Ask Language Log: "But long or short, but here or there"
« previous post | next post »
From Chris Cooper:
I was intrigued by this construction, which I'd never come across before. From the explanation of the German word "Bummel" in Jerome K Jerome's comic novel Three Men On The Bummel:
A 'Bummel', I explained, I should describe as a journey, long or short, without an end; the only thing regulating it being the necessity of getting back within a given time to the point from which one started. Sometimes it is through busy streets, and sometimes through the fields and lanes; sometimes we can be spared for a few hours, and sometimes for a few days. But long or short, but here or there, our thoughts are ever on the running of the sand. […]
It was the repetition of "but" in the last quoted sentence that struck me – I've never seen this elsewhere. It reminds me of the constructions
whether long or short, whether here or there …
and the obsolete
nor long nor short,
(I can't think of any real-life examples of the latter, but I'm sure it was once common, at least in poetry.)
In the first place, Bummel seems to mean something like "ramble" or "stroll", though allowing for longer journeys, as in the German translation of Mark Twain's A Tramp Abroad as Bummel durch Europa. The business about "the necessity of getting back within a given time to the point from which one started" seems to be Jerome's invention, or perhaps his fictional narrator's invention.
In the second place, the repetition of sentence-initial "but ADJ or ADJ" strikes me as a bit antique and even poetic, but not surprising. Without the repetition, the construction is reasonably common in literature, often with the disjunction serving as an initial adjunct or appositive loosely coupled to the rest of the phrase:
But long or short, what descriptive power, what vividness! [Theodor Fontane]
This Lady's short, that Mistresse she is tall;
But long or short, I'm well content with all. [Robert Herrick]
But good or bad, there are some things which a woman can't understand, and some things which she ought not to be let to understand. [Anthony Trollope]
And forthrights some, and some meanders trace,
But late or soon they end in every case [Jane Barlow]
And given this loose coupling of the disjunction, it's easy enough to add another one:
Life is too long:
But, long or short, foolish or wise, this death
Casts its still shadow half athwart our lives [Alfred Austin]
[B]ut good or bad, original or otherwise, it delighted Mr. Pen [William Makepeace Thackeray]
Mov'd in the Orb, pleas'd with the Chimes,
The foolish Creature thinks he climbs:
But here or there, turn Wood or Wire,
He never gets two Inches higher. [Matthew Prior]
But I agree that the repeated pattern but ADJ or ADJ, but ADJ or ADJ is rare — I haven't turned up any other examples, though I'm sure they're Out There. One reason may be that (unlike whether or nor in Chris's examples) the word but in this case is not tied directly to the following disjunction, but rather intermediates between the whole sentence and what precedes it.
So why did Jerome K. Jerome repeat it in the cited passage?
The key thing, I think, is the fact that the cited line — and some of what follows — scans easily as perfect iambic pentameter– as long as the second but is in there.
But long or short, but here or there, our thoughts
Are ever on the running of the sand.
We nod and smile to many as we pass;
With some we stop and talk awhile; and with
A few we walk a little way.
At that point the meter stops fitting so well:
We have been much interested, and often a little tired. But on the whole we have had a pleasant time, and are sorry when ’tis over.”
(Though "But on the whole we've had a pleasant time" is another scannable line…)
But remove that second but, and the whole passage-as-blank-verse thing falls apart.
Note also the other bits of poetic diction in that passage — the use of ever in place of always, and the kenning-like phrase "the running of the sand".
Overall, the evocation of blank verse is so striking that I immediately thought it must be a quoted poem. But if so, I haven't been able to find it elsewhere on the internet. Perhaps it's a recycled bit of Jerome K. Jerome juvenilia? This is not implausible, given this passage from his autobiography My Life and Times:
My first book! He stands before me, bound in paper wrapper of a faint pink colour, as though blushing all over for his sins. "On the Stage—and Off. By Jerome K. Jerome" (the K very large, followed by a small j; so that by many the name of the author was taken to be Jerome Kjerome). "The Brief Career of a would-be Actor. One shilling nett. Ye Leadenhall Press. London. 1885."
