FAMILIAR MISQUOTATIONS
To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—A misquotation which has obtained almost universal currency, and has now, I regret to see, been perpetuated in the title of a novel, relates to the famous Lyke-Wake Dirge. The first stanza runs :- "This ae night, this as night, Every night and all, Fire, and fleet, and candle-light, And Christ receive thy sawle."
Fleet is house-room, shelter, and completes the picture of the warmth and light and comfort from which the soul is represented as faring forth into cold and darkness. Yet it is donstantly rendered as sleet—spoiling the alliteration and interrupting the thought. Originally, perhaps, this may have been the fault of a transcriber, misled at once by a long s and an unfamiliar word.—I am, Sir, &c., SYDNEY C. GRIER.
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