Recently, Rich and I attended a folk concert where the group
performed the Mississippi John Hurt song, “Make me down a pallet on the floor.”
As a Louisiana native, I slept on many a pallet as a child while visiting
relatives. (Some relatives offered if
enough beds were not available to hang us on a nail to sleep, but I always
preferred a pallet.) Chances are that those of you who did not grow
up in the South at some time have laid down “a temporary bed made from bedding
arranged on the floor, especially for a child,” the definition taken from my
brand spanking new American Heritage Dictionary
of the English Language, 5th edition. The word “pallet” ultimately goes back to the
Anglo-Norman and Latin words for “pile of straw,” which in days of yore would have
made up a guest bed. The OED also lists a rare but not obsolete
usage of “pallet” as a verb, so at bedtime you could say, “Let’s go pallet on
the pallet.”
These thoughts bring me back to the basic idea of sleeping
places—beds. While the word history
itself of “bed” is simple, actual meanings of the word in its origins have interesting
variations. For this investigation, I
pulled out my OED. The Old English form of the modern word “bed”
is actually “bed” or “bedd”—quite straightforward as far as word histories
go. However, the meaning began in
Germanic times as “a dug out place,” and “a ‘lair’ of men or beasts.” “Bed” in its origin also referred to a
garden-bed. It is unclear if the naming
of a “garden-bed” was influenced by the concept of the sleeping bed for “men or
beasts.” As one whose bassets slept in
the bed with her, I appreciate this connection of men and beasts sleeping in
beds.
Regardless of where you sleep—pallet, bed, or elsewhere—or with
whom or what you sleep, I wish you sweet dreams!
No comments:
Post a Comment