He was born in Whitfield Street, Tottenham Court Road, in a second floor back overlooking a burial ground. The house is now a part of Whitfield's Tabernacle. A former tenant of the room—some young clerk like myself, I guessed him to be—had been in love with a girl named Annie. The bed was in a corner, and, lying there, he had covered the soot-grimed wall-paper with poetry to her—of sorts. It meandered in and out among Chinese temples, willow-trees and warriors. One verse I remember ran:
"Oh, Annie fair, beyond compare,To speak my love I do not dare. Oh, cruel Fate that shakes her head, And tells me I'm too poor to wed."
Being directly opposite the pillow, it greeted me each morning when I opened my eyes. It was applicable to my own case also, and had a depressing effect upon me.
Bloix said,
November 6, 2016 @ 9:41 am
A little googling reveals that "nor long nor short" seems to have been an idiom. This is from a description of "The Sea at the Cape of Good Hope," 1836:
Nor ever have I have felt as if so near being engulfed by overwhelming mountains of roaring waters; which are nor long nor short, but somehow do come on, one after another, with a steepness and a wickedness, if so I may say, that sets seamen’s knowledge and prudence at nought.
And this is from a biographical sketch of a 17th century physician named Doctor Hamey who was “of low stature yet of a comely mien:”
His hair was black which he always wore, nor long, nor short but not curling.
http://munksroll.rcplondon.ac.uk/Biography/Details/5068
Bloix said,
November 6, 2016 @ 9:43 am
Link for the first quote is here.
Cervantes said,
November 6, 2016 @ 10:39 am
From Mark Liberman:
Sure.
Here's a well-known (though not identical) example (at least, in "translation"):
(Nor is the "nor [x] nor [y] nor [z]" construction in the original.)
[(myl) The cited quotation is from Chris Cooper, not me — but yes.]
TR said,
November 6, 2016 @ 10:43 am
I doubt the lines are actually from a poem — Jerome's prose seems to be naturally highly metrical. His definition of the Bummel is also a fine iambic pentameter line: "a journey, long or short, without an end". And in the next sentence we get an iambic octameter: "Sometimes it is through busy streets, and sometimes through the fields and lanes".
Cervantes said,
November 6, 2016 @ 12:35 pm
My apologies. I had meant to go back to the top and change my "From" to "Via" but, mesmerized by the "Submit Comment" button, automatically hit it instead.
In any event, thanks to Chris Cooper and you for a delightful excursion.
Michael Watts said,
November 6, 2016 @ 4:50 pm
I've been reading Edih Hamilton's Mythology, and when she includes stretches of poetry directly in her retellings positive-polarity coordinations with doubled "or", like "or long or short", are pretty frequent. That might, of course, reflect the original Latin (or Greek?); I have my doubts as to whether it was permissible in English even at whatever time the translation was done.
Jerry Friedman said,
November 6, 2016 @ 9:17 pm
The OED has citations for "nor… nor" meaning "neither… nor" from 1500 to 1969, noting that it's "now rare (literary)." It has citations for "or… or" meaning "either… or" from 1325 to 1957, noting that it's "now poet." and "Formerly, sometimes a literalism of translation (cf. Latin aut..aut, French ou..ou), but perh. sometimes an actual phonetic reduction of other..other, other..or: cf. wher..or for whether..or." The majority of the citations, especially the recent ones, are from poetry.
Ray said,
November 6, 2016 @ 9:45 pm
something about the rhythm and construction in jerome's passage reminded me a lot of queen elizabeth II's famous radio address to the commonwealth on her 21st birthday. you can read the text here:
https://www.royal.uk/21st-birthday-speech-21-april-1947
the author of the masterful speech was dermot morrah — not of jerome's generation nor education, yet perhaps he and jerome share some kind of literary tradition worth tracking down…
(also, jerome's passage strikes me as being somehow enigmatic, riddle-like… could it be an example of his comic wit, a sort of extended double entendre around the meanings of "bummel" — "bum" and "bicycle saddle"?)
AntC said,
November 6, 2016 @ 10:03 pm
Bummel seems to mean …
I've never read the book (because it's always been compared unfavourably to Three men in a Boat), but knowing the three men are on a cycling trip, supposed Bummel is a play on "pommel", being a saddle.
