The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

3^4
The Highland Monthly.
if not much worn in the way of legitimate using, had sorely-
suffered from rough and careless handling. The n that
became r or i was always at the edge of the plate. It was,
so to speak, an outsider. Here then was a clue to the key
that solved the mystery. The unhappy letter had obviously
lost its exposed limb much in the same way as our morning
paper is too often maimed in its foot-line. Where the
amputation was at the hip-joint the n looked like an i ; a
knee-joint amputation made it in the printer's eye an r. It
is well known that, in the olden times, stereo-plates were
not carefully stored b}- the master printer, while also they
were peculiarly obnoxious to his men, who never missed
the chance of giving them a kick or a buffet. In those
days stereo-plates were not only roughly used, but they
sometimes disappeared altogether, like the plates of a
reprint of Alexander Macdonald's poems, in a way that
suggested foul play. It is otherwise nowadays. The plateroom
at Neill & Co.'s establishment is a sight worth seeing.
It is the strong-room of the place—a prison-like, fireproof
apartment, arched in with solid masonry, where the stereo-
plates are all carefully arranged and indexed, like the books
in a great library. The n group of blunders are not, there-
fore, very likely to occur in future reprints.
But there is another group of misprints, the origin of
w^hich the proof before me very aptly explains. It may be
called the hyphen group. Daoine, dealachadh, deisciobuil,
Trionaid, and the like, are hyphened out as da-oine,
de-alachadh, de-isciobuil, Tri-onaid. The aspirated con-
sonant is the special sport of this h)-phen game of ducks
and drakes, e.g., dealac-hadh, coim-head, gleid-headh, &c.
For this blundered use of the hyphen the old stereo-printed
" copy " is nowise responsible. But its fons et origo can
easily be traced in the proof before me. In stature and
general " get up " our young Mother's Catechism closely
resembles the grandmother. There are, however, differ-
ences ;
and
these differences, though so minute as not