"early" ex. of initial "myself"

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED has sentence-initial emphatic _myself_ from before 1375, but all its examples include a stated "I" somewhere in the clause.  Here's one without :

  1909 in William Elsey Connelly _Quantrill and the Border Wars_ (Cedar Rapids, Ia.: Torch Press, 1910) 362: The guerrillas sacked Lawrence just before sunrise....Myself and family were yet in bed and asleep.

  The writer is referring to events of 1863, making it likely that he had been using the idiom for a very long time - at least in formal writing.

  JL


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