The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [290]
Page 131: A helpful French-speaking reader wrote to inquire why I had called Fergus’s male child “Germaine,” this being the strictly female spelling of said name. Well… because I don’t speak French, and none of my French dictionaries and idiom books included proper names, that’s why. Change “Germaine” to “Germain,” throughout, please.
Page 139: typo; change “breois voluptas” to “brevis voluptas.”
Page 139: typo; change “veneiis” to “veneris.”
Page 225: change “Thou” to “Thee.”
Page 229: insert comma. Change “dribbled down staining the blanket” to “dribbled down, staining the blanket.”
Pages 333, 336: “Glenmorangie” is one word, not two.
Page 333: “then” should be “hen”; “That’s not it, hen, and you know it.”
Page 420: Moravians.
This was a matter of some mild confusion to me, since varying sources informed me that the Moravians were a) from Moravia (a likely story), which is in part of modern-day Czechoslovakia (or whatever they’re calling it these days), and therefore spoke something like Slovakian, and that b) the Moravians who settled in North Carolina spoke German. Since I needed German-speakers (I thought it doubtful that Jamie spoke either Czech or Slovakian, but I did know he could speak German), I opted merely to mention the Moravians in a doubtful tone of voice, and feature the Muellers and Pastor Gottfried as German Lutherans—who were certainly there, and who also certainly spoke German.
However, I am now reliably informed that the Moravian settlement at Salem (which may appear in one of the future books) was composed of German-speaking people, who were merely called Moravians because the religious movement to which they were attached originated in Moravia. So there, now we’ve got that straight. Not that it matters, since there aren’t actually any Moravians in any of the first four books, but we like to be as accurate as possible anyway.
Page 500: insert comma. Change “Fresh, too—see the sap’s not dried” to “Fresh, too—see, the sap’s not dried.”
Page 520: knitting.
Again, here’s one of those maybe so/maybe no bits. I knew there were such things as straight knitting needles in the eighteenth century, but that’s about all I knew about them. I therefore asked one of my knowledgeable friends, who is a crafts expert, about the history of knitting needles, wanting to know whether such things as circular knitting needles existed at the time.
She replied with a great deal of useful and valuable information, including a description of something called “knitting sheaths,” made of steel wire, and (I gathered) used to hold excess stitches while working on a large garment. This, of course, is what circular knitting needles do, and I promptly made a mental leap, equating the two—and provided Claire with circular knitting needles in her basket, as well as the quadruple double-pointed needles for turning stocking heels.
As I later learned from the experts of the CompuServe Crafts Forum, a knitting sheath is not the same thing as a circular needle, and while the double-pointed needles are historically accurate, the circular ones aren’t. On the other hand, they all added, they loved the scene, and we are writing fiction here rather than history, aren’t we?
Page 528: “the the.” Pick one, discard the other.
Page 696: Change “silent for moment.” to “silent for a moment.”
Page 847: Insert period after “fight”; “It was a fair fight. I said.”
Page 1070: Insert comma; “brushing sand from her skirts, and bent.”
Now, I don’t by any means claim that this listing of errata is complete. I now and then get helpful letters or E-mail pointing out some small inaccuracy (perceived or real), which invariably conclude with the writer kindly assuring me that this is really pretty good, if they’ve found only one error in umpty-zillion pages! I thank them graciously, and refrain from telling them about the errors they didn’t happen to notice.
APPENDIX II
GAELIC
(GAIDHLIG)