Is it OK to be anachronistic?

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Saioued Al-Zaioued wrote:
> [quote from Pynchon's Luddite essay]
> "But the Oxford English Dictionary has an interesting tale to tell.
> In 1779, in a village somewhere in Leicestershire, one Ned Lud broke into a
> house and 'in a fit of insane rage' destroyed two machines used for
> knitting hosiery. Word got around. Soon, whenever a stocking-frame was found
> sabotaged - this had been going on, sez the Encyclopedia Britannica, since
> about 1710 - folks would respond with the catch phrase 'Lud must have been
> here.'"
> 
> 1779 is many a year after 1710, so was this a typo? is it meant to be 1679?
> Any light on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

"1710" is surely an error for 1810:

Kirkpatrick Sale, Rebels Against the Future, 1995 --

page 3: "The Luddites took their name from a mythical Ned Ludd -- whose
origins are still obscure, of which more later ... "

pages 77-78: "All are agreed that it was used as a pseudonym by any
number of people in the 1811-12 period and that there was never such a
person as General Ludd (or "King Ludd" or any of the other variants) in
command of the Luddite troops; but there is no agreement as to where
this anonym arose. Historical consensus has followed, although with
random variations, an explanation put out by the Nottingham Review on
December 20, 1811, that once upon a time [1779 in some accounts] a boy
named Ned Ludd who had been apprenticed to a knitter near Leicester was
so reluctant to work that his master got a magistrate to order him
whipped; whereupon the lad took a hammer and demolished his knitting
frame, an act that gained such renown that when any machine was damaged
people would say that Ned Ludd had been there. ...
"It is possible that the local Nottingham dialect had an expression
similar to one in Cornwall, "sent all of a lud," meaning "struck all of
a heap," or ruined. The word might connect to a place name, such as
Ludlow or Ludbrook, from the Old English hlude, loud one. It could
conceivable derive from a King Ludeca, an actual if shadowy personage
who in A.D. 825 succeeded Beornwulf as kind of Mercia, a territory
roughly the same as the Midlands and containing Nottingham. Or it could,
with more tenability, be rooted in a King Lud who was a fairly well
known historical figure of the first century B.C. (connected in legend
with the Celtic god Lludd [for whom London ("Lud's Town") is named])."

The last possibility is interesting, a looking back to more chthonic
authority against the destructive light of modern industry.
--
Eric R


jbor wrote:
> Yes, that's the way I read it as well. Stocking looms were being sabotaged
> in Britain from 1710; Ned Lud launched his infamous (legendary?) attack in
> 1779; the Luddites emerged c. 1811-1816.

> >From: Jeremy Osner <jeremy at xyris.com>
> >> 1779 is many a year after 1710, so was this a typo? is it meant to be 1679?
> >> Any light on this matter would be greatly appreciated.
> >
> > Right, the idea is, the sabotaging of stocking-frames predates Mr. Lud,
> > however he was the person whose name became associated with the practice.