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So, exactly, what is the origin of that idiom?

Here's one explanation: It’s a mild expression of surprise, once well known in Britain and dating from the early twentieth century. It has been used a lot in inoffensive situations...

The Oxford English Dictionary has just one example, from — of all sources — James Joyce’s Ulysses: “Paddy Leonard eyed his alemates. Lord love a duck, he said. Look at what I’m standing drinks to!”

But T S Eliot also used it, in The Rock of 1934: “Lor-love-a-duck, it’s the missus!”.

It also turns up a number of times in the works of P G Wodehouse, the earliest being The Coming of Bill, two years before Ulysses was published: “‘Well, Lord love a duck!’ replied the butler, who in his moments of relaxation was addicted to homely expletives of the lower London type.”

I would unhesitatingly argue that it was originally British, though it has since emigrated to other Commonwealth countries. And that origin is supported by the earliest example I’ve found, in a long-forgotten tale of 1907, The Wheel O’ Fortune, by Louis Tracy, a British journalist and prolific author: “‘Lord love a duck!’ he guffawed. ‘If only I’d ha’ knowed, I could have told my missus. It would have cheered her up for a week.’”

But why should aristocrats amorously dally with anatine animals? And why should their proclivities be turned into an exclamation? Nigel Rees suggests it was a fake Cockney version of “Lord love us!” never uttered in real life.

Or it might be a line from some music-hall sketch long gone from memory.

Perhaps the whole point about it is that it doesn’t make sense?

Source: www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-lor1.htm

Pressing L is nice ;-)

Pressing L is nice ;-)

When most people think of Dr. Albert Schweitzer, it's usually not a pelican that comes to mind.

However, Dr. Schweitzer wrote a book called The Story of My Pelican. It is narrated by his pet pelican, Parsifal. Three orphaned fledgling pelicans were brought in for money by the hunter who killed their mother. The pelicans were named for the German composer, Richard Wagner's legendary Tristan, Lohengrin and Parsifal. As soon as they were trained to live as pelicans, two of them joined passing pelicans and flew away, but not Parsifal.

Parsifal tells how as a young bird he was rescued and fed by Albert Schweitzer and Nurse Emma Haussknecht, and how he went on to assume a place of importance at the hospital, guarding Schweitzer's door by night and often accompanying him on walks. The Doctor's Pelican describes his warm friendship with Schweitzer and Mlle Emma, and his generally hostile relations with everyone else, human and pelican alike.

When Schweitzer was in residence at Lambarene, virtually nothing was done without consulting him. Once, for instance, he all but halted the station's work when he received a letter from a Norwegian child seeking a feather from Parsifal, his pet pelican. He insisted on seeing personally that the youngster got a prompt and touching reply from his own pen before work was permitted to resume.

Sources:
Animals, Nature and Albert Schweitzer by Ann Cottrell Free, Albert Schweitzer
www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0114.html
The Animals of Doctor Schweitzer by Jean Fritz