a§ ' §55§ ■;"''-■■■■•.■..■ -:' : • ' H^n8HBBB&9SKSSffl ;.'.■.":,.'"'; ■'•■-"'"•'''■■■'." 583 ■•'■ •"■••■.■: - BbBSBHiB Mt£ ■Mfe *• " .■..-■■'''.■.•■.■.- jtgWfrCiiwg m&i* ECS ■■:■••■■•••.••■•■ •wfs ra S lou|{«b BJBSB SSS2 BBtHI KB ■■■-".•■■■.••■..■■■■■■■•■■ MR ywowiw fip a PWa b fti iii ssztw sBSH BBMfPg : BBS ' Hn i 5, %as§ KiffiBi hbrI LEAVES WOKD-HUNTEK'S NOTE-BOOK, PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON LEAVES WORD-HUNTER'S NOTE-BOOK ; onu Contributions to (Etujlisjj (Ktnmologtr. BY EEV. ABEAM SMYTHE PALMER, B.A. SOMETIME SCHOLAR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN. " Philologists, who chase A panting syllable through time and space, Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark, To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah's ark." Cowper, Retirement. ' Polonius. What do you read, my lord ? Handet. Words, words, words." Hamlet, act ii. sc. 2. LONDON: TRUBNEE & CO., LUDGATE HILL. 1876. [All rights reserved.'] EI CHARD CHENEVIX. LORD ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN, I DEDICATE GTijis Book IN TOKEN OF RESPECT. isii 524 PREFACE. In the following papers I have endeavoured to give a full, and, so far as it lay in my power, an exhaustive, examination of certain words in the English language, the derivations of which, being curious and recondite, present some special features either of interest or of difficulty. With that ob- ject I have freely availed myself of the labours of my predecessors in the same field, and have tried to concentrate in one view the results obtained by many independent and scattered investigations. Indeed, all the best authorities that lay within my reach have been had recourse to. I may mention the names of MM. Littre, Scheler, Pictet, and Renan, among French philologists; of Benfey, Diez, Diefenbach, Ebel, Grimm, Ed. Miiller, M. Miiller, &c, among the German. The English writers from whom I have received most help are Cleasby, Farrar, Ferrar, Garnett, Haldeman, La- tham, Morris, Skeat, Wedgwood, Monier Williams, and the contributors to the < Philological Society's Vlll PREFACE. Transactions.' From the old dictionaries of Cot- grave (French), Fiorio (Italian), Minsheu (Span- ish), and the ' Promptormm Parvulorum ' (Eng- lish), much latent word-lore of a valuable nature has been dug out. With lights so many and various coming to me from different sources, it will not be thought, I hope, that my ' word-hunting ' has been prose- cuted altogether ' in the dark.' That in every case I have been successful in running down my quarry would be too much to expect. The most enthusiastic lover of the chase must be prepared for some blank days. This I may say, however, that if I have not dogged every word which I have started through all its doublings till it has taken cover at last in ' Noah's ark,' I have at least never desisted from the pursuit, nor rested content till I have run it to earth in a Sanskrit root ; and that, in the eyes of a philologist, is pretty much the same as winning its brush. It should be understood that, notwithstanding my acknowledged obligations, many of the deriva- tions here adopted are now advanced for the first time, and differ from the conclusions arrived at by previous writers. In most cases, I have adduced copious illustrations from all periods of our litera- ture, and confirmatory proofs from the cognate languages, either in the way of verbal parallels or analogous usages. PREFACE. IX In a few instances, where the evidence for two conflicting etymologies seemed almost equally balanced, I have stated both sides of the question without prejudice, and left the decision to others. I should perhaps apologise for printing here the rather long chapter which treats of the super- stitious beliefs connected with the West and North as regions of darkness. That discussion, though it belongs rather to the province of folk- lore, was suggested by the preceding chapter on the word ' Night,' and arose naturally out of it. The interesting nature of the subject may perhaps render its appearance excusable. Every page of the volume, it will be seen, bears witness to the title that these are truly ' Leaves from a Note-Book.' If, however, they are found to be at all interesting, aud not devoid of information, the candid reader will not be so unjust as to condemn them for not being other than they pretend to be. Though I have striven to be accurate in my quotations and references, some mistakes will, in all probability, have escaped my observation. These, when pointed out, I shall be thankful and happy to correct. St John's Hill, Wandsworth Common. February 12*/*, 1876. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE THE WORDS ' BODY ' — ' CARCASS ' — ' COAT ' — ' HOOD ' — ' CHAS- UBLE,' ETC 1 CHAPTER II. THE WORDS ' FLIRT ' — ' FLUNKEY ' — ' SCORN ' .... 32 CHAPTER III. THE WORDS ' TRY ' — ' FLATTER ' — ' ADULATION ' — ' SOOTHE ' — 'PERSUADE' — 'INDULGE,' ETC. 40 CHAPTER IV. THE WORDS 'TREE' AND ' TRUE ' — 'VICE,' ' VITIUM,' AND ' VITIS* — 'BAD ' — ' VETCH,' ' WICKER/ ' WEAK,' AND ' WICKED ' . 73 CHAPTER V. THE WORDS ' DUPE ' — ' DOTTEREL ' — ' DUNCE ' — ' COWARD ' — ' POLTROON,' ETC. . . . . . . . .115 CHAPTER VI. THE PHRASE ' HE HAS A BEE IN HIS BONNET ' — THE WORDS ' FRET ' — ' CHAGRIN ' ' TO NAG ' — ' NIGGARD ' — ' TEASE ' — ' BRUSQUE ' — ' CAPRICE ' — ' TO LARK ' — ' MERRY AS A GRIG ' — 'ETRE GRIS,' ETC 142 CHAPTER VII. WORDS FOR THE ' PUPIL ' OF THE EYE — THE HUMAN TREE — THE WORDS 'TOE' — 'DOTE,' ETC 174 XII CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. THE WORDS ' CHIGNON ' — ' NODDLE ' — ' PATE ' NUT ' — ' FOOL ' — ' BOAST ' — ' BUFFOON ' PAGE -'skull' — 'coco- -' FATUOUS,' ETC. 198 CHAPTER IX. THE WORDS ' HEARSE ' — ' HOE ' — ' FURROW ' — NAMES OF MA- CHINES DERIVED FROM ANIMALS — ' PULLEY,' ETC. — ' HATCH- MENT ' — ' LOZENGE ' — ' BLAZON ' — ' TIMBRE ' — ' HALO ' — ' AUREOLE ' 223 CHAPTER X. THE WORD 'CLEVER' 243 CHAPTER XI. THE WORD ' NIGHT ' 259 CHAPTER XII. THE WORDS 'WEST ' — ' EAST ' — ' AURORA ' — SUPERSTITIONS CON- NECTED WITH THE WEST AND NORTH AS REGIONS OF DARK- NESS — THE WEST THE LAND OF THE DEAD — THE NORTH THE devil's quarter 27 G INDEX 313 The following contractions have occasionally been used : — A.S. or A. -Sax for Anglo-Saxon (i.e., Lat. for Latin. the oldest form of the English L. Lat. ,, Low Latin. speech). Lett. ,, Lettish. Cf. for Compare. Lith. ,, Lithuanian. Dan. ,, Danish. 0. N. „ Old Norse. Dut. ,, Dutch. 0. H. G. ,, Old High German Fr. ,, French.- Pers. ,, Persian. G. or Ger. ,, German. Pg. or Portg. ,, Portuguese. Gk. „ Greek. Prov. ,, Provencal. Heb. ,, Hebrew. Sk. or Sansk. ,, Sanskrit. Ic. or Icel. ,, Icelandic. Sp. ,, Spanish. Ir. ,, Irish. Sw. ,. Swedish. It. ,, Italian. W. „ Welsh. LEAVES FROM A WOBD-HUNTEE'S NOTE-BOOK CHAPTER I. THE WORDS ' BODY" — ' CARCASS ' — ' COAT' — ' HOOD ' — ' CHASUBLE,' ETC. 1 The derivation of words is like that of rivers — there is one real source, usually small, unlikely, and difficult to find, far up among the hills ; then, as the word flows on and comes into service, it takes in the force of other words from other sources, and becomes itself quite another word after the junction — a word, as it were, of many waters, sometimes both sweet and bitter.' * If the origin of the word be undiscovered hitherto, then, owing to this confluence of vocables and commixture of meanings, any attempt to mount the stream is attended with 1 Mr Ruskin in Fraser's Magazine, April 1863. A 2 BODY. perplexity as to which is the main river and which is only the tributary. It is with words as with a winding river ; not only do they change the colour and characteristics which they once possessed when near the fount, but often reverse the very direction of their former current. 