Deaf adder or death adder?

Note to file.

These three items give the lie to the theory that ''deaf adder'' is a corruption of ''death adder'': in fact, it is the other way around!

1611

King James Bible, Psalm 58:4

Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear;

1832

And when the sound of the church-going bell is heard in the stillness of the Sabbath morn, swelling its note of tuneful invitation upon the breeze to your homes embosomed in the vast forest, whose long silent echoes that sacred minstrelsy never awoke before, O! be not ye as the deaf adder which stoppeth her ears against the charmer, charm he never so wisely; and O! be well assured, the voice which will then be lifted up in this place, fraught with the message of reconciliation, will move in perfect unison with so harmonious and hallowed a tone, when it also calls on the passers-by in such words as these . . . The Sydney Herald, 13/12/1832, 2 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/12845902

1848

The death of Mrs. Ann Morrissy at Dundudemore near Wellington.

The reptile upon being trod upon gave a sort of short shrill cry, that was generally supposed by the friends of the deceased to have emanated from a cat. The deceased, however, stoutly maintained that she had trod upon a death adder, whereupon search was made, and the venomous reptile was caught and destroyed… As the symptoms apparent upon a human being, after the sting from a death adder, have never been fully described, the following may not be uninteresting:-The deceased trod on the death, or deaf, adder, as it is generally designated, late in the evening, near the steps of a kitchen door; she wore a shoe and thick worsted stocking; she trod on, or so near to the head of the reptile, that little doubt seems to be entertained of the fatal wound having been caused by the sting in its tail. The anomalous fact of a sting in the adder's tail has often been doubted, but is generally supposed to be the case.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 31/3/1848, 3, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/59768330