I vow to thee with a small 't'

Not surprisingly, perhaps, a high proportion of the linguistic material commented on in this blog has been extracted from the pages of the two periodical publications that our household takes every week: namely Radio Times and The Week. Both are good publications that we would not want to be without. But both provide fruitful material for an amateur pedant.

The Week printed in February, in their 'Pick of the week's correspondence' page, a letter from a gentleman in Wales (whose name I will not provide, lest it provoke a flood of pedantic hate mail to the poor chap) who had written to The Times "You tell us that the National Secular Society has vowed to try to outlaw prayers in Parliament. Vowed to whom ?" ('Ha ha, got you there, you stupid and inconsistent old secularites', I hear our gentleman chuckling.)

Now I wonder on what grounds this letter was chosen to appear among the 'Pick of the week's correspondence ?' My guess is that on a hasty reading it appears to make a witty and meaningful thrust at the National Secular Society. Actually it merely displays the writer's ignorance of the significance of the English word 'vow'. It derives (via French vouer) from the Latin votum meaning a solemn promise, or any strong wish or desire. It appeared in our language over five centuries ago, and has been used (and still is used) to denote such a promise or wish, made to whomsoever - even to oneself. And our word 'vote' is its cousin.

The National Secular Society presumably made the promise to themselves (a perfectly legitimate use of the word 'vow) - or even to the world at large. Indeed, The Times may have merely used the term 'vow' metaphorically in their report.

What is surprising is not just that someone seems here to be claiming the term 'vow' for use only in religious contexts; but that the editors of The Week thought fit to re-publish such a silly letter among its choices.

Incidentally, when Cecil Spring-Rice (a lovely surname that I have from time to time mused on with pleasure since boyhood) wrote "I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above ", how did he mean us to interpret his words ? The commas indicate that he is vowing not to God, but to his country. The meaning of the phrase 'all earthly things above' also requires syntactical interpretation. Work it out.

I vow to thee with a small 't'