1 A word that comes from olden days, And passes through the peoples ; every tongue Alters it passing, till it spells and speaks Quite other than at first.' x Thus, when we are engaged in exploring the hidden source of some word which has challenged our attention, it sometimes happens that we do not proceed far in our research until we find our- selves brought face to face with an unexpected difficulty. A divergent path presents itself which branches away in two different directions, and the puzzling thing is, that each of these directions promises almost equally fair to lead us to the de- sired object of our inquiry. It sometimes happens, too, that the reasons in favour of adopting one of these courses in preference to the other are so evenly balanced, that an impartial investigator will feel bound to suspend his judgment, and will hesitate to pronounce an absolute decision in a case where much may be advanced on either side of the ques- tion, and definite certainty seems hardly attainable. Such a difficulty meets us when we make the 1 Tennyson, Queen Mary, act iii. sc. 5. Thus the verbs ' blacken, ' ' blanch/ and ' bleach, ' are radically identical. BODY. 3 word c body ' the subject of examination, and pro- pose to ourselves to trace out its primary and radical significance. 6 Body ' is (A. -Sax.) bodig, (Gaelic) bod/iag, (0. Ger.) botah. In Bavarian, the words botic/i, pottich, and potacka, which mean ' body/ are only different forms of bottig, potig, potacka, which mean a 1 cask.' Wedgwood therefore suggests that our 6 body ' is etymologically akin to the German bottich (a cask), and appeals to the parallel in- stances of 'trunk'' and (Ger.) rump/, which signify a hollow case as well as the body of an animal. We may compare also the Spanish barriga (the belly), identical with barrica (a cask), French barrique, and we still call the round part of a horse's body the 6 barrel.' i Kedgy ' and ' kedge-belly ' in provincial Eng- lish are used for a ' pot-bellied ' person (Wright), literally, one whose stomach resembles a keg or cask (Norse, kaggje). The following quotation from the old chronicler Speed, in which the word ' cask ' is used for ' body, gives much probability to this derivation : — ' Onely the heart and soule is cleane, yet feares the taincture of this polluted caske, and would have passage (by thy reuenging hand) from this loathsome prison and filthy truncke.' Speed, Hist. G. Britain, p. 379 (1611). It may be noticed in confirmation that panze 4 BODY. in Carinthian and panzl in Bavarian denote both a cask and a paunch or stomach, and that the Grisons buttatsck, stomach or belly, is from butt, a barrel. Similarly, ' cqffre ' in French, and ' chest ' in English (It. casso), are used for the breast or trunk ; areas in Spanish, a coffer, is also 'a man's chest or breast ' (Minsheu) ; and the word breast itself (Ger. trust) means the box or trunk in which the vitals are enclosed, being near akin to (Prov.) brostia, brustia (a box). Compare also 6 bust,' 'busk,' (Fr.) buste, busck, connected with (Sp.) buche (breast), bucka (a chest or box), (L. Lat.) busta (a box). Shakspere frequently em- ploys ' case ' for l body,' e.g., when speaking of the lifeless Antony, " This case of that huge spirit now is cold" (Antony and Cleop. iv. 15). On the whole, then, we need not hesitate to bring our word i body ' (Bavarian, bodi) into con- nection with the Bavarian boding (a barrel), bottich, &c, as meaning a round hollow vessel; cf, (Erse) bodhaigh (body), (Irish) bold (a cask). All these words Pictet (Orig. Indo-Europ., ii. 275) traces up to the Sanskrit bandha (1, a barrel, 2, a body), from bandh (to bind, tie, or hoop in). 1 1 The M&heswaras, a sect of the Hindus, term the living soul pdsu, i.e.,/astened or fettered, conceiving it to be confined in bandha, the bondage of sense (Colebrooke, Essays, vol. i. p. 431). In Per- sian, bandha is (1) a binding or fetter; (2) a body ; (3) a building. Another word for body in that language is badan. Cf. ' His soul is wrapped in the truss of his senses ' ( Adams, Sermon on the BODY. 5 Cf. i Thou hast fenced me with bones and sinews' (Job x. 11), (A.-Sax.) feorh-loca, i life's enclosure/ the body. If the above account were not so satisfactory as it is, we would be tempted to see in * body ' only another form of ' bothy,' Gaelic, bothag, both (a hut, cottage), Welsh, bod (a house), bwth (a booth). In this case it would be connected with (Irish) buth, both, (Ger.) bude, (0. H. Ger.) boda, (Polish) buda, (Lith.) budd, (Scand.) bildh, (Dut.) boede, (Icel.) bud, (Bohem.) bauda, budka, (Russ.) budka, (Pers.) bud — all meaning a house, hut, or dwelling-place, and traceable to the root bhu (to exist). — Pictet, Origines Indo-Europeenes, ii. 239. Cf. German leib (body), from leiben (to exist). The Welsh bod, bodau, besides meaning a house, is also used for a living being ; and there is no figure more common than that by which the human frame is compared to a building or mansion, in which the immortal spirit has been placed to dwell as a tenant for life. For instance, in Gen. ii. 22, where it is said that God i made the woman,' the original says He ' builded ' her (Heb. banah). Compare Gk. demas, dome (a body, Be'/ias, Bo/jlti) derived from demo (to build, Befico), the Sanskrit dhaman, a house, also the body ; and it will be remembered that St Paul Soul's Sickness). In Sanskrit the body is also called deha, * what de- files or envelopes ' the soul, from the root dih, cognate with which are the Gothic leik, Ger. Iciche, 0. Eng. lich. See, however, M. Miiller, Chips, iv. 6 BODY. (2 Cor. v. 1) calls our body a tabernacle, house, or building (cf. 2 Pet. i. 13, 14) ; and Eliphaz long before had described men as * them that dwell in houses of clay ' (Job iv. 19). Compare Dryden's well-known lines — * A fiery soul, which, working out its way, Fretted the pigmy body to decay, And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.' Absalom and Achitophel, 11. 156-158. The prophet Daniel, using a somewhat similar figure, declares (ch. vii. 15) — ' I, Daniel, was grieved in my spirit in the midst of its sheath ' (Heb. nidneh, A. V. c my body '), as if the active working of his mind, like a sharp sword, was wearing through the case that held it ; which re- minds us of a saying recorded of the good George Herbert, that his wit, ' like a penknife in too narrow a sheath, was too sharp for his body.' 1 Compare also the following from Lilly's play of 1 Mother Bombie ' — c So faire a face cannot bee the scabbard of a foolish mind ' (act ii. sc. 3). 2 1 Sidney Smith's bon-mot is not very different — ' There is my little friend , who has not body enough to cover his mind decently with ; his intellect is improperly exposed.' a Was Dickens conscious of the plagiarism when he put these almost identical words into the mouth of the redoubtable Mrs Harris in one of his fragmentary sketches ? ' Your mind is too strong for you, Sairey. It is useless to disguise the fact ; the blade is a wear- ing out the sheets ' (sheath). Forster, Life of Dickens, vol. ii. p. 346. Lord Byron in a letter says of himself that ' the sword is wearing out the scabbard.' Carlyle, in his ' Life of John Sterling,' observes that ' he wore holes in the outward case of his body ' by his restless vitality, which could not otherwise find vent. BODY. 7 la a similar manner the ' fur ' of an animal is etyniologically the sheath in which it is comfort- ably encased. It is the Spanish and Portuguese forro, Icel. Jodr, and identical with the Gothic fodr, It. fodero, Fr. fourreau, G-er. /utter, which signify a sheath or scabbard. Cotgrave gives the proverb, JS T, admirons lefour- reau pour mespriser la lame, c Let not a faire outside make the inside less esteemed of.' How extensively the Scripture metaphor of the body being a house has been adopted by our best English writers will be seen by the quotations which I now subjoin. ' It is commonly seen that misshapen trunks are houses of the sharpest wits.' Thomas Adams ( Works, vol. i. p. 19). 