英語聽書《白鯨記》 第1期
Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a GrammarSchool
The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, andbrain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his oldlexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief,mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of allthe known nations of the world. He loved to dust hisold grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him ofhis mortality.
"While you take in hand to school others, and toteach them by what name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue leaving out, throughignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh the signification of the word, you deliverthat which is not true." —HACKLUYT
"WHALE.... Sw. and Dan. HVAL. This animal is named from roundness or rolling; for in Dan.HVALT is arched or vaulted." —WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY
"WHALE.... It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. WALLEN; A.S. WALW-IAN, to roll, towallow." —RICHARDSON'S DICTIONARY
KETOS, GREEK.
CETUS, LATIN.
WHOEL, ANGLO-SAXON.
HVALT, DANISH.
WAL, DUTCH.
HWAL, SWEDISH.
WHALE, ICELANDIC.
WHALE, ENGLISH.
BALEINE, FRENCH.
BALLENA, SPANISH.
PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, FEGEE.
PEHEE-NUEE-NUEE, ERROMANGOAN.
EXTRACTS (Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian).
It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm of a poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long Vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, picking upwhatever random allusions to whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever, sacred orprofane. Therefore you must not, in every case at least, take the higgledy-piggledy whalestatements, however authentic, in these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from it. Astouching the ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here appearing, these extracts aresolely valuable or entertaining, as affording a glancing bird's eye view of what has beenpromiscuously said, thought, fancied, and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and generations,including our own.
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