ACHILLES' HEEL. Before the Saskatchewan election last year, rant Devine was reported to have said that the failure of Roy Romanow to state clearly his political beliefs was the NDP leaders "single biggest Achilles' heel." Quite apart from the then premier's choice of the word biggest as the superlative for a part of the human body that normally comes only in pairs, even the moody Greek warrior had but one heel that proved to be a fatal weak spot.
GROWING LIKE TOPSY. Charlotte Gray, writing in Saturday Night about our expanding national capital region, mentioned "big charts of the city showing Ottawa growing like Topsy." In fact, Topsy herself did not grow, she "growed," and the original reference had nothing to do with increased size. The little slave girl of Uncle Toms Cabin was asked about her knowledge of God, and invited to explain how she had come into the world. Since Topsy could claim no parents she replied, "I 'spect I grow'd. Don't think nobody never made me." The growth that is commonly likened to Topsy's should therefore be confined to things that have apparently developed of their own accord, without any external assistance or direction.
KING CANUTE. In his review of an American book, The Environmental Factor, Colin Isaacs, a former executive director of Pollution Probe, referred to the "King Canute syndrome," which he evidently assumed to be synonymous with arrogance or vanity. The mistake arises from a misinterpretation of the story that Canute, a
Danish king who ruled England in the 11th century, sat down on the seashore near Southampton and commanded the rising tide to recede. When the advancing water ignored his order and started to cover him he pointed out to his sycophantic attendants that even he, as king, was unable to reverse the flow of the ocean. He undertook the experiment to rebuke the flattery of his courtiers, not as an act of self-ascribed omnipotence.
PIG-HEADED LEGIONNAIRES. Although a Financial Post editorial justifiably decried the proliferation of parliamentary committees and royal commissions that pervade Canada, it was less than strictly accurate in complaining that "their number is Legion," for the biblical expression refers to a name, not a number. According to Mark the Evangelist, a Gadarene man possessed by demons, when asked by Christ to identify himself, replied "My name is Legion: for we are many," meaning that the devils inside him were as numerous as the number of soldiers in a Roman legion. Jesus, somewhat unfairly and apparently without compensation to the animals' owner, transferred the demons to a herd of 2,000 innocent swine feeding nearby, causing them to dash headlong down a steep slope into the Sea of Galilee, where they all drowned.
SPECTRAL IMAGERY. The Globe arid Mail asserted that "Like Marley's Ghost, the spectre of recession -- allegedly past -continues to rattle around the minds of corporate travel managers." This reference to a fictional character is not only pointless, it erroneously suggests that the earthly former partner to whom Marley paid his spectral visit was in the travel business.
PO0R, NASTY, BRUTISH, AND SHORT. A Toronto newspaper columnist drew attention to "contrarians" who predict that the expected economic upturn will not be as "poor, nasty, brutish and short as the Hobbesian majority now proclaims." Leviathan's famous phrase was meant to describe the fate of human life in a natural state of society, where universal competition prevails in the absence of an accepted authority. Even the more pessimistic economists are not a "Hobbesian majority"; they are simply victims of quotation dropping.
SAVAGE BREAST. "Soothe the Savage Beast" was the headline on an invitation by the Calgary Centre for the Performing Arts to its series of free lunchtime concerts. To illustrate the offer, the advertisement displayed a picture of an angry, King Kong-like creature, towering with raised fist above a row of organ pipes. Despite their eye-catching message, the opening words were either a deliberate or an unnoticed misquotation. "Music has charms to soothe a savage breast," wrote William Congreve for the first line of his tragedy, The Mourning Bride.
WHAT, IS HORATIO THERE! A PIECE OF HIM. A Financial Post columnist, no doubt eager to share in the euphoria that greeted the failed coup attempt against the Soviet leadership in August 1991, described Boris Yeltsin as "Horatio on the Bridge" who had saved his country front chaos and civil war. It is true that Hamlet's Horatio declared himself to be "more an antique Roman than a Dane," but it was his near namesake Horatius who, some centuries earlier, stood alone to repel the Etruscan army while his companions destroyed the bridge that Would have allowed the enemy to cross the Tiber.