1 Our great Landlord hath let us a fair house, and we suffer it quickly to run to ruin. That whereas the soul might dwell in the body as a palace of delight, she finds it a crazy, sickish, rotten cabinet, in danger every gust of dropping down.' Thomas Adams, DeviFs Banquet. * The body is the soule's poore house, or home, Whose ribs the laths are, and whose flesh the loame.' Herrick, Hesperides (ed. Hazlitt), ii. 299. Browning, in hi3 poem of 'The Statue and the Bust,' has the same idea when he represents Duke Ferdinand as being •Empty and fine, like a swordless sheath.' So the term cullion for a long, lank, lubberly coward, a fool, Fr. couillon, It. coglione, has been connected with the Lat. coleus, Gk. KoKeos, a sheath, as much as to say, the outward semblance of a man, a case without its treasure, a 'soulless clay.' The innuendo here, however, may be different {vide Diez, s.vv. Coglione, Minchia). Compare the Icelandic skauftir (A.-Sax. scea%, Ger. schote, Dan- skede), meaning, first, 'a sheath,' and then, as a term of abuse, ' a poltroon,' skavti, akin probably to our ' scut.' 8 BODY. 1 The Body indeed is not the Man, but the House or Taber- nacle of the diuiner Spirit, and both together make up Man ; the one as the Shell; the other, the Kernel. . . . One the Tene- ment, the other the Tenant' Purchas,Microcosmus (1619), p. 18. (God the Son) * Forsook the courts of everlasting day, And chose with us a darksome house of clay.' Milton, Ode on Christ's Nativity. 1 The body is domicilium animce, her house, abode, and stay ; ... as wine savours of the cask wherein it is kept, the soul receives a tincture from the body through which it works.' Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 173. (Winter) ' All unawares, with his cold-kind embrace, Unhoused 1 thy virgin-soul from her fair hiding-place.' Milton, On the Death of a Fair Infant. 1 If thou beest not so handsome as thou wouldst have been ... be glad that thy clay cottage hath all the necessary forms thereto belonging, though the outside be not so fairly plaistered as some others.' Fuller, Holy State, iii. c. 15. ' Lord, be pleased to shake my clay cottage before thou throwest it down. May it totter a while before it doth tumble.' Fuller, Good Thoughts, p. 19 (ed. Pickering). ' I hold from God this clay cottage of my body (a homely tenement, but may I in some measure be assured of a better before outed of this).' Ibid., p. 128. ' God . . . hath shaked the house, this body, with agues and palsies, and set this house on fire, with fevers and calen- tures, and frighted the Master of the house, my soule, with horrors, and heavy apprehensions, and so made an entrance into me.' Donne, Sermons (fol. 1640), p. 777. When the good Sir Guyon found the fair lady Amavia slain, and wallowing in blood, 1 Chaucer, if I remember right, somewhere uses the phrase, ' spirit changing house ' for dying. Cf. 2 Cor. v. 1. BODY. 9 ' He hoped faire To call backe life to her forsaken shop.' Faerie Queene, II. i. 43. 1 I looked upon my Body but as the Instrument, the Vehicu- lum Animce, and not so much given for its own sake, as to be an Engine for the exercise of my Soul, and a Cottage, wherein it might inhabit and perfect itself.' Sir Matt. Hale, Contemplations, p. 305 (1685). ' The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, Lets in new light, through chinks that time has made ; Stronger by weakness, wiser men become, As they draw near to their eternal home.' Edmund Waller. Compare — " Through the chinks of an unhighted flesh we may read a neglected soul." — Adams, 1629 (Works, vol. iii. p. 143). The Sanskrit word for body, de/ia, meaning literally that which envelopes the soul, is used also for a rampart or surrounding wall. The root from which it comes, dik, to shape, is seen also in dehiy a wall, Gk. toichos, Pers. dik, a village. Compare — ' Within this wall of flesh There is a soul counts thee her creditor.' Shakspere, King John, act iii. sc. 3. ' Weak cottage where our souls reside ! This flesh a tottering wall ! With frightful breaches gaping wide, The building bends to fall.' x Br Isaac Watts. 1 A white, pure, innocent spirit may be shadowed under the broken roof of a maimed corpse.' Adams's /Sermons, The White Devil. ' The Soul, in the Body or out of the Body, differs no more 1 Compare Toplady's hymn, 'When languor and disease invade.' 10 BODY. than the Man does from himself when he is in his House or in open air.' Spectator, No. 90 (1712). ' How ruinous a farm hath man taken, in taking himself. How ready is the house every day to fall down,' &c. Dr Bonne's Devotions, xxii. (1624). Hogarth, giving a humorous account of Mr Wilkes, who was notoriously ugly, says — ' I believe he finds himself tolerably happy in the clay cot- tage to which he is tenant for life, because he has learnt to keep it in pretty good order. "While the share of health and animal spirits which heaven has given should hold out, I can scarcely imagine he will be one moment peevish about the out- side of so precarious, so temporary, a habitation ; or will ever be brought to our Ingenium Galbce male habitat : — Monsieur est mal loge? Quoted in JSouthey's Doctor, p. 472. Compare Spenser's c Hymne in Honour of Beau- tie ' (passim), Globe ed. p. 59 6. x I will finish this long list of illustrations with these curious verses of Francis Quarles, prefixed as a suitable introduction to that curious anatomical poem, Fletcher's ' Purple Island ' — 1 Man's Body 's like a House : his greater Bones Are the main Timber ; and the lesser ones Are smaller Splints : his Ribs are Laths, daub'd o'er, Plaster'd with Flesh and Blood : his Mouth 's the Door, His Throat 's the narrow Entry ; and his Heart Is the Great Chamber, full of curious Art.' 2 1 See also Bp. Andrewes' Sermon (1595) on John ii. 19, 'The Temple of the Body,' a text which is itself an illustration ; and Dr Donne's Works, vol. vi. p. 61 (ed. Alford). 5 * The House I Live in,' a popular account of the human body, published by Parker, 1S46, treats the subject from the same point of view, and has chapters on the Framework, the Sills, the Windows, the Furniture, the Hinges, &c. BODY. 11 The nose he makes the chimney, the eyes the windows, the stomach the kitchen, &c. Cf. Pur- chas, Microcosmus, v. ix. Keaders of Spenser's ' Faerie Queene ' will re- member his elaborate allegorical description of the body as a goodly castle ' not built of bricke ne yet of stone and lime,' inhabited by a virgin bright, Alma (i.e., the soul, so called in the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, Latin anima), with its five bulwarks of the senses ever besieged by temp- tations night and day. The head is the turret ascended by ten alabaster steps, wherein ' two goodly beacons, set in watches stead, gave light and flamed continually.' The mouth is the porch, in which l twise sixteen warders satt, all armed bright and strongly fortifyde,' leading to the hall, where ministered the steward Diet, and the marshall Appetite. The stomach is the kitchen, with its ' caudron wide and tall,' and ' fornace that brent day and night, ne ceased not,' its ' maister cooke 'Concoction, and ' kitchen clerke that hight Digestion/ while a ' huge great payre of bellows ' (the lungs) ' did styre continually and cooling breath, inspyre.' 1 In the Book of Ecclesiastes (xii. 3 seq.), the frame which the spirit is ready to desert is repre- sented under the image of a tottering house, of 1 Book II., cantos ix., xi. 12 BODY. which the windows (the eyes) are darkened, the doors (the ears) are shut, and the mill (the mouth) lies idle with its grinders (the teeth). 1 A similar idea is probably meant to be conveyed by ' the golden bowl being broken ' (v. 6), the body being conceived as the precious reservoir (as in Zech. iv. 3), which contains the oil of life that keeps the flame burning. 