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Butler, Samuel, 1835-1902

"The Note-Books of Samuel Butler"



Jutland and "Waitee"

I made a mistake in The Authoress of the Odyssey [in a note on p. 31]
when I said "Scheria means Jutland--a piece of land jutting out into
the sea." Jutland means the Land of the Jutes.
And I made a mistake in Alps and Sanctuaries [Chap. III], speaking of
the peasants in the Val Leventina knowing English, when I said "One
English word has become universally adopted by the Ticinesi
themselves. They say 'Waitee' just as we should say 'Wait' to stop
some one from going away. It is abhorrent to them to end a word with
a consonant so they have added 'ee,' but there can be no doubt about
the origin of the word." The Avvocato Negri of Casale-Monferrato
says that they have a word in their dialetto which, if ever written,
would appear as "vuaitee," it means "stop" or "look here," and is
used to attract attention. This, or something like it, no doubt is
what they really say and has no more to do with waiting than Jutland
has to do with jutting.

The Parables

The people do not act reasonably in a single instance. The sower was
a bad sower; the shepherd who left his ninety and nine sheep in the
wilderness was a foolish shepherd; the husbandman who would not have
his corn weeded was no farmer--and so on. None of them go nearly on
all fours, they halt so much as to have neither literary nor moral
value to any but slipshod thinkers.


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