A good friend with an inquisitive mind and an expert at research sent a challenging email this morning. Yesterday's post crediting W. B. Yeats with the quote concerning "Magic Things" may or may not have been penned originally by him. Although many other brilliant quotations can rightly be credited to the poet, this was probably not among them.
It seems we must conduct our research more thoroughly concerning sources of quotes as we've learned to do with Urban Legends. Because my friend is so very good at this, she directed me to a site that does just that - myth bust quotations. It's called Quote Investigator. They in turn found another site to help them get to the bottom of this travesty. Terri Guillemets is a researcher who posts her discoveries on The Quote Garden. Well, I'm for sure a monkey's aunt, because I got it wrong. I could point you to the site that led me astray, but you probably already have it bookmarked and I don't like to blame shift. I didn't do sufficient research.
Here's the real story. Mr. Phillpotts was an English playwright and author. According to the folks at Quote Investigator, this quote came from a book published in 1919 titled A Shadow Passes. According to the researcher this portion of the quote, waiting for our wits to grow sharper, referred to a need at the time to improve methods of scientific discovery. As science knowledge improved, we would have a better understanding of the complexities of - the buckbean.
I don't know how you receive this startling information but I must say that I'm a little disappointed. I do like the word "magical" better than magic, but I'm less impressed by the buckbean. I also hope you will excuse my image of buckwheat in the header, but I couldn't find a picture of a buckbean that was royalty free.
I hope, dear thorough friend, you will note that I am willing to admit my mistake and print a retraction as necessary. I would be distressed if quotes from my novels were credited to another. My sincere apologies to Mr. Phillpotts.
