"certain" inThe First Noel

[James Harbeck]

>Don't we need all of this to parse it properly?
>
>The first Noel, the angels did say
>Was to certain poor shepherds...
>
>My "modern" gloss is
>
>The first Noel that the angels said ("announced") was the one that
>they announced to some poor shepherds laying around in a field...
>

I agree in the main with your gloss (except that they weren't
announcing a Noel but giving a greeting -- we don't use "Noel" in
this sense anymore), but you have a comma that doesn't belong after
"Noel" (often spelled "Nowell"). It was the first Noel that they
said, rather than that the angels said that the first Noel was to
certain poor shepherds... The other interpretation, that the angels
told us (or someone) that the first Noel was to certain poor
shepherds, doesn't really make sense, particularly in context. Also,
there are other carols that use "Nowell" as a Christmas salutation.
For instance, this rarely heard one: "Nowell, Nowell,
No-o-o-o-o-o-well, this is the salutation of the angel Gabriel."

I see now, on reading further, that there has been a lot of
back-and-forth in this thread about this phrase. I'm quite certain on
this one -- I've sung it a gazillion times from a multitude of books!
I'm also a big fan of early music, and there's no season like
Christmas for early music. I sing a pile of it with the Toronto
Mendelssohn Choir each year. Early music recordings are also very
helpfully scholarly; as a rule, among other things, they reproduce
the original texts in the liner notes.

A similar comma palcement error is very common in "God Rest Ye Merry,
Gentlemen," which, in a sort of grammatical eggcorn (what would we
call that?), is very often recast as "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen"
because "rest" isn't used in this sense anymore.

And then I'm put in mind of the sheet music for Scarborough Fair that
had a picture of a Ferris wheel and other country fair things. I
believe that in actuality in the song "fair" is actually an adjective
in inversion... but if anyone has proof to the contrary, do tell.

James Harbeck.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org