United States or Tokelau ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He married my mother at York, who received her first breath in that country: and as her maiden name was Robinson, I was called Robinson Kreutznaer: which not being easily pronounced in the English tongue, we are commonly known by the name of Crusoe. I was the youngest of three brothers.
Yet it stares right out of the very first paragraphs in the book a clean, perhaps accidental, proof of good scholarship, which De Foe possessed. Crusoe tells us his father was a German from Bremen, who married an Englishwoman, from whose family name of Robinson came the son's name which was properly Robinson Kreutznaer.
This latter name, he explains, became corrupted in the common English speech into Crusoe. That is an excellent touch. The German pronunciation of Kreutznaer would sound like Krites-nare, and a mere dry scholar would have evolved Crysoe out of the name. But the English-speaking people everywhere, until within the past twenty years or so, have given the German "eu" the sound of "oo" or "u."
He got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called—nay we call ourselves and write our name—Crusoe; and so my companions always called me.
It was in this manner, he declares, that he "first took to the paths of knowledge," and when he began his own "autobiography" he must have well remembered the opening of "Robinson Crusoe": "I was born in the year 1632, in the City of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, named Kreutznaer, who first settled at Hull," though Borrow himself would have written it: "I was born in the year 16 , in the City of Y , of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, named Kruschen, who first settled at H ." Probably he remembered also that other fictitious autobiography of Defoe's, "The Adventures of Captain Singleton," of the child who was stolen and disposed of to a Gypsy and lived with his good Gypsy mother until she happened to be hanged, a little too soon for him to be "perfected in the strolling trade."
I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull: he got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called, nay we call ourselves, and write our name Crusoe, and so my companions always called me.
Robinson's father therefore was called Crootsner until it was shaved into Crootsno and thence smoothed to Crusoe. But what was the Christian name of the elder Kreutznaer? Or of the boy's mother? Or of his brothers or sisters?
London Gaz. I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull: he got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York; from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called, nay we call ourselves, and write, our name Crusoe; and so my companions always called me.
Word Of The Day