2 In Greek, tezichos, a vessel, is found with a like signification. All these passages make it probable that ' body ' might come from a word meaning house (Welsh bod, &c), by showing that the transition of mean- ing is easy and natural. This view, moreover, derives strong confirmation from the very similar account that has to be given of another word of 1 Hengstenberg, in he. Speaker's Commentary, in loc. 5 Henry More compares the relation of the soul to the body to that of a light enclosed within a lantern. ' Like to a Light fast lock'd in Lanlhorn dark, "Whereby, by night, our wary Steps we guide In slabby streets, and dirty Channels mark, Some weaker rays through the black top do glide, And flusher streams perhaps from the horny side : But when we've past the peril of the way, Arriv'd at home, and laid that case aside, The naked light, how clearly doth it ray, And spread its joyful beams as bright as summer's day. Even so the Soul, in this contracted state, Confin'd to these strait instruments of Sense, More dull and narrowly doth operate : At this hole hears, the Sight must ray from thence ; Here tasts, their smells : But when she's gone from hence, Like naked lamps, she is one shining sphear, And round about has perfect cognoscence "Whate'ra in her Horizon doth appear ; She is one Orb of Sense, all Eye, all airy Ear.' Antidote against Atheism, Bk. III. ch. iv. CARCASS. 13 like signification. I mean the word c carcass/ which we will next proceed to examine. 1 Carcass,' which is now used for a body, espe- cially the lifeless body of a beast, when traced to its origin, is found to mean a ' house of detention or constraint,' a 6 prison.' Carcass — (Fr.) carquasse, (It.) car came, (It. and Port.) carcassa (= a skeleton) — is another form of (Fr.) carquois, (Sp.) carcax, (It.) carcasso (= a quiver). In modern Greek karkasi has both meanings, (1) a quiver, (2) a skeleton. All these words are connected with (Welsh) carchar (re- straint, prison), (Gaelic) carcair (prison, coffer), (Ir.) car car, (Goth.) karkara, (Ger.) kerker, (Gk.) kdrkaron, (Lat.) career (an enclosure, or prison), (Sans.) cdraka, kdrdgara, from the root kar (to wound, punish). It is curious, though perhaps only a coincidence, that the Talmudic word for the case in which written rolls were commonly kept is cared} The old derivation, which once passed current, that c carcase ' is compounded of the two Latin words caro and casa, as if it meant ' fallen-flesh ' 1 A ' carcanet ' is an ornament that confines or imprisons the neck — ' Oarcan, a carkanet, or collar of gold, &c. , worne about the necke ; Also an Iron chain e, or collar, wherein an offender is tyed by the necke to a post ' (Cotgrave). Compare the following, from an old play : — * Did you not see the key that's to unlock My carcanet and bracelets ? Till you give it back, my neck and arms Are still your prisoners. Webster, vol. iii. p. 281. 14 CARCASS. (which, indeed, is the primitive meaning of cadaver from cado, and of the Greek ptoma from pipto, to fall), is alluded to in the following passage from Samuel Ward, wherein the writer, unknown to himself, has a much truer conception of the word's etymological significance. Speaking of the unim- paired powers of the mind at death, he asks — ' Do they not tell the body, the soul means not to fall with the carcase (which hath the name of falling), lies not a dying with it, but erects itself, means only to leave it as an inhabi- tant doth a ruinous house, or as a musician lays down a lute whose strings are broken, a carpenter a worn instrument unfit any longer for service and employment, and as a guest makes haste out of his inn to his long home and place of abode.' The Life of Faith in Death. From meaning a i prison ' the word came after- wards to be applied in a secondary sense to the body, as being the structure wherein the soul is incarcerated, while 1 This muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in,' like the ' bone-enclosure ' or i bone-cloister ' of our remote ancestors, (A. -Sax.) ban-loca, ban-cofa. Compare the following, also from Shakspere : — ' My heart all mad with misery Beats in the hollow prison of my flesh.' Titus Andronicus. 1 A grave unto a soul Holding the eternal spirit against her will In the vile prison of afflicted breath.' King John. CARCASS. 15 1 My soul's palace is become a prison.' 3d Ft. Henry VI., ii. 1. Plato frequently calls the body the prison-house of the soul ; * and Virgil, when philosophising on the doctrine of the one great spirit of nature (iEn. vi. 734), explains that in the case of men, while confined within ' these walls of flesh/ it is clogged and blinded, being shut up in the darkness of a dun- geon (' clauses tenebris et carcere caeco'), or as we might render it with etymological literalness, ' in the darkness of a sightless carcass.'' A belief almost identical with this was held by the Jews. The Hebrews consider (we are told in ' The Con- ciliator ' of Rabbi Manasseh Ben Israel, trans, ii. 22) that souls were created in the six days of the be- ginning, and not together with bodies. They com- pare its state (1st) prior to coming into the world, to a king seated on his throne ; (2d) when inspired into the body, to a king placed in confinement ; (3d) when released by death, and it returns to its former regions, to a king returning to his kingdom after being delivered from prison. Compare— 1 Is there no charitable hand will sever My well-spun thread, that my imprisoned soul May be deliver'd from this dull dark hole Of dungeon flesh ] ' Quarks, Emblems, Bk. V. Emblem 7. ' What need that house be daub'd with flesh and blood ? Hang'd round with silks and gold ? repair'd with food ? 1 E.g., Cratylus, p. 400 C ; Phasdo, p. 62 B. 16 CARCASS. Cost idly spent ! that cost doth but prolong Thy thraldom. Fool, thou mak'st thy jail too strong.' Quarks, Emblems, Bk. V. Epig. 8. 1 The soul once fled Lives freer now than when she was cloystered In walls of flesh — But an imprison' d mind, though living, dies, And at one time feels two captivities ; A narrow dungeon which her body holds, But narrower body which her self enfolds. Death is the pledge of rest, and with one bayl Two prisons quits, the Body and the Iayl.' 1 Bp. Henry King's Poems (1657, ed. Hannah), p. 12. ' He that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts, Benighted walks under the mid-day sun ; Himself is his own dungeon. 5 Milton, Comus, 347. 'My body is my prison, and I would be so obedient to the law as not to break prison : I would not hasten my death by starving or macerating this body ; but if this pri- son be burned down by continual fevers, or blown down with continual vapours, would any man be so in love with that ground upon which that prison stood, as to desire rather to stay there than to go home.' Br John Bonne (Selections from), Oxford, 1840, p. 14. . . . ' The Body is the Soules Prison ; that I mention not that Hell-darke Prison of the Graue, nor that darke Hell- Prison of the Damned.' Purchas, Microcosmus (1619), p. 298. We might also adduce here an exclamation re- ported to have been made by Archbishop Leigh ton (d. 1684), who was himself slender in person, when informed that a corpulent friend had pre- 1 In language almost identically the same Howell speaks of his twofold imprisonment when writing from the Fleet, 1643. Vide Familiar Letters, Bk. I. sect. vi. 48. CARCASS. 