… something like "ramble" or "stroll", though allowing for longer journeys …
Seems to exactly fit the meaning of Algernon's "Bunburying" in The Importance of being Earnest. (And the three works — four if you include H.G. Wells' The Wheels of Chance — appeared within a span of a decade.)
djbcjk said,
November 7, 2016 @ 12:21 am
"Note also the other bits of poetic diction in that passage — the use of ever in place of always" — Actually I've been reading quite a few obituaries (1890-1930) in Australian newspapers recently, and what has struck me is their apparently quite normal use of 'ever' in place of 'always', not just in stock phrases like 'ever ready', eg 'It is ever a sorrowful task to record the death of the young'. Whether it was felt that poeticisms suited the tone of obituaries, or whether a change in idiom among us has occurred, but it seems to me like a normal usage for the period.
ajay said,
November 7, 2016 @ 5:08 am
In the first place, Bummel seems to mean something like "ramble" or "stroll", though allowing for longer journeys, as in the German translation of Mark Twain's A Tramp Abroad as Bummel durch Europa.
I believe there's also a connotation of idle curiosity, as in the Useful Word schlachtbummeler, meaning the sort of person who turns up on a nearby hilltop with a picnic blanket in order to watch the Battle of Leipzig or whatever. "Battle tourist" might be the best translation.
krogerfoot said,
November 7, 2016 @ 7:47 am
Martin Amis's unjustly panned Yellow Dog begins with the same construction, which I similarly assumed was a quote from somewhere:
"But I go to Hollywood but I go to hospital, but you are first but you are last, but he is tall but she is small, but you stay up but you go down, but we are rich but we are poor, but they find peace but they find . . ."
BZ said,
November 7, 2016 @ 12:38 pm
How can a journey without end be long or short, or require one to return within a given time?
Brett said,
November 7, 2016 @ 2:10 pm
@AntC: I don't think that what "bunbury" means. Algernon talks about bunburying all around Shropshire, which does seem to mean rambling in that instance. However, it later seems that "bunburying" is whatever pleasant activity Algernon (or Ernest) undertakes while he is pretending to be elsewhere.
Cervantes said,
November 7, 2016 @ 3:24 pm
The essence of Wilde's Bunburying is given in this quotation:
An excuse, in other words, to escape someone else's expectation or desire.
Chris Cooper said,
November 7, 2016 @ 5:22 pm
@ BZ
> How can a journey without end be long or short, or require one to return within a given time?
It's "without an end" – "end" must mean "purpose".
BZ said,
November 7, 2016 @ 5:49 pm
@Chris Cooper,
Thanks, that didn't even occur to me. That just accentuates how subtly language can change in 100 years. I think "end" meaning "purpose" is not even alive today outside a few set idioms. Certainly tome "without an end" unambiguously means "not having an ending" in all contexts.
J.W. Brewer said,
November 8, 2016 @ 12:47 pm
The German "bummeln" (that's the verb that a Bummel is an instance of performing) is said to be the etymological root of modern English "bum" in the sense of hobo, vagrant, etc. See also the (now semi-archaic?) phrase "to be on the bum," which at least mildly implies some degree of perhaps aimless-seeing movement, in order to avoid being so stationary as to be saddled with bourgeois responsibilities and/or locked up by the authorities. "Bum" for buttocks seems to be etymologically unrelated.
tetri_tolia said,
November 10, 2016 @ 5:23 am
Was a huge fan of Jerome in my youth but I always found him to have his purple tendencies, least enjoyable when he strayed from his immense comic gifts to attempt seriousness and lyricism.
nbm said,
November 10, 2016 @ 11:19 am
If "on the bum"'s archaic, "bum around" is still in general use, right? US, anyway. What were you doing? Oh, just bumming around downtown.
David Scott Marley said,
November 11, 2016 @ 6:57 pm
Nineteenth-century English prose often slips into the rhythm of iambic pentameter when it comes time to express loftier sentiments (or to parody them). In those days anyone with any schooling was certain to have been exposed to lots and lots of Shakespeare, and in the popular mind that was what great poetry was supposed to sound like. In a popular novel or melodrama of the period, the hero might be a lowly and uneducated farmer or sailor, and he might speak most of the time in plain, simple, honest language, but when it came time for him to confess his love for the miller's daughter or defy the villain or proclaim his loyalty to the Union Jack, his vocabulary would become more florid and his lines become blank verse. (You can still see this parodied in, for example, "H.M.S. Pinafore", even though the popular melodramas that Gilbert was parodying such as "Black-Ey'd Susan" are mostly forgotten.)
Whether Mr. Jerome was gently poking fun at that sort of thing in this passage or meant it seriously I don't know. But I'm pretty confident that it was deliberate, not accidental.