Friday, January 11, 2019
Professor Rigg was the generous and forgiving instructor for my small graduate course in History and Structure of the English Language, a rigorous introduction to Old English for, mostly, bewildered twentieth-century lit students who had previously avoided pre-Chaucerian exposure in 1998. He sighed over us--I can't have been the only one who failed every weekly quiz, yet mysteriously passed the course--but drilled us so thoroughly that the words "nominative, accusative, genitive, dative" still occasionally pass through my mind. So many thanks for a brilliant, kindly, mentor of many generations of students.
