"Few a" v. "few"

Question

Note: This question is about whether few a is a grammatical construction. It is not about the usage of a few. In my mind, few and few a have identical meanings — as opposed to few and a few, which do not.
In a recent English essay of mine, I wrote the following:

...on the edge of a town few a map even bother to record...

The instructor marked it up to the following:

...on the edge of a town few maps even bother to record...

Having my attention explicitly drawn to this made me realize that I have no idea where I picked this construction up — and I use it all the time. I can find several other instances of it in my own writings, but I am having trouble finding even one online. The Ngram viewer seems to support my construction being essentially nonexistent:

If I check the texts associated with "few a", all I find are variants of "...few, a..." or "...few. A..." (i.e., "few" and "a" are coincidentally linked by punctuation).
The second example above is obviously grammatical.
Is the first?

Greybeard · Accepted Answer

You are perhaps thinking of "Many a map shows the town" as in

1989   O. S. Card Prentice Alvin iii. 52   That road led through many a village and many a town.

and attempting to replace "many" with "few". Unfortunately, this collocation does not exist in English. It would be "Scarce a map..." but this construction is somewhat archaic.

LPH · Answer

Although the claim by user Greybeard is quite convincing, I wouldn't consider it as the ultimate explanation, not just by itself anyway. It's current usage to use this inversion in modern English when the degree adverb "too" is added: "too few a …". Plenty of examples are found here. I wouldn't neglect the possibility of this "extended" form having an influence on your subconscious in the way of legitimizing the "few a" form generally.

too few a composer, too few a points,

Answered by LPH on February 20, 2021

too few a composer, too few a points,

"Few a" v. "few"

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