"O Holy Night, The stars are brightly shining.
It is the night, of our dear Saviour's birth."
Christmas is one of the strangest times of the year. As we live in an increasingly secular society, the instance of most people singing Christmas Carols has probably passed and now we're more likely to hear increasingly banal music that has rushed in to fill the void.
What once was a Christian co-opt and invasion of a Roman festival, is now a secular co-opt and invasion of that Christian festival. The banal has almost succeded in toppling the sacred when it comes to the kinds of songs that people sing; and with it, one of the last remnants where you are likely to find that curious word in the vocative register: O.
Yes, 'O'. One letter. That is not a misspelling. O is an acceptable word to play in Scrabble for instance, albeit one that is almost impossible to put on the board. When playing Scrabble because you have to build off of words that are already on the board, it means that it is impossible to make one letter words most of the time. The only time that you could in theory make a one letter word, is right at the beginning of the game, and those words are very limited.
This is a blog post. It could be a waste of time. I have just seen a horse.
E - which is a regional interjection from Yorkshire.
E by gum. E up fluffy whiskers.
I - which is the perpendicular pronoun.
I think that this is obvious.
O - which is what is known as a poetic vocative.
O English, what trouble hast thou wrought?
'O' is different to oh. Oh is used as an interjection. 'Oh' can be used to sharply express a whole cast of emotion; including disappointment, sorrow, joy, pain, pleasure, hesitation, regret, and can even be used as recognition of what someone else has said, or with a questioning intonation to further press someone for more information about what they have just said.
In text, 'oh' doesn't have to be capitalised and might occur in the middle of a sentence. As a hanging interjection, it will be entrapped by surrounding commas because it isn't of itself a clause.
'O' on the other hand is always capitalized. As a poetic vocative, it always immediately precedes the person or thing being addressed. This is the odd thing though, even though it is a poetic vocative (which means that it is employed in addressing or invoking a person or thing, it isn't actually a proper noun.
Pronouns may be played on the Scrabble board. It is perfectly acceptable to play His, Hers, Theirs, Ours, You etc. on the Scrabble board. It is even acceptable to play 'I' on the Scrabble board because while I may be a pronoun, it is not a proper noun; for nobody has the proper name of 'I'. Cycling back around to 'O'. There isn't anyone or anything called 'O' unless that letter is used as the initial for something else. Roy Orbison was know as 'The Big O' but now we've moved well away from the word 'O'.
'O' as a vocative can be found in places like:
'O Yahweh, my God, in you I have taken refuge' (Psalm 7:1),
'O holy night, the stars are brightly shining' (Christmas carol),
'O Love divine, what hast thou done!' (Charles Wesley),
'O Canada! Our home and native land!' (Canadian national anthem),
'O Fortuna, Velut luna, Statu variabilis.' (Carmina Burana, Carl Orff)
'O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,' (Walt Whitman)
In all of those places, the poetic vocative is invoked when the person or thing is bigger than the one making the invocation. The vocative case in English is used in very formal settings and the most common places that you will hear it are in statutory bodies like courts and parliament. 'Mister Speaker', 'Madam President', 'M'lud', are all in this form.
The reason why a scabby language like English, that nasty little thief of the Anglo-Frisian language family even has a vocative case is likely because had it imposed upon it when the Normans invaded England in 1066. English's cousins in Norwegian, German and Icelandic generally do not have a vocative case and when they do, it is because English passed it back to them once the English edition of the Bible started to make its way around the world.
O in English is first recorded the middle of the twelfth century; and it is apparent that Middle English got it from Old French who in turn got it from Latin ō, who by that time had already abandoned it for academic uses. English's vocative 'O' is a late addition to the language; but was already seen as archaic by the time that the Authorised Bible was published, under the direction of King James I (James VI of Scotland). Probably because of the ubiquity of the King James Bible from 1611 onwards, 'O' was given a second chance to escape; hence the reason why it exists in Christmas carols and poetry.
"Oh Holy Night!" which is wrong, looks more like a creative interjection in place of a swear word; in the same way that Bandit Heeler's favourite injection in "Biscuits!". "Oh, Holy Night!" looks like either a declaration of surprise or disappointment. However "O Holy Night!" which is actually how the thing is spelled, uses the vocative case and declares that the "Holy Night" is the thing which is sacred or worthy. Likewise "O Canada" places Canada as the thing which is being declared as worthy; which is fitting as a national anthem is usually the national song which declares some kind of worthiness to the nation, flag, or monarch which represents it. "Oh Canada!" sounds like a swear word and "Oh, Canada!" sounds like the sort of thing that someone might say if they have been merrily sailing along for months and have accidentally bumped into Canada (to be fair, Canada is pretty big; so it's not like you could have missed it).
Vocative 'O' almost but not quite falls into the category of being a skeuomorph within the English language. Just like the little handle on the side of maple syrup bottles which is totally useless, or pictures of steam trains on level crossing signs despite the fact that steam trains haven't really been in main line use for more than 60 years, or even that picture of a dogbone handset on the icon for 'Phone' when it's totally obvious that the mobile phone that you are using looks nothing like that, vocative 'O' is almost totally useless but hangs around as a decoration to mark the worthy and sacred.
In a world where the most common songs that you are likely to hear at Christmas are now "All I Want For Christmas Is You" by Mariah Carey, "Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time" by Paul McCartney, or "Jingle Bells" by whoever it is, then vocative 'O' can not exist because once the sacred and the worthy has been scraped away, there is simply no place for it at all.
O English, what trouble hast thou wrought?
Aside:
Compare this curious line from 'O Holy Night':
"Led by the light of Faith serenely beaming
With glowing hearts by His cradle we stand."
- O Holy Night
with:
"With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free,"
- O Canada
If you do have a glowing heart, then there is a chance that you are either radioactive and should seek urgent medical care, or that you are E.T. and should run away from urgent medical care. In both cases, it sounds incredibly uncomfortable.
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