Hint #1: Roger, your guess was good because you were too smart to hit my trap. I thought my wording would diguise that it was indeed a person (not a thing).

Hint #2: It was not a man either.

Julia Taft?

I'm sorry, Roger, it was not "Flibbertigibbet" either. But you are very close - it was a young lady.

Hint #3: She was born in 1846.

(05-28-2014 08:33 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Hint #3: She was born in 1846.

Mary Harlan (as a future daughter-in-law)?

(05-28-2014 08:33 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Hint #3: She was born in 1846.

Well I guess that eliminates Kate Chase

Excellent, Roger! It was Edwin Stanton whom A. L. once told: "Mary is tremendously in love with Senator Harlan's little daughter. I think she has picked her out for a daughter-in-law. As usual, I think Mary has shown fine taste."

Since Gene was right, too, and completing the sentence with "Fido" made perfectly sense as well, you both win a trip to Hildene.

Thanks, Eva. I was thinking it wasn't Mary Ord or Julia Grant even before you posted the birth year.

This was the first time I have read/heard the term "flibbertigibbet" since my grandmother died in 1965. She used it quite a lot, and I always loved it. I've never known its source, however. Has anyone ever searched it?

P.S. Depending on whom my grandmother was describing, flibbertigibbet could define someone good and cute or someone who was a social butterfly but never accomplished a thing.

Laurie, this is A. Lincoln's explanation to Julia Taft whom he called a "flibbertiggibet": "It's a small, slim thing with curls and a white dress and a blue sash who flies instead of walking."

Most likely he had it from Shakespeare's King Lear (IV, i):

"EDGAR
...Poor Tom hath been scared out of his good wits. Bless thee, goodman’s son, from the foul fiend! Five fiends have been in poor Tom at once: of lust, as Obidicut; Hobbididence, prince of dumbness; Mahu, of stealing; Modo, of murder; Flibbertigibbet, of mopping and mowing, who since possesses chambermaids and waiting-women. So bless thee, master."

I found Shakespeare got the name from Samuel Harsnett's Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (1603), where one reads of 40 fiends, which Jesuits cast out and among which was Fliberdigibbet, described as one of "foure deuils of the round, or Morrice, whom Sara in her fits, tuned together, in measure and sweet cadence."
Orignally it is a middle English word for a flighty, whimsical or talkative person, usually a young woman.

On what day of the week was Abraham Lincoln born?

Sunday? (In case it was Sunday - I didn't look it up or so, but I'm very sure I read it somewhere.)

(05-30-2014 03:30 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Sunday? (In case it was Sunday - I didn't look it up or so, but I'm very sure I read it somewhere.)

You are quite correct, Eva. I had never thought about what day of the week until one of my volunteers recently gave me a perpetual calendar. Now, how well does Abe fit the old rhyme of "...but the child that is born on the Sabbath Day is bonny and blythe and good and gay."?

Isn't the Sabbath a Saturday?