17 deceased liim — c How is it that A has broke through these goodly brick walls, while I am kept in by a bit flimsy deal ? ' * Our soden feete stick in the Clay, Wee thro' the bodye's Dungeon see no day/ Evelyn, Life of Mrs Godolphin, p. 227. ' who shall from this dungeon raise A soul enslaved so many ways ? "With bolts of bones, that fettered stands In feet, and manacled in hands ; Here blinded with an eye, and there Deaf with the drumming of an ear ; A soul hung up, as 'twere, in chains Of nerves, and arteries, and veins 1 ' Andrew Marvell, Dialogue between Soul and Body. ' Great Muse, thou knowest what prison Of flesh and bone, curbs, and confines, and frets Our spirits' wings.' Keats 1 Endymion, Bk. IV. ' How weak the prison is where I dwell ! Flesh but a tottering wall ! The breaches cheerfully foretell The house must shortly fall. * Now let the tempest blow all round, Now swell the surges high, And beat this house of bondage down To let the stranger fly ! ' Dr Watts. ' The soul contending to that light to fly From her dark cell, we practise how to die.' Waller, Of Divine Love. The comparison in the last three extracts of the sonl to a captive bird, 1 eager to escape, but encaged 1 ' They who prink, and pamper the Body, and neglect the Soul, are like one, who having a Nightingale in his House, is more fond of the Wicker Cage than of the Bird.' Howell, Familiar Letters, Bk. IV. 21. B 18 CARCASS. within the body, from which it is only permitted to take flight at its dissolution, is made explicitly in the following from Quarles : — 1 My soul is like a bird, my flesh the cage, Wherein she wears her weary pilgrimage. . . . The keys that lock her in and let her out, Are birth and death ; 'twixt both she hops about From perch to perch, from sense to reason ; then From higher reason down to sense again.' Bk.Y. Emblem 10. The same thought is found in the c Silex Scintil- lans ' of Henry Yaughan, the Silurist (1655). And so Pope — * Most souls, 'tis true, but peep out once an age, Dull, sullen prisoners in the body's cage : Like Eastern kings, a lazy state they keep, And, close confined to their own palace, sleep/ Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady. And Adams — 'The imprisoned bird, when she sees no remedy, sings in her cage ; but she flies most and highest when she is at liberty. Set the soul once at freedom, she will then most cheerfully sing the praises of her Maker. Yet the common course is to fortify this prison, and to boast in corporal abilities. But qui gloriatur in viribus corporis, gloriatur in viribus career is.' Meditations upon the Creed. It is curious to observe that in Sanskrit the word for cage, 1 pa?ijara y is actually used for the 1 Cf. 'Ex corporum vinculis tanquam e carcere evolaverunt ' (Cic. Rep. vi. 14). It is a widespread and ancient superstition that the soul escapes from the dead body under the form of a bird or other winged creature. Grimm, D. Myth., 214, 478 ; Kelly, Indo- Furop. Tradition, p. 103 ; Trevor's Egypt, 192 ; Didron, Christian CARCASS. 19 skeleton or body. The same idea has, I suppose unconsciously, been used by an American writer, Dr Holmes — 'They said the doctors would want my skeleton when I was dead. . . . Don't let 'em make a show of the cage, I have been shut up in, and looked through the bars of, for so many years.' Professor at Breakfast- Table, p. 105. Compare ban-hus (bone-house), ban-sele (bone- hall), ban-loca (bone-enclosure), A.-Sax. terms for the body; 1 Icelandic beina-grind (' bone-lattice'), the skeleton. As our ancestors show by their nomencla- ture that they had formed a true estimate of this perishing dust-built frame, the c body of our humiliation ' (Phil. iii. 21), whether on the one hand they called it a c cask ' or ' chest,' or on the other, a ' house ' or l prison ; ' so they would seem, on the testimony of other words, not to have forgotten what a ' treasure ' we have in these Iconography, 460. A graphic delineation of the imprisoned soul looking out through its cage of bones, and intended to represent the idea contained in Rom. vii. 24, 'Who shall deliver me from the body of this death ? ' will be found in Quarles, Bk. V. Emblem 8. 1 'The flames consumed the bone-Jwuse of the mighty -handed chief ' is Mr Jones' paraphrase of the burning of Be6wulf (Popular Romances of the Middle Ages, p. 398). « This body then, I say, is like An house in each degree ; The soule the owner of the house I do account to bee.' Ro. Vn. {temp. James I.) 20 CARCASS. ' earthen vessels.' If the body was to them no more than a case or coffer, still it was one, they felt, that guarded the most precious of possessions, a house of clay indeed, but one that harboured the most exalted of inhabitants. In the Anglo-Saxon, besides the words 'feorh-kus ' (i.e., ' life-house ') = 'body,' (cf. Shakspere's 'bloody house of life '),and i feorh-cofcC 1 (i. e., mind's cave, or sours chamber) == breast, we meet the very poetical term ' breost- hord' for the soul, i.e., the hoard or treasure of the breast — a word upon which no more fitting commentary could be made than these verses of a little-remembered poet — ' ignorant poor man ! what dost thou bear Lock'd np within the casket of thy breast ? What jewels, and what riches hast thou there ? What heavenly treasure in so weak a chest.' Sir John Barnes (d. 1626). Beside this we may set the scarcely less poetical prose of Bishop Hall — * This body, if it bee compared to the soule, what is it, but as a clay wall that encompasses a treasure ; as a wodden boxe 1 (A.-Sax.) cof (a cave or receptacle), (Bret.) kdf, 1c6v (belly), (Fr. ) coffre (1, a coffer; 2, chest of the body). Compare (Heb.) guph, (jupha (a body), from the root guph (Cpi), to be hollow, shut in). The Heb. Mb hah (stomach), and ' alcove,' (Sp. ) alcoba, (Arab.) al-qobbah (a hollow recess), (Heb.) Kubbah (translated ' tent,' Num- bers xxv. 8), are of kindred origin. Cp. ' We are so composed, that if abundance or glory scorch and melt us, we have an earthly cave, our bodies, to go into by consideration and cool ourselves/ (Donne, Letters, p. 63). Synonymous are A.-Sax. hrether-cofa and hrether-loca (mind's cave or inclosure), Icelandic hug-borg, 'castle of thought,' a poetical term for the breast ; 6dhar-rann, * mind's- house ; ' fjor-rann, ' life's-house ;' hjarta-salr t ' heart-hall.' CARCASS. 21 of a jeweller ; as a coorse case to a rich instrument ; or as a niaske to a beautifull face ? ' Contemplations, Bk. I. Cont. 2 (1634). The same thoughts, expressed in the very same words, are to be found in the treatise of another divine whom Hall much resembled. Thomas Adams, in his ' Meditations on some Parts of the Creed/ 1629, moralises thus : — 1 The body is to the soul as a barren turf to a mine of gold, as a mud wall about a delicate garden, as a wooden box wherein the jeweller carries his precious gems, as a coarse case to a fair and rich instrument, as a rotten hedge to a paradise, as Pharaoh's prison to a Joseph, or as a mask to a beautiful face.' ' We love the cabinet for the jewel's sake, esteem it for that it contains. . . . Yet how many men pollute this fair house, by drunkenness making it a swine-sty, by uncleanness a brothel, by worldliness a dung- hill, by oppression a lion's den, by voluptuousness a boar's frank, by malice a stove or burning furnace, and by con- tinual sin a barricaded jail to imprison the soul ! ' 1 Nichol's edition, vol. iii. pp. 142, 146. Compare the following from Shakspere : — 1 (I have) mine eternal jewel Given to the common enemy of man.' Macbeth, iii.l. 'A jewel in a ten-times-barred up chest Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast.' Richard II. ,i. 1. ' They found him dead and cast into the streets, An empty casket, where the jewel of life By some damn'd hand was robb'd and ta'en away. 7 1 Howell (1635) has the same similitude, — ' Whereas my Creator intended this Body of mine, though a Lump of Clay, to be a Temple of His Holy Spirit, my Affections . . . turn it often to a Brothel-house, my Passions to a Bedlam, and my Excesses to an Hospital.' Fam. Letters, Bk. I. 6, xxii. 22 CARCASS. ' (My heart) A jewel, lock'd into the wof ull'st cash That ever did contain a thing of worth.' 2d PL Henry VI., iii. 2. We have seen that the body was called a 1 house,' as being the outward shell or case wherein the spiritual part of man was appointed to dwell. This bodily 6 house ' was also regarded sometimes as the clothiDg wherein he was invested, e.g., by St Paul in 2 Cor. v. 2, 3, where he expresses an earnest desire to 'be clothed upon'' with a better house from heaven — i.e., a house 6 to be put on as an outer garment over this fleshly body' (e-n-evSv- cracrOai). Immediately afterwards he uses the cor- relative phrase ' to put off one's clothing ' for i to become disembodied,' i to die.' In the ancient Gothic version the apostle's expression c to be clothed ' with the body is rendered by the verb, ufar-hamon, ana-kamon, and the ' stripping off' of it by the verb af-hamon, — hamon being to clothe. It is not a little interesting to observe that this same radical, which is still traceable in the German hemd, a shirt or garment, supplies a name for the body in many kindred languages. It is seen in the latter part of the A. -Saxon lic-lwma, 0. H. German lik-hamo, German leichnam, Old Norse lik-hamr, — i.e., i the garment of flesh,' the un- tenanted body, or corpse; A.