Not so bright and beautiful

[jonfan]

Joseph Addison’s version of Psalm 23 has ‘the friendly crook shall be thine aid’. Found in that original version in EH of 1933.

[PeterboroughDiapason]

Ah, but there is an all important comma, is there not?

God rest you merry, gentlemen...

But, according to Andrew Gant, the comma was BEFORE merry in the earliest versions and he quotes broadsheets and The Monthly Review from the 18th century that have this. Also The Gentleman's Magazine in 1824 and George Eliot in Silas Marner. Dickens quotes it without a comma at all. So when did the pedants (I include myself!) decide they were all wrong?

[vinteuil]

wiki provides some background -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Rest_You_Merry,_Gentlemen

,

[smittims]

I've always preferrred the alternative words as set by Vaughan Williams:

Come all you worthy gentlemen
That may be standing by