The term "Lilliput"?

[Daniel Moreau]

Last week on my journey on reading up on all there is about the Maine two-footers, I finished up Linwood Moody's The Maine Two-Footers and was off put by him referring to the two-footers as "lilliputs". A term which I've never heard before. But earlier this week I started reading Two Feet to Tidewater by Robert Jones and David Register, and noticed something peculiar in the first few chapters. There was a reference to a relatively short-lived newspaper called the Wiscasset Lilliputian, which--if I have my facts correct--was published before it was decided that the W&Q would be a two-footer, in 1881-1891.

Seeing this is making me wonder about where the term "Lilliput" really came from as it refers to a two-footer. From a quick Google search, it came up with the 1726 book Gulliver's Travels, where there's an island called Lilliput and Blefuscu, and the citizens of which are called Lilliputians.

So this brings me to a "chicken and egg" sort of situation. It seems Lilliput refers to something small and diminutive in size, but how could the editor of the Wiscasset Lilliputian have known that the W&F was going to be a two-footer? Did he see the Sandy River being established just a couple of years before and say "Goodness, this would be perfect for Wiscasset!" Would that make him one of the earliest supporters of the two-foot gauge at Wiscasset? And going off that, did Moody take the term from the newspaper, did he come up with it on his own, or was it a commonly used term for the two-footers back then?

[Dante Lakin]

So this brings me to a "chicken and egg" sort of situation. It seems Lilliput refers to something small and diminutive in size, but how could the editor of the Wiscasset Lilliputian have known that the W&F was going to be a two-footer? Did he see the Sandy River being established just a couple of years before and say "Goodness, this would be perfect for Wiscasset!" Would that make him one of the earliest supporters of the two-foot gauge at Wiscasset? And going off that, did Moody take the term from the newspaper, did he come up with it on his own, or was it a commonly used term for the two-footers back then?

I'd wager a guess and say Moody took it from Gulliver's Travels directly, if not from other sources. In the book the Lilliputians are small in size.

It's been a while since I've read Two Feet to Tidewater, but was the Wiscasset Lilliputian published by the Wiscasset railroad promoters or was it just a local paper? It might not be more than a case of coincidence that a local newspaper decided to borrow the same name that Moody would sixty-seventy years later.

According to Google Ngrams viewer the word "lilliput" and it's different forms were fairly common in literature in those days. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=7&case_insensitive=on&content=lilliputian . The word also has entries in a few dictionaries where the meaning boils down to "small" or "miniature."

[Bruce Wilson]

Excellent post Daniel, and equally interesting comment by Dante.

Linwood Moody was above all a wordsmith. He enjoyed corresponding with as many as one hundred other rail enthusiasts. I'm sure he used the word "Lilliput" as both a term of endearment and to avoid using other descriptive words too often.

With respect to the Wiscasset Lilliput newspaper, another small publication called itself the Phillips Phonograph. Likely the Wiscasset editor viewed his papers' circulation as diminutive, and the Phillips concern looked at their own efforts as that of the community mouthpiece.

I would not be surprised that the Wiscasset editor knew of the 1854 chartering of the Wiscasset & Quebec.   
Small town and the town fathers likely discussed such important proposals, and looked for investment opportunities.
                 
Moody and others such as Richard Andrew's explored all such doings and offered as many pondering to their own readers.

Again, thank you both for your postings.

[Daniel Moreau]

Excellent post Daniel, and equally interesting comment by Dante.

Linwood Moody was above all a wordsmith. He enjoyed corresponding with as many as one hundred other rail enthusiasts. I'm sure he used the word "Lilliput" as both a term of endearment and to avoid using other descriptive words too often.

With respect to the Wiscasset Lilliput newspaper, another small publication called itself the Phillips Phonograph. Likely the Wiscasset editor viewed his papers' circulation as diminutive, and the Phillips concern looked at their own efforts as that of the community mouthpiece.

I would not be surprised that the Wiscasset editor knew of the 1854 chartering of the Wiscasset & Quebec.   
Small town and the town fathers likely discussed such important proposals, and looked for investment opportunities.
                 
Moody and others such as Richard Andrew's explored all such doings and offered as many pondering to their own readers.

Again, thank you both for your postings.

A couple of thoughts now. The W&Q was chartered in 1854 but it was a long-while until the idea that it could be narrow gauge let alone a two-footer. I don't know exactly when it was decided though, as I don't have the book in front of me at the moment.

So perhaps a theory is that it was just appropriate (maybe fate, if I dare say) that the "lilliput" town of Wiscasset ended up with a "lilliput" two-foot railroad.

[Daniel Moreau]

So this brings me to a "chicken and egg" sort of situation. It seems Lilliput refers to something small and diminutive in size, but how could the editor of the Wiscasset Lilliputian have known that the W&F was going to be a two-footer? Did he see the Sandy River being established just a couple of years before and say "Goodness, this would be perfect for Wiscasset!" Would that make him one of the earliest supporters of the two-foot gauge at Wiscasset? And going off that, did Moody take the term from the newspaper, did he come up with it on his own, or was it a commonly used term for the two-footers back then?

I'd wager a guess and say Moody took it from Gulliver's Travels directly, if not from other sources. In the book the Lilliputians are small in size.

It's been a while since I've read Two Feet to Tidewater, but was the Wiscasset Lilliputian published by the Wiscasset railroad promoters or was it just a local paper? It might not be more than a case of coincidence that a local newspaper decided to borrow the same name that Moody would sixty-seventy years later.

According to Google Ngrams viewer the word "lilliput" and it's different forms were fairly common in literature in those days. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=7&case_insensitive=on&content=lilliputian . The word also has entries in a few dictionaries where the meaning boils down to "small" or "miniature."

Interesting point, maybe it was just a common term for "small" back then, and Moody was probably just "old-fashioned" in his vocabulary after it went out of fashion.