~SigCity~
The Story Of Donner and Blitzen ?
Two of Santa's reindeer were named 'Donner' and 'Blitzen.'are wrongly named!
If you can you recite the names of Santa's eight reindeer you probably do it by recalling the first few lines of the 1949 song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer".
The Song lists the reindeer as follows"
- You know Dasher and Dancer,
- and Prancer and Vixen;
- Comet and Cupid,
- and Donner and Blitzen
- "Now! Dasher, now! Dancer, now!
- Prancer, and Vixen,
- On! Comet, on! Cupid, on!
- Dunder and Blixem
Although most people don't realizes it, two of those names are wrong, at least when compared to the work that added eight individually named reindeer to the Santa Claus legend: "A Visit from Saint Nicholas," first published in 1823.
The most common version of this poem reads as follows:
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name.
"Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! on, Cupid! on Donder and Blitzen! To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall! Now, dash away! dash away! dash away all!
Two of the reindeer's name are wrong even in The poem.
The Reindeer names were taken by Dutchman from a common Dutch exclamation of the time, "Dunder and Blixem!" (the Dutch words for "thunder" and "lightning,").
These are the names that appeared in the original 1823 publication of "A Visit from Saint Nicholas":
In 1837, Charles Fenno Hoffman made several alterations to "A Visit from Saint Nicholas," including changing 'Blixem' to 'Blixen' (to make it rhyme with 'Vixen') and 'Dunder' to 'Donder' (for reasons unknown).
When Clement Clarke Moore prepared "A Visit from Saint Nicholas" for publication in his own 1844 book of verse, if he was not the true author these two names may have sounded odd to him (in part because he knew German but not Dutch). He therefore may have rechristened one of the reindeer 'Blitzen' (after the German word for 'lightning') and retained Hoffman's change of 'Dunder' to 'Donder.'
Moore's 1844 version of the poem is the one that became the standard and established 'Donder' and 'Blitzen' as the names of two of Santa' reindeer in the memories of generations of children!
For The Full Story click on Urbin Legends Below!
Village
Legends
Rudolph
View Page Stats
See who's visiting this page.Page design by Retired Esquire
CopyrightŠ2001