" Olive, the other reindeer"

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 12:26 PM 8/4/2007, you wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: " Olive,               the other reindeer"; was  Re:
>               "Trolling" for "Trawling": An               Eggcorn?
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>At 9:13 AM -0700 8/4/07, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >I was scarred - I can remember lying awake waiting for the ax to
> >fall - but I never had a problem parsing "now I lay me."
> >
> >   JL
>
>Right; the scary line was definitely "If I should die before I wake"
>(whether or not you understood this to imply postmortem zombiehood)
>rather than the "Now I lay me down to sleep" opener, although I
>suppose some proto-Chomskyan youngsters might have been kept awake by
>the horrors of Principle B being violated.
>
>LH
>
> >
> >Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
> >   ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> >-----------------------
> >Sender: American Dialect Society
> >Poster: Charles Doyle
> >Subject: Re: " Olive, the other reindeer"; was Re:
> >"Trolling" for "Trawling": An Eggcorn?
> >-------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
> >
> >I wonder how many individuals of my generation and older, as
> >children, were permanently scarred by the morbid bedtime prayer
> >commencing with that incantation in some arcane language (I believe
> >I assumed it was Hebrew), "Now I lay me" (as I eventually learned it
> >was spelled).
> >
> >--Charlie

Ah, that scary, and scared (and maybe scarred?), Martin Luther.  I think he
wrote the prayer, in German, which would explain the "lay myself down" verb
and the better prosody of "lay me down" in English.  But I wonder if the
common substitution of "lay" for "lie" comes from a reduction of the
reflexive, or is it just a generalization of one form for both?  I've also
heard the hypercorrections "lie (something) down" and "sit (something)
down," though the latter may reflect [I/E] merging instead?

Beverly

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