-Saxon Jtcesc-hama. 1 1 Cognate with A.-Sax. hama, homa, Dan. ham, Icel. hammr, the covering, skin, or shape of the body, are the Sansk. carnima ; Hind, cam, camra, of similar meaning ; and the It. camisa, Fr. CARCASS. 23 Such was the poetical conception that found favour with the old Teutonic and Scandinavian races. At death the weary spirit slips off its clinging raiment, our Maker (to use the language of an old poet) doth— 1 Thresh the husk of this our flesh away, And leave the soul uncovered,' l and then the divested remains or exuvice is the lifeless corpse — the body-clothes, lie-harm; Old Eng. lie-am. This idea has received a feeling expression in the following pretty verses by the Duchess of Newcastle : — 1 Great Nature she doth cloathe the soul within A Fleshly Garment which the Fates do spin ; And when these Garments are grown old and bare, With sickness torn, Death takes them off with care, And folds them up in Peace and quiet Best ; So lays them safe within an Earthly Chest, Then scours them and makes them sweet and clean, Fit for the soul to wear those cloths again.' Poems, p. 135. Compare these lines from Herrick's * Epitaph on Sir Ed. Giles '— 1 But here's the sunset of a tedious day. These two asleep are ; I'll but be undrest, And so to bed. Pray wish us all good rest.' chemise. Cleasby & Vigfusson, Icel. Diet. ; B.-Gould, Book of Werewolves, pp. 47, 163. The same word is seen in ' yellow- Jiammer,' 1 Ger. gelb-ammer, and in 0. Swed. hamber, prov. Eng. an article of clothing (Atkinson, Cleveland Glossary, s.v. ) 1 George Wither. 24 COAT. The bodily tenement is here regarded as being the raiment in which the spirit was enveloped ; by a somewhat similar association of related ideas, but from a directly opposite point of view, the literal clothing of the body was conceived as being to it a kind of portable dwelling, and so the covering or vestment wherein the entire man is wrapped was in many instances, we shall find, quaintly styled his ' house.' The idea that under- lay this use of the term is well brought out by this query of Carlyle's — ' Hast thou always worn them [thy clothes] perforce, and as a consequence of Man's Fall ; never rejoiced in them as in a warm movable House, a Body round thy Body, wherein that strange Thee of thine sat snug, defying all variations of climate ? ... In vain did the sleet beat round thy temples ; it lighted only on thy impenetrable, felted or woven, case of wool.' Sartor Resartus, ch. ix. p. 39 (ed. 1871). Now take the word c coat,' (Fr.) cotte, (It.) cotta. It is plainly identical with i cote ' * (a shelter for animals), 'cot,' and 'cottage,' (A. -Sax.) cote, (Dut.) kot, (Ir.) cotta, (Welsh) cwt, (Fin.) kota, koti (a house); and so it meant originally the 6 house' or shelter wherein the monk on his travels (it was especially a monkish garment at first), or the working-man in the field, encased himself as a protection against the inclemency of the weather. Thus l coats ' served almost as well as 1 * Coat' was formerly spelt 'cote,' e.g., Chaucer, Rom. of Rose, 461; and 'cote' was spelt 'coat,' e.g., ' Bordieux, little cottages, coats ' (Cotgrave). COAT. 25 ' Cotes that did the shepherds keep From wind and weather.' Chapman, Horn. II. , xviii. 535. and hence they got their name. Verstegan, one of the best and earliest of our English etymologists, pointed this out long ago. He says — ' A cote in our language is a little slight built country habi- tation (such as after the French we call a cottage). . . . TVe also use this word cote for a garment, but it seemeth to have been at first metaphorically brought in use, in regard of being shrowded therein, as in the little house or cote of the body, but anciently we so used it not, for our ancient word for a cote in this sence was a reaf.' Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, p. 286 (1634). The cota mor l (great coat) of the. ancient Irish, which seems to have been a kind of mantle, was one of their national peculiarities. It is to it, pro- bably, that Spenser refers when he says — 'The out-lawe. . . . maketli his mantell his howse, and under it covereth himself from the wrath of heaven, from the offence of the earth, and from the sight of men. When it rayneth it is his pent-howse ; when it blowes, it is his tent ; when it freezeth it is his tabernacle.' State of Ireland (1643). Globe ed. p. 631. Other instances of the same word being used for a house and an article of clothing are the following — (Fr.) caban, gaban, (It.) gabbano, cabarino, (a cloak), (Eng.) i gabardine. ,' (Bohem.) habane (a jacket), the same word as (Fr.) cabane, (It.) ca- panna, (Welsh) caban (a booth, hut), our ' cabin.' 1 Cf. Castle Rackrent (Miss Edgewortb), 1815, p. 2. A repre- sentation of it will be found in Plauche's ' British Costume/ p. 369. 26 HOOD, CHASUBLE, ETC. The heavy Maltese cloak worn by the farmers in Sardinia they call their ' cabbanu.' i Cape ' and i cap,' (Fr.) chape, chapeau, (Sp.) capa, (It.) cappa, is the 0. Sp. cappa, (1) a hut, (2) a mantle, according to Isidore so called quia totum capiat hominem, because it takes in, or con- tains, the whole man. 'Hood/ (Ger.) hut, (Welsh) hotan, (Dut.) hoed (lit. a covering, shelter), is identical with ' hut,' (Dut.) hut, hutte, (Sans.) kuti (a house), hot (a hut), (Egypt.) kdti (a circuit, and to surround). c Cassock/ (Fr.) casaque, (It.) casacca, (Gael.) casag (a long coat), is from the Latin casa (a house). Cf. (Gk.) kdsson (tcdaaov, Hesjxh., a thick garment), (Pers.) kdshah (hut), all connected with (Sans.) kakshd (enclosure). 1 Another ecclesiastical vestment, the l chasuble,' (Sp.) casulla, (Fr.) chasuble, (It.) casupola, (M. Lat.) casula, is of the same origin, and means a little house or hut, for so the Roman labourer called the smock-frock in which he shut himself up when out at work in bad weather. (Ir.) rocan, (1) a cot, (2) a cloak. Cf. (Ger.) rock (a coat). It is open to doubt whether i hose,' (Fr.) house, houseau, (Ger.) kosen, (A.-Sax.) hosa, (Welsh) hosan (covering for the leg), and ' housing,' (Fr.) housse, 1 Pictet, Orig. Indo-Europ., ii. 255. HOOD, CHASUBLE, ETC. 27 (Welsh) hws (covering, housing), are connected with ' house. ' 1 In Coptic one and the same root is still serving for ' house ' and ' garment.' 2 The same comparison which led Shakspere to speak of the body as the soul's c vesture,' and St Paul as its i clothing,' was implicitly made long before by the author of the 139th Psalm, where he breaks into a fine ascription of praise to the Creator on contemplating the marvellous structure of his own frame — ' I will praise Thee ; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. . . . My substance was not hid from Thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously ivrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance yet being un- perfect ; and in Thy book all my members were written [drawn out, as it were, in pattern], which, in continuance, were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them ' (vv. 14-16). The word here rendered i curiously- wrought' has a definite and much more expressive force in the original Hebrew, viz., ' wrought-with-a- needle.' 3 It is the very same word which is used in Exodus xxviii. 39, with reference to the em- broidered garments of the high priest, and in Exodus xxvi. 36 for the hangings of the Taber- 1 But cf. 2 Kings xxiii. 7, ' hangings,' marg. c houses.' So, per- haps, (Gk.) ndaas (housings) is connected with (Pers.) Mshah, (Lat.) casa. 2 Dr Abel in Philolog. Soc. Trans. (1855), p. 57. 3 Vide Lowth, Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, in loc. 28 nacle made of fine-twined linen, and various colours wrought with needlework ; Heb. rdkaM f Arab, raqama, which may still be traced in the Spanish reca?nar, It. ricamare, Fr. reca?ner, to embroider. 