Yesterday’s post started with this: “How are your grammar skills? Specifically, how well do you understand ‘lie’ (to recline) vs. ‘lay’ (to place)?”
Here are some of the contributing factors for all the confusion between “lay” and “lie”:
1. The past tense of “lie” is “lay,” the same spelling and pronunciation as the present tense of the verb “lay.”
2. The past tense AND the past participle for “lay” are both “laid”; however, the past participle of “lie” is not “laid” but “lain” – and few people these days actually use “lain.”
3. The verb “lay” is transitive and requires a direct object; “lie” is intransitive and does not take a direct object.
Yesterday’s post focused on Dickinson’s poem ‘I died for beauty” which includes these lines: “When One who died for Truth, was lain / In an adjoining Room.”
The correct word at the end of that first line is “laid,” which Mabel Loomis Todd pointed out to Thomas Higginson, but Higginson insisted the word “lain” remain “as it is” when they published the first edition of “Poems” in 1890.
Here are some of the contributing factors for all the confusion between “lay” and “lie”:
1. The past tense of “lie” is “lay,” the same spelling and pronunciation as the present tense of the verb “lay.”
2. The past tense AND the past participle for “lay” are both “laid”; however, the past participle of “lie” is not “laid” but “lain” – and few people these days actually use “lain.”
3. The verb “lay” is transitive and requires a direct object; “lie” is intransitive and does not take a direct object.
Yesterday’s post focused on Dickinson’s poem ‘I died for beauty” which includes these lines: “When One who died for Truth, was lain / In an adjoining Room.”
The correct word at the end of that first line is “laid,” which Mabel Loomis Todd pointed out to Thomas Higginson, but Higginson insisted the word “lain” remain “as it is” when they published the first edition of “Poems” in 1890.
 |  |
In Febrary 1891, Higginson received a letter from Julia Eastman, a principal of a school for girls, about Dickinson’s misuse of “lain” in this poem:
“Dear Sir,
Would it be an ‘impertinence’ – to borrow your own word – to ask if one change might not be made in the next edition of Emily Dickinson’s ‘Poems’?
On page 119, in the line, ‘When one who died for truth was lain,’ could not ‘laid’ be substituted without harming the poem?”
Eastman continued later in the letter with this observation:
“To most of the educated people of New England, the confusion of ‘lie’ & ‘lay’ is condoned with some difficulty, and the writer of this note is the more sensitive, perhaps, with regard to a grammatical error of this nature, from the fact of her having known Miss Dickinson, and also in her having the most unspeakable delight in her poems.”
Across the top of this letter, Higginson wrote, “I have discouraged this.”
A professor at Amherst College, George F. Whicher, in his 1938 book This Was a Poet, argued that Dickinson’s grammatical errors – including this “lain” for “laid” – were traceable to the fact that she followed the current spoken usage of her time. More on this tomorrow.
“Dear Sir,
Would it be an ‘impertinence’ – to borrow your own word – to ask if one change might not be made in the next edition of Emily Dickinson’s ‘Poems’?
On page 119, in the line, ‘When one who died for truth was lain,’ could not ‘laid’ be substituted without harming the poem?”
Eastman continued later in the letter with this observation:
“To most of the educated people of New England, the confusion of ‘lie’ & ‘lay’ is condoned with some difficulty, and the writer of this note is the more sensitive, perhaps, with regard to a grammatical error of this nature, from the fact of her having known Miss Dickinson, and also in her having the most unspeakable delight in her poems.”
Across the top of this letter, Higginson wrote, “I have discouraged this.”
A professor at Amherst College, George F. Whicher, in his 1938 book This Was a Poet, argued that Dickinson’s grammatical errors – including this “lain” for “laid” – were traceable to the fact that she followed the current spoken usage of her time. More on this tomorrow.
RSS Feed
