizing?).  "Heifer" seem to have become standard
>with the so-called Bishops' Bible of 1568, followed by
>Geneva (1587), Rheims Douai (1609), and KJV (1611).
>
>In the Vulgate, it's "arassetis in vitula mea"; that "in" is
>kind of interesting--since (unlike "cum") it can mean "in"
>as well as "with."  But little is definitively known
>regarding St. Jerome's feelings about heifers.
>
>I don't know what the Hebrew says or implies--or when or
>whether the whole phrase became an idiom or stock metaphor!
>
>--Charlie

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