Well, there's nothing so good as primary sources if the "authorities"
aren't authoritative, but if we don't rely on each other, there's no
point in doing scholarship at all.  And when it comes to a trustworthy
authority, I'll put my faith in Bob Hirst any time.  He and his team
have done painstaking and exhaustive primary research so the rest of us
don't have to.

For that matter, so has Terrell Dempsey.  Yes, scholars make mistakes
(so did Twain, as when in _Life on the Mississippi_ he said the State of
Delaware is part of the Mississippi basin), but the point of a commuity
of scholars is that we are--over the long run--self-correcting.  I, for
one, don't have the time or the institutional support to go to Missouri
to dig into all of Terrell's primary resources and re-do his work.  I'm
sure that in the editorial process of putting the book together, Tom
Quirk did a fair amount of checking, and I suspect other scholars who
are local will do cross-checking in places.  But on the whole, I'll take
Terrell's word for it.

Now, Terrell, if you were George Bush, I'd check the facts for myself.
Are you telling me, in your pitch for primary sources, that I shouldn't
trust your book?

Gregg