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Aurguplu Posted 5 years ago
Grammar

A stanza from Byron

Hello,


I am editing the translation of a book containing portions of Byron's poems. The following is from Byron's X, and I have a different understanding of the last line of it from the translator:

Troops of untended horses; here and there,

Some little hamlets, with new names uncouth;

Some shepherds (unlike Paris), led to stare

A moment at the European youth

Whom to the spot their school-boy feelings bear;

A Turk, with beads in hand, and pipe in mouth,

Extremely taken with his own religion,

Are what I found there—but the devil a Phrygian


The translator took the last line (in context with the rest of the portion of the poem cited here) to mean "This then is what I saw there, except for a Phrygian devil", whereas I understand it to mean "Are what I found there-but a Phrygian, not at all/but not a single Phrygian".


Could someone please tell me which one of us is right, or, if we are both wrong, what the correct paraphrasing in English would be?


Thank you very much in advance.

  

Top answer

You are right. This is an unusual use of "devil", unknown to me before now in this exact use. It is in the Oxford English Dictionary under "Phrases" in the entry "devil".

  • You are right.
  • This is an unusual use of "devil", unknown to me before now in this exact use.
  • It is in the Oxford English Dictionary under "Phrases" in the entry "devil".
  • They define it as "In collocation with a following noun, esp.
  • g.
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1 Answers
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You are right. This is an unusual use of "devil", unknown to me before now in this exact use. It is in the Oxford English Dictionary under "Phrases" in the entry "devil". They define it as "In collocation with a following noun, esp. separated by a, with the sense ‘not’, ‘not a single’, as in e.g. devil a doubt. Often with the. Chiefly Scottish and Irish English

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