1 And when we consider the wonderful ingenuity and manifold marks of design displayed in the fabric of man's body, the closely interwoven fibrous appearance of the cellular tissue, the interlacing and ramifications of the blood-vessels, the impli- cations of the muscles, the knots or ganglions of the nerves, the exquisite embroidery of the veins, the gauze-like membrane of the skin, technically termed ' network' (rete mucoswri) — we cannot but perceive how true and appropriate is this meta- phor of the Psalmist by which the texture of the human structure is likened to a piece of tapestry or needlework, elaborated with subtle varieties of colour and material by the hand of a skilful arti- ficer. Even so curiously wrought are the curtains 1 It is radically the same word rlhndh which is found in Ezek. xvi. 18, ' broidered garments;' and Psalm xlv. 14, 'raiment of needlework.' 'Such is the human body, ever changing, ever abiding. A temple, always complete, and yet always under repair. A mansion, which quite contents its possessor, and yet has its plan and its materials altered each moment. A machine which never stops working, and yet is taken to pieces in the one twinkling of an eye, and put together in the other. A cloth of gold, to which the needle is ever adding on one side of a line, and from which the scissors are ever cutting away on the other. Yes ! Life, like Penelope of old, is ever weaving and unweaving the same web ; whilst her grim suitors, Disease and Death, watch for her halting.' Br George Wilson, Edinburgh Essays (1856), p. 316. HOOD, CHASUBLE, ETC. 29 of the tabernacle wherein we dwell. There is scriptural authority for so styling our bodies. The inspired apostle employs the phrase, declaring that the Eternal Word, when He vouchsafed to take our flesh, ' tabernacled among us ' (la/crjvcoaev, John i. 14). When Job (iv. 21) speaks of the death of man, and the soul being separated from the body which it upholds, he likens it to the ropes of a tent being loosened or severed, using the same word that in Exodus is applied to the cords of the Tabernacle, 6 Are not the cords of their tent torn away ? ' where the rendering in our authorised version is diluted into 6 Doth not their excellency which is in them go away ? ' x Our bodies, it is implied, constituted as they are at present, are intended but for a temporary habi- tation while passing through the wilderness. They are removable at any time, like a shepherd's tent (Isa. xxxviii. 12). Shortly we must put off this our tabernacle (2 Pet. i. 14). When the Yoice is heard saying, c Arise ye, and depart, for this is not your rest ; because it is polluted ' (Micah ii. 10), the life which is in us will be taken up from us like the pillar of cloud, and will pass away like an expiring vapour. Then the house of this earthly tabernacle will be taken down — the silver cord will be loosed — this curious frame, with its 1 Delitscb, in loc. 30 mortices, its tenons, its woven coverings, and all its cunning work, will be levelled to the dust. Then it will he said of each — 1 His spirit with a bound Burst its encumbering clay ; His tent, at sunrise, on the ground A darken'd ruin lay.' l But He who undoes His own work is able to raise it up again, and has pledged Himself to do so. * Though He slay us, yet we may trust in Him ' (Job xiii. 15). ' He will show wonders to the dead ; the dead shall arise and praise Him. His loving- kindness shall be declared in the grave, and His faithfulness in destruction. His wonders shall be known in the dark, and His righteousness in the land of forgetfulness ' (Ps. lxxxviii. 10-12). Even in the tomb our substance is not hid from Him. In His book are still all our members written ; not one of them will be overlooked or forgotten ; but we will be made again in secret, and curiously wrought (like needlework), even in the lowest parts of the earth — even in those dark places the Divine Work-master can renew His handiwork. ' He which numbereth the sands of the sea, knoweth all the scattered bones, seeth into all the graves and tombs, searcheth all the repositories and dormitories in the earth, knoweth what dust belongeth to each body, what body to each soul. Again, as His all-seeing eye observeth every par- ticle of dissolved and corrupted man, so doth He also see ] Montgomery. 31 and know all ways and means by which these scattered parts should be united, by which this ruined fabric should be re- composed : He knoweth how every bone should be brought to its old neighbour- bone, hoiv every sinew may he re-embroidered on it ; He understandeth what are the proper parts to be con- joined, what is the proper gluten by which they may become united.' l Not only will He reform our bodies, but He will transform them. Natural, earthly, perishing, they will be raised up spiritual, incorruptible, im- mortal. The Lord Jesus Christ ' will change the body of our humiliation, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the work- ing whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself (Phil. iii. 21), and this will be 'a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens' (2 Cor. v. 1). 1 Pearson, The Resurrection of the Body. ( 32 ) CHAPTER II. THE WORDS ' FLIRT' — ' FLUNKEY' — ' SCORN? How sadly deficient even our best dictionaries are! Monuments though, they be for the most part of patient and laborious industry — Latham, and "Richardson, and Todd's Johnson, Worcester, and Webster, ponderous tomes as they are — how often will we turn to their pages in vain if we need something out of the trite and beaten track, or put them to the test by anything more than very moderate requirements in matters of verbal lore. It has been the fortune of most people, I should think, at some time or other, to consult those standard works of reference in hopes to obtain some conclusive, or at least satisfactory, iuformation as to the etymology and primitive signification of a word which has refused to yield its secret to their own unassisted efforts — but only to encounter a vexatious disappointment. The oracle is found dumb just at the moment when its response was most earnestly desired. A note of interrogation, or the curt remark, ' origin unknown,' is all the reward vouchsafed to our unsatisfied curiosity. In FLIRT. 33 many cases, of course, these blanks and silent gaps are unavoidable. They are a part of the necessary imperfection of all human knowledge. Still, many of these deficiencies would disappear if only a more careful research and diligent investigation were brought to bear upon them ; and it may well be believed that not a few neglected nooks and corners of the philological field still remain to recompense the industry of future gleaners. One of these words, of which no satisfactory account has as yet been given, is 6 flirt.' What- ever we may think of the thing which it denotes, it must be admitted that the word itself is pic- turesque and pretty enough when we trace it to its origin. It is a matter of surprise to me that Wedgwood and our other professed etymologists have quite failed to discover it. Dr Johnson — whom we may in general depend upon for our definitions — tells us that ' to flirt ' is 6 to run about perpetually, to be unsteady and fluttering.' He makes no allusion, however, to its now more com- mon signification of coquetting — trifling with the affections of another, or amusing one's self at the expense of one's admirers. And yet that use of the word is of considerable antiquity. In the ' Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions,' 1578, we find a lover complaining to his mistress in the following terms : — 34 FLIRT. 