IT TOLLS FOR THEE

A tale told by an idiot. Shakespeare

Ed. Note: The September MHT newsletter arrived early last week. It's interesting how once the rector boasted about three new seminarians from France, but now he reports just one. And there's still no update on his "permanent arrangement" with Our Lady of the Sun. We warn the Michigan chapel to be on guard. Things are probably tough down in the swampland. You're looking like the last resort. Hold on to your wallets.

Speaking of the Michigan outpost, we can give our readers a juicy tidbit before they wade into the contents of this week's post (in which we must flog the rector for a grievous misspelling in his newsletter): Last week, the pastor -- you know... the simian-grinning Father "What Me Consecrate?" -- forgot (once again) to say the third Hail, Mary at the Leonine Prayers after Mass. (Isn't it time to give him a refresher course?)

The Readers know that pointing out the gross spelling errors of the Blunderer and the rector can be tedious for many people. Ordinarily, we would just chalk these embarrassments up to the inferior formation these men received and leave it at that. However, these clerics persist in representing themselves as the very best in Catholicism, and they are ever so quick to lambaste others as "country priests" -- or even worse -- for their mistakes. So turn about is always fair play here.

The rector, with his flair for belaboring the obvious, tells us:

We have have five seminarians left from last year, and have two new ones this year...All tolled, there will be seven...

Had he be given a real education, he would have written "all told." One of the meanings of 'to tell,' indeed the original Old English meaning, is to count, reckon up, mention numerically, calculate the total amount. That's why we call someone who counts votes or cash a "teller."

The howler is especially horrific for a Catholic, who should have had that meaning of "tell" in mind from the idiom "to tell one's beads," meaning to say the Rosary ( as in Paul Laurence Dunbar's line, "She told her beads with downcast eyes," or in the old Percy ballad, "It was a friar of orders gray/Walkt forth to tell his beads"). The ignorance is compounded in a priest, who should have known the sense from the Douay verson of Psalm 146.4: "Who telleth the number of the stars; and calleth them all by their names."

Educated folk know that 'to toll' means to exact as a toll (charge, tax) or to sound a (large) bell slowly at regular intervals or to attract, entice, allure (as in 'toll-bait' or 'toller'). But that's our point. It's the old story of the emperor's new clothes, isn't it? Apparently, the rector's been hanging around the Blunderer for too long: he's absorbed all those bad habits of language, which an inferior education did not remove.

As an aside, if you'd like a really humorous look at the boo-boo the rector shares with many others of the stubbornly careless classes, we suggest you read the Word Detective's fine note on this error. After you read the note, be sure to remember to

STARVE THE BEAST & KEEP YOUR MONEY AT HOME