Comments on: Quoth the raven, "Halloa old girl!"

Quoth the raven, "Halloa old girl!"

amyms — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:02:41 -0800

"On the clock striking twelve he appeared slightly agitated, but he soon recovered, walked twice or thrice along the coach house, stopped to bark, staggered, exclaimed 'Halloa old girl!' (his favorite expression) and died... The children seem rather glad of it. He bit their ankles, but that was play..." So wrote Charles Dickens, describing the death of his pet raven "Grip," in a letter to a friend. Grip has an interesting legacy. Having served as an eponymous character in Dickens' Barnaby Rudge [full text] and subsequently inspiring Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven [full text], Grip has the distinction of being named a literary landmark. His taxidermied body is on display in the Rare Book Department at the Philadelphia Free Library.

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:07:55 -0800

This is relevant to my interests. Thank you, amyms.

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:16:32 -0800

"He bit their ankles, but that was play..." Gee, nobody ever gave my pet crocodile the same benefit of the doubt.

By: kalimac

kalimac — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:27:46 -0800

How has no one ever figured out a brilliant prank involving Grip and St. John Neumann? PHILLY, YOU ARE DISAPPOINTING YOUR COLLECTION OF PRESERVED DEAD CREATURES.

By: amro

amro — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:32:12 -0800

I never knew that ravens could talk (or, really, imitate human speech).

By: Daddy-O

Daddy-O — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:40:24 -0800

eponymous [uh-pon-uh-muhs] –adjective giving one's name to a tribe, place, etc.: Romulus, the eponymous founder of Rome. Eponymous (Wikipedia) Amyms, I apologize and I'm not trying to single you out, but I don't think I have ever seen this word used correctly by anyone except REM. The band R.E.M. titled their 1988 compilation CD Eponymous as a joke.

By: never used baby shoes

never used baby shoes — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:42:08 -0800

So can crows, amro. My wife worked for a time at a nature centre where a crow was kept - it would say hello and could also say its name. They're reasonably intelligent birds, and it was interesting to see that Pegleg remembered my wife the last time we were there. She immediately jumped to the side of the cage nearest us and croaked "hello" endlessly.

By: jbickers

jbickers — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:47:20 -0800

No, "Rarnaby Budge" by Charles Dikkens. That's Dikkens with two Ks, the well-known Dutch author.

By: amyms

amyms — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:51:41 -0800

Hey no problem, Daddy-O. You know, it's funny, I paused when I typed "eponymous character" in the FPP, thinking it just didn't feel "right"... What would have been a correct way to indicate that the raven character had the same name as the real raven (with the goal being to do so without being too wordy)? I thought about MeFiMailing you, so as not to derail the thread, but then I figured since the subject matter is literature-related, it's probably okay to take a small detour to hash out a word usage issue.

By: Rinku

Rinku — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:52:29 -0800

I hope my taxidermied body becomes a literary landmark.

By: CaseyB

CaseyB — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:59:46 -0800

jbickers, that's the only thing I could think of when I read the headline.

By: amyms

amyms — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:01:12 -0800

never used baby shoes, your comment reminded me of a mynah bird that lived free-range at a local souvenir shop I used to frequent as a kid. He'd strut around the store and follow people, looking them up and down as they shopped. Every once in awhile he'd let out a very exaggerated wolf-whistle and then he'd say "Oh, sorry." People loved it.

By: TheWhiteSkull

TheWhiteSkull — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:06:52 -0800

(having one's pet stuffed having became all the rage in England after George IV had his pet giraffe stuffed). Wait, what? How is this little tidbit not featured in a song by Flanders & Swann?

By: ubiquity

ubiquity — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:27:08 -0800

I suppose he's displayed there because Rare Book was as close as they could get to Bare Rook?

By: mwhybark

mwhybark — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:38:09 -0800

Daddy-O, amyms, by the definition Daddy-O posted, amyms' usage looks A-OK. From the link Daddy-O posted: eponymous 1846, from Gk. eponymos "given as a name, giving one's name to something," from epi- "upon" + onyma, Aeolic dial. variant of onoma "name" (see name). The raven gave his name to an 'etc.,' in this case, a character. The specifically geographic usage cited in the definition appears to me to be misleading. Also, here's the opening of the wikipedia entry linked above (for "eponym"): An eponym is the name of a person, whether real or fictitious, which has (or is thought to have) given rise to the name of a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item. An eponymous person is the person referred to by the eponym. In contemporary English, the term eponymous is often used to mean self-titled, as in "Metallica's eponymous 'black album'".

By: Daddy-O

Daddy-O — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:27:37 -0800

mwhybark I think you would be correct if all ravens had become known as Grip thanks to Dickens' bird or the character in his story. Giving the same proper name of an actual creature to a fictional creature in a book is not eponymous. Careful reading of your italicized quote will bear this out.

By: cashman

cashman — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:29:26 -0800

I was in there not too long ago too, crap!

By: fixedgear

fixedgear — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:59:07 -0800

Forty-seven years in Philly and how could I not know this? I'm gonna have to go there and check it out.

By: Pyry

Pyry — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:29:49 -0800

Ravens are actually amazingly good mimics; they actually sound like people talking, unlike parrots.

By: jonp72

jonp72 — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:49:40 -0800

James Russell Lowell has the classic piss-take on Edgar Allen Poe in his poem, A Fable for Critics. "There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge"