From Wit’s End

Today as i was writing Leanne, i quoted from George Macdonald about an appropriate alternative name for the Man himself…

For what it’s worth, here’s hoping this nobody can help make things better for you, if Somebody has anything to say about it.

She wrote:

Oh, Somebody has something to say about it, I just don’t know what yet.

All in good time, i suppose. Oh, i found the initial reference to that name in
"Guild Court" by George MacDonald.  Here it is:

     " ‘What did Mr. Spelt read to you, Mattie?’
     ‘He read about >Somebody<–’
     It was very remarkable how Mattie would use the name of God, never with certainly with irreverence, but with a freedom that seemed to indicate that to her he was chiefly if not solely an object of metaphysical speculation or, possibly, of investigation; while she never uttered the name of the Saviour, but spoke of him as >Somebody<.  And I find that I must yet further interrupt the child herself to tell an anecdote about her which will perhaps account for the fact I am about to finish telling.  She was not three years old when she asked her mother, a sweet, thoughtful woman, in many ways superior to her husband, though not intellectually his equal– ‘Who made the tree in Wood Street?’   Her mother answered, of course, ‘God made it, my pet…’ for by instinct, she never spoke of her God without using some term of endearment to her child.  Mattie
answered– ‘I would like it better if a man had made it’ — a cry after the humanity of God — a longing in the heart of the three years’ child for the Messiah of God.  Her mother did not know well enough to tell her that a man, yes, >the< man did make them– ‘for by Him all things were made;’ — but Mattie may have had some undefined glimmering of the fact, for, as I have said, she always substituted >Somebody< for any name of the Lord.  I cannot help wishing that certain religious people of my acquaintance would, I do not say follow queer little Mattie’s example, but take a lesson from queer little Mattie."

[Oh, my mom just reminded me as she peeked in the door that the word somebody is in "The Wise Old Woman", the story i sent you a while ago -- at least in a similar usage, if not in the exact same way.]

Mattie also has her own name for Satan.  It is "Syne", which is the Scotch word for "time", you know like the New Year’s song "Auld Lang Syne".  Interesting, huh?  I don’t have time to type out the entire first reference where that term is used in such a way.  I’ll show it to you later, though, because it is fascinating.