undyingking: (Default)
[personal profile] undyingking
I guess you're all probably familiar, if only by repute, with the traditional song that starts:
Four-and-twenty virgins came down from Inverness;
And when the ball was over, there were four-and-twenty less.
It will not have escaped the sharp-eyed, though, that the second line contains what some consider a grammatical solecism.

I suggest the following improved version:
Four-and-twenty virgins came down from Invermuir;
And when the ball was over, there were four-and-twenty fewer.


Alternatively:
Four-and-twenty virgins came down from Invergordon;
And when the ball was over, there were four-and-twenty more o'dem.
(although arguably that one doesn't make much sense…)

Any more for any more? I guess it doesn't necessarily have to begin with 'Inver', probably any town somewhere in the Highlands would do.

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undyingking

March 2012

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