"certain" inThe First Noel

[Mark Mandel]

Yup. It's a garden path sentence. The catch is that the obvious
interpretation of "The first Noel", as referring to the first Christmas,
doesn't work. Instead, I take it as referring to the greeting: The angels'
first Christmas greeting was uttered to certain poor shepherds.

On checking the OED I see that it's not exactly a greeting, but
   A. int[erjection]. A word shouted or sung: expressing joy, originally to
commemorate the birth of Christ. Now only as retained in Christmas carols
(cf. NOEL n.).

Or an utterance of such an interjection:
 B. n.
    2. An utterance of 'Nowell'.

... although the evidence for that is suspiciously circular:
1833 in W. Sandys Christmas Carols, Anc. & Mod. 74 The first Nowell the
Angel did say Was to three poor shepherds. 1894 Daily News 8 Feb. 5/5 The
child..had been taught the well-known Christmas carol entitled 'The First
Nowell'. 1909 K. TYNAN (title) The first nowell.


To add to the confusion, the rhythm of the song strongly encourages a
parenthetical reading of "the angels did say": The first Nowell, the angels
did say, was to certain poor shepherds -- i.e., "The angels said that that
the first Nowell [whether as Christmas or as greeting] was to certain poor
shepherds." Try to make sense of that with the rest of the carol!

-- Mark A. Mandel
[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]


On 8/2/07, Douglas G. Wilson <douglas at nb.net> wrote:
>
> >OED2 for "certain", a., n., and adv.:
> >
> >II. 7.    a. Used to define things which the mind definitely
> >individualizes or particularizes from the general mass ....
> >
> >"the first Nowell... was to certain poor shepherds" has always seemed
> >to me to have this use of "certain" in it; it never occurred to me
> >that there was a problem in interpretation. ....
>
> >arnold
>
> Me too.
>
> -- Doug Wilson
>
>
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