"Black Man", 1849

[Joel S. Berson]

At 5/1/2010 05:49 PM, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>On Sat, May 01, 2010 at 02:37:28PM -0400, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> > "Black Man" also appears in Hawthorne's "Main Street":  "Most of them
> > have one huge chimney in the centre, with flues so vast that it must
> > have been easy for the witches to fly out of them, as they were wont
> > to do, when bound on an aerial visit to the Black Man in the forest."
> >
> > This 1849 instance antedates the OED2's earliest citation of 1851 for
> > singular "black man",   "2. An evil spirit; also, the evil one, the
> > devil; also, a spirit or bogey invoked in order to terrify children".
> > Its only two earlier citations are:
> >      [1591 in Pitcairn Crim. Trials Scotl. (1833) I. 246 {Th}e
> > Dewill start vp in {th}e pulpett, lyke ane mekill blak man, with ane
> > blak baird stikand out lyke ane gettis baird.] 1658 tr. Bergerac's
> > Satyr. Char. xii. 48, I send the Goblins..the nightbats,..the black men.
>
>We now have 1656, 1727, and 1751 singular examples of this
>sense.
>
>Jesse Sheidlower
>OED

1)  Once again, I'm too late  :-)

2)  Hawthorne was not as original (or archaic?) as Jon imagined and I
had hoped.

3)  The OED has recognized the existence of the 18th century  :-)

Joel

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