Date:    Mon, 11 May 1998 01:23:44 -0500
<br>From:    Mike Salovesh <t20mxs1[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CORN.CSO.NIU.EDU>
<br>Subject: Re: crryhe, marmottao revisited
<br>
<br>Hypothesis:  some of the letters in "marmottao" are a transposition of
<br>tomato.
<br>
<br>Problem:  So what to do with the extra letters, "mar"?
<br>
<br>Maybe I should have reprinted Danny Long's list, from that 19th century
<br>English text about the Bonin Islands.  The placement of the mystery word
<br>"marmottao" may be significant.  Here's the list:
<br>
<br>> Discussing the plants and animals of the island, the text reads "there
<br>> are on the Islands, wild plum, crryhe, orange, laurel, juniper and box
<br>> wood tree, sandal wood, marmottao, wild cactus, curry plant, wild sage
<br>> and celery."
<br>
<br>"crryhe" appears in the context of fruit trees, which tends to confirm
<br>the reading "cherry".
<br>
<br>Some of the neighbors of "marmottao" fall in the class of seasonings.
<br>(I don't know from this excerpt just which "wild cactus" is meant here,
<br>but some of the cacti I know from Southwestern U.S. and Mexico are used
<br>to add flavor in cooking.) Could the "mar" segment be a typographically
<br>elided "marjoram"?
<br>
<br>For my suggested reading of "marjoram, tomato" to be a correct
<br>reconstruction of the original before mangling by some typesetting
<br>process requires two different kinds of errors to have taken place at
<br>the same point: elision of five letters and the scrambling of perhaps
<br>five more.
<br>
<br>That's the sort of thing you might expect with handset type if the
<br>typesetter got sloppy moving letters into their final placement.  It's
<br>what could happen if the typesetter dropped the handheld stick which
<br>first receives the type as it is removewd from its job case.  It
<br>couldn't happen that way with the Linotype, because it casts a whole
<br>line of type at one time.  (Mergenthaler's Linotype became available
<br>commercially in 1884 or 1885.  For most of the 19th century, type was
<br>set by hand.)
<br>
<br>My suggested solution may verge on a "just so story".  What tempts me to
<br>accept the possibility is what I have noticed in my own keyboarding.  I
<br>can go for many lines, up to whole pages, with no errors at all, but
<br>once I make one typo I am very likely to make another (or several) in
<br>direct succession to the first.
<br>
<br>And, of course, I could be dead wrong in taking this line at all.
<br>
<br>--  mike salovesh                               <salovesh[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]niu.edu>
<br>    anthropology department
<br>    northern illinois university                     PEACE !!!
<br>
<br>P.S.:  I used to set type by hand, over fifty years ago.  That was so
<br>long ago that I've forgotten most of the vocabulary associated with the
<br>process.  I can visualize the process step by step.  I see, in my mind's
<br>eye, each of the tools and instruments that are used.  I could even do a
<br>rough sketch of most of them, I think.  I just can't remember what the
<br>damned things are called!  (At this late date, there is no way I could
<br>remember such details as the full layout of, e.g., the California job
<br>case, one of the standard ways of storing the letters of a single
<br>font).  All of which is a neat demonstration, for items of vocabulary,
<br>of the dictum "use it or lose it".
<br>