[Ads-l] Digs: mystery citation?

[Stephen Goranson]

As you may know, it appears earlier than in Farmer in M. Schele De Vere, Americanisms (1872) 171. That book quotes Charcoal Sketches elsewhere. Perhaps checking those would give a sense of accuracy or not, or which editions used. Or: picture caption not scanned? And: was Charcoal Sketches first in periodicals? Dunno. Diggings (Diggins?) origin is new to me.
SG

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From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of dave at wilton.net <dave at WILTON.NET>
Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2022 9:05 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Digs: mystery citation?


The OED (old entry), Green's, and virtually every other secondary source all list the following as the first use of "diggings" to mean lodgings:

1838 J. C. Neal Charcoal Sketches II. 119 (Farmer) I reckon it's about time we should go to our diggings.

But when I look at all the digitized editions of "Charcoal Sketches" that I can find online (HathiTrust, Google Books, Nineteenth Century Collections Online, newspaper databases, etc.) nothing even remotely similar to this quotation appears anywhere in any of them, at least not that I can find. Neal's work appeared in three volumes over a decade or more, but I'm drawing a blank on all of them.

The "Farmer" would appear to be a reference to Farmer & Henley's Slang and Its Analogues, which has this exact citation. (It could also be a reference to Farmer's earlier Dictionary of Americanisms, but that work doesn't include the details of volume and page number.) Could it be that Farmer mixed up his sources and every subsequent lexicographer simply relied on him without bothering to look at the text itself? That strains credulity.

Am I missing something obvious?

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