Anne of Green Gables II: Smelly Fortnight

One of the pleasures of the Anne of Green Gables series, that the little Goofs and I are listening to, is the archaic language. For exmaple, the characters often refer to plans to be made in a “fortnight.”

“What’s a fortnight,” the little Goofs asked the first time they heard.

“Two weeks,” I explained, and then not wanting to leave it alone, I continued. “We should try to bring that back, the term fortnight sounds much more interesting then two weeks.”

Naturally the little Goofs ignored me. But every time someone in the books mentioned a fortnight I reiterated my proposal. Finally GoofBoy exploded, “I know dad. You want to wear a monocle. You want to sell the house buy a farm and ‘work the land.’ And we should all say fortnight. Enough already.”

So I dropped it. But occasionally we take Guillotine Buddy to school. He isn’t that interested in Prince Edward Island (not enough guillotines – although there are French people about, so you never know - maybe in one of the later books.) But he had to ask, “What’s a fortnight?”

“Oh no,” GoofBoy moaned. “It is two weeks, but now my dad is going to go on about it…”

“Well,” I began, hoping I’d found a new ally, “You have to admit it has a certain poetry to it?”

Guillotine Buddy, unsurprisingly, had his own take.

“I thought they said fart night. For me, every night is fart night!”