4

Around the time of the American Revolution, Samuel Adams wrote a poem "The Divine Source of Liberty" whose first stanza runs as follows:

All temporal power is of God,
And the magistratal, His institution, laud,
To but advance creaturely happiness aubaud:
Let us then affirm the Source of Liberty.

The word "aubaud" does not appear in any dictionary, not even the OED, nor have I seen it elsewhere except as a surname. Does anyone know what it means, or is it a typo for some other word?

Improve this question
8
  • 2
    I’m not finding any evidence that this poem actually exists — other than where you saw it. Commented Aug 27 at 2:29
  • My guess is that abaud is a spelling of about made to rhyme with laud. Commented Aug 27 at 11:29
  • 3
    As far as I can tell (tho it's hard to prove a negative), the poem is a fake invented by George Grant around 1996. Commented Aug 27 at 13:51
  • 1
    Also, there’s no evidence that Samuel Adams wrote any poetry at all. Commented Aug 27 at 14:09
  • The only sources I can find for this clip are Facebook and Instagram -- do you have anything authoritative? Commented Aug 27 at 17:34

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

I can't find evidence in any English dictionary that this word exists (all uses of it that I can find in the 18th century are in French sources and are proper nouns, mostly surnames or place-names), and no evidence that I can find that this poem existed any earlier than 1996, when George Grant published it in The Patriot's Handbook. Although he called the poem a "widely circulated verse," there is no evidence that I can find of it before this date. This strongly suggests that Grant fabricated the poem, or perhaps republished it unquestioningly from an unreliable secondary source.

If that is the case, the question is "what did the author mean for us to think aubaud means," and we can only guess from context. This is not easy, as the convoluted syntax throughout the poem doesn't yield clear meaning easily. It reads as if a modern author relied on the fact that modern readers find 18th-century texts difficult to parse in order to cut corners. The third line is difficult to interpret because the second is also hard: "magistratal," in every use I can find, is an adjective, and it's difficult to parse the number, tense, and object of "laud." The third line makes adequate sense without the word "aubaud" anyway; temporal power is given by God "to advance creaturely happiness." We're left to intuitively grasp at similar-sounding words; "abroad" seems like a reasonable choice (and I wonder why the author didn't simply use it).

Improve this answer
3
  • Littéraire. Concert donné à l'aube sous les fenêtres de quelqu'un. In this early dawn concert. Larousse dictionary. Left out the window. Commented Aug 28 at 15:08
  • @Lambie True, altering the spelling to "aubade" does yield 18th-century results. Still doesn't seem to yield a meaning that can be shoehorned into this context, though, at least not without a lot of shoehorning. Commented Aug 28 at 16:58
  • @Lambie And good point, I changed the "we can't find it in any dictionary" to "I can't find it in an English dictionary," not to speak for others. Commented Aug 28 at 17:01
4

A Google search suggests it might be a variation of aubade (see Wordnik).

An aubade is a dawn song (or possibly a poem or instrumental work). It is somewhat parallel to serenade for an evening song. Often an aubade is about lovers separating at dawn, while a serenade is often a song of a lover declaring love for another.

If Adams was using the word as a verb it would mean "sing in the morning" or "sing of the morning" Either would seem appropriate in the context.

Improve this answer
3
  • 1
    aubader is a verb in French meaning to deliver an aubade, but I can't find aubade as a verb in the OED or elsewhere in English. There isn't any evidence that Adams visited France or spoke French but maybe he picked the word up somewhere. Commented Aug 27 at 9:15
  • The intended syntax is rather unclear, but the mystery word doesn't seem to me to be intended as a verb. An adjective or preposition, like a faux-historic mangling of "about," seems more likely. This answer is a good speculation, but given the evidence that the poem is a 20th-century forgery, it seems like a red herring. Commented Aug 27 at 20:20
  • Larousse: Littéraire. Concert donné à l'aube sous les fenêtres de quelqu'un. Literary: concert given at dawn under someone's window. Commented Aug 28 at 15:07

You must log in to answer this question.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.