The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [289]
Page 913: “1968.”
This is not an error, if the dates in Outlander are adjusted from 1945 to 1946, and 1967 to 1968 (see discussion of chronology in “Where Titles Comes From”). On the other hand, if they aren’t, it is.
VOYAGER
Page 120: change “chess” to “dice.”
Page 145: a charaid(h)?
Page 223: punctuation error. Change “married couldn’t do enough” to “married. Couldn’t do enough.”
Page 244: change 1945 to 1946.
Page 258: typo. Change “intstead” to “instead.”
Pages 373–374: we have a prostitute named Mollie on one page, and Millie on the next. Take your choice, but it ought to be the same name on both pages.
Page 409: change “I drifted down the street” to “As I drifted down the street.”
Page 538: “lang-nebbit” shouldn’t be italicized; it’s Scots, not Gaidhlig.
Page 636: typo. “stop at Lewes” should be “stop at Lewis.”
Page 681: “His eyes were on Fergus, who was teasing Marsali with an albatross’s feather, holding her by one arm and tickling her beneath the chin as she struggled ineffectually to get away.”
Well, this is another of the maybe so/maybe no errors. As a few astute readers have pointed out, Fergus has only one hand, and presumably would find it difficult to hold an albatross’s feather with his hook. This is perfectly true; on the other hand, I’m not so sure that he isn’t holding Marsali’s arm with his hook, and using his hand to wield the feather. Naturally, he couldn’t be restraining her very effectively in this fashion—but then, he obviously isn’t, or she wouldn’t be struggling “ineffectually,” would she?
Page 699: change “out the realm of Kraken” to “out of the realm of Kraken.”
Page 709: “Gideon and his daughter.”
Okay, it’s a fair cop. Claire’s not a Bible scholar, and neither am I. It wasn’t Gideon, it was Jephthath (Judges 12).
Page 737: punctuation error. Change “thought he’d killed, lank brown hair” to “thought he’d killed. Lank brown hair.”
Page 761: insert comma. Change “kirtling it up above my knees and took” to “kirtling it up above my knees, and took.”
Page 822: MacKimmie/Joyce
Okay. I admit it, I temporarily lost track of Laoghaire’s husbands. She had two before marrying Jamie—Hugh MacKenzie, one of Colum’s tacksmen, and then Simon MacKimmie, who fathered Marsali and Joan and died in prison. Only I hadn’t taken proper note of Simon, and so had him in one spot as Simon MacKimmie and in another as Simon Joyce, and when I wrote this particular passage, I hadn’t yet made up my mind which was right, so included both names, intending to strike out the extraneous one later. Only I didn’t.
Page 848: “How much blood did ye tell me a person has in his body?” he asked. “About eight quarts,” I said, bewildered. “Why?”
At this point in the story, Claire is under a fair amount of stress, having been attacked by a pirate and seriously wounded. It’s therefore understandable that she should have suffered a slight lapse of attention, since she plainly would know that the human body contains an average of eight pints of blood, rather than eight quarts.
Page 894: insert period. “Yes, that was his name. Why?”
Page 897: change “MacIvers” to “MacIver.”
Page 1024: the Gaidhlig phrase beginning “A Mhìcheal” should be italicized.
DRUMS OF AUTUMN
Page 83: At the calling of the clans, I am reliably informed, customary usage dictates that the representative of the MacDonalds should call, “Clan Donald is here,” rather than “MacDonald is here.” This is reasonable usage, given that “MacDonald” really means “son(s) of Donald;” on the other hand, MacLeod, McKuen, MacLaren, and (to the best of my knowledge) all other “Mac” clans don’t do this, but call according to the “Mac” form of the name. On the third hand, nobody says custom has to be consistent, and if Clan Donald wants to call itself that, it’s certainly fine by me.
Page 94: The same vigilant horticulturists
who objected to the cherry season in Scotland are still on the job regarding the proper season for peaches in the Carolinas. Hmm. Possibly it does not occur to these helpful souls that the