common abbrev table for major modes

[peterson]

Hi, how can I use one set of abbrev definitions in more than one major
mode?  I want to use the same abbrevs in all text modes, for example
text-mode, erc-mode, muse-mode.  What I found so far is the :parents
option of define-abbrev-table, which contains a list of abbrev tables
from which this table inherits abbreviations.  Seems like the thing
I'm after, but I have no idea how to define the parent.  I tried:

(define-abbrev-table 'muse-mode-abbrev-table '(    ) nil :parents
'(text-mode-abbrev-table))

And had all definitions in the text-mode abbrev table, but I get the
following error in a muse buffer:

abbrev-table-get: Wrong type argument: vectorp, text-mode-abbrev-table

Thanks in advance.