1 Hath light of love held you so softe in her lap ? Sing all of greene willow ; Hath fancy provokte you ? did love you intrap 1 Sing willow, willow, willow ; That now you heflurting, and will not abide, Willow, willow, willow, willow, To mee which most trusty in time should have tride Willow, willow, willow, willow.' Eel 1814, p. 133. ' Flirt,' 1 or, as we see it used to be spelt formerly, c flurt,' is in fact nothing else but a slightly con- tracted form of the French fleureter (from fleur) to go a-flowering, or, as old Cotgrave gives it in his dictionary (1660), ' Fleureter, lightly to pass over ; only to touch a thing in going by it {meta- phorically from the little Bee's nimble shipping from flower to flower as she feeds) ; ' and so the cognate word in Spanish, florear, means c to dally with, to trifle' (Stevens, 1706). Any one who has observed a butterfly skimming over a gay parterre on a hot summer's day will admit that its c airy dance ' is no unapt comparison for the course of that frivolous and ephemeral creature, whether male or female, which is known as a ' flirt.' 2 1 The word may have been insensibly affected by, perhaps blended with, the A.-Sax. fleardian, to trifle. In Scotch, flyrd is to flirt, and fiivd to flutter ( Jamieson). Compare the German flattern, to flutter, rove about, and flatterhafi, flirting, fickle. 2 ' Comme un papillon voletant de fleurette en fleurette.' Yver (16th cent.) Compare the use of papilloner. Some verses which appeared in ' Punch ' in the summer of 1875 speak of one who, ' A butterfly vagrant, Flits light o'er the flower-beds of Beauty in June.' FLIRT. 35 It is the very ideal of inconstancy — it veers and flickers 1 about hither and thither in the most fickle and uncertain way imaginable ; and when it does light upon some favoured flower, and closes its wings over it, and we think that now at last, having found what it had long been seeking, it will rest and sip its sweets contentedly — lo ! in a moment it is off and away as unsettled and un- captivated as ever. This hovering of insects from flower to flower seems to have suggested the same idea to the people of different countries. For instance, in Sanskrit, bhramara, which primarily means a bee, is used also for ' a lover, a gallant, a libertine.' The bee-like humming-bird is said to be called ' the kiss-flower ' by the Brazilians, as if it were enamoured of their beauty. Similarly, far- falla, a butterfly in Italian, is also applied to a fickle man, and in the Parisian argot, an an- tiquated beau who keeps up the airs and graces of youth is termed an ' old butterfly ' (papillon vieux). In the following lines the word ( butterfly' seems to be employed in very much the same sense : — * Amongst that fine Parterre of handsome Faces, Do any like a Joynture in Parnassus ? . . . Will Beaus and Butterflies then please your Fancies 1 The Scotch flicker, according to Jamieson, also means to flirt. 'I flycker, as a birde dothe whan he hovereth, Jevolette. I flycker, I kysse togyther, Je baise.' Palsgrave, Lesclarcissement. 36 FLIRT. "Well vers'd in Birthrights, Novels and Romances Scandal, Plays, Operas, Fashions, Songs and Dances, We'll show you those that most politely can, Or tap the Snuff-box, or gallant the Fan.' The Music Speech, spoken at the Public Commencement in Cambridge, 1714, by Roger Long, M.A. A word which we had occasion to use above may be noted in passing as embodying a like concep- tion. ' Fickle,' A.-Sax. jicol, is a derivative from 0. Eng. fyke, North Eng. feek, < to fidget/ Scot. fike y to be restless, to move from place to place unsteadily, also to dally with a girl, to flirt ; and is akin to 0. Norse fika, Dut. Jlcken, to move rapidly to and fro, Swiss Jltsc/ien, to flutter about. In the following, from a poem entitled t Why the Rose is Red,' which appeared in the ' Temple Bar Magazine ' some years ago (No. cxxvi. p. 285), the word we are discussing will be found used with perfect propriety, and in its original signifi- cation : — 1 The rose of old, they say, was white, Till Love one day in wanton flight, Flirting away from flower to flower A rose-tree brushed in evil hour/ — lines which recall Spenser's comparison of the little god of the restless wing to a bee (Globe ed., p. 586). The subjoined quotations, indeed, will show that this ' flirting ' of insects is quite a commonplace with our English poets ; they will also serve to FLIRT. 37 illustrate how easy the transition was to the present use of the term : — * For love's sake, kiss me once again ! I long, and should not beg in vain ; I'll taste as lightly as the Bee That doth but touch his flower, and flies away.' Ben Jonson. ' The flow'r enamoured busy bee The rosy banquet loves to sip ; But Delia, on thy balmy lips Let me, no vagrant insect, rove ; O let me steal one limpid kiss, For, oh ! my soul is parched with love.' Burns. 1 My youth ('tis true) has often ranged, Like bees o'er gaudy flowers ; And many thousand loves has changed, Till it was fixed in yours.' Prior. ' When the first summer bee O'er the young rose shall hover, Then, like that gay rover, I'll come to thee. He to flowers, I to lips, full of sweets to the brim — What a meeting, what a meeting, for me and for him ! Then to every bright tree In the garden he'll wander ; While I, oh, much fonder, Will stay with thee. ! In search of new sweetness through thousands he'll run, While I find the sweetness of thousands in one.' T. Moon. In one of Sir John Suckling's love-poems occur these lines, with an amatory significance : — 38 FLIRT. 1 If where a gentle bee hath fallen, And laboured to his power, A new succeeds not to that flower But passes by, Tis to be thought the gallant elsewhere loads his thigh. But still the flowers ready stand, One buzzes round about, One lights, one tastes, gets in, gets out ; All always use them, Till all their sweets are gone, and all again refuse them/ Vol. i. p. 24 (reprint, 1874). When a bee came sipping at the lips of Her- rick's l sweet lady-flower ' Julia, he excuses himself by urging, with pretty gallantry — * I never sting The flower that gives me nourishing : But with a kisse, or thanks, doe pay For honie, that I bear away.' Hesperides, vol. i. p. 73 (ed. Hazlitt). 1 The bee through all the garden roves, And hums a lay o'er every flower, But when it finds the flower it loves It nestles there and hums no more.' (?) * I'd be a butterfly born in a bower Where roses and lilies and violets meet, Koving for ever from flower to flower, And kissing all buds that are pretty and sweet.' T. H. Bayly. 1 Oh say not woman's false as fair, That like the bee she ranges ! Still seeking flowers more sweet and rare, As fickle fancy changes. Ah no ! the love that first can warm, Will leave her bosom never ; FLIRT. 39 No second passion e'er can charm ; She loves, and loves for ever.' Isaac Pocock. In illustration of the formation of the word, I might adduce the term C flurt-Bilk 9 > i.e., i floret silke, cowrse silke ' (Cotgrave, s.v. Filoselle), from the French fleuret t Ger. Jioret-seide, and so = ' flowered ' silk ; likewise the heraldic term < crosse JlurV (Fuller, Church History, ii. 227-228, ed. Tegg), q.d., croix JleureUe, a flowered cross, i croix Jlorencde ' (Cotgrave). It is curious to note that the French within these last few years have bor- rowed back from us the word which originally was altogether their own. In the ' Dictionnaire de 1' Argot Parisien ' appears i Flirtation, badinage galant, manege de coquetterie, Anglicanisme,' with two quotations from works published in 1872 ; ' Flirter, se livrer a la flirtation.' From the assiduity of his attentions to the heather, Thomas Hood concluded that ' The broom's betroth'd to the bee,' forgetting that he is a 6 chartered libertine ' pledged to no flower in special, but wooing them all in turn. 1 Lever, we cannot but think, showed 1 M. Littre, apparently unconscious of the close relationship to our English word, traces the history of fieureter somewhat differ- ently, as follows : — Fleurette, a little flower, (2) anything trifling, fig. < Propos galant. C'est par une mdtaphore facile a saisir que des propos galants out 40 FLUNKEY. much truer insight into the character of this in- constant insect when he wrote the playful doggrels which will furnish a suitable illustration where- with to conclude these remarks — ' And as for the bee And his industry, I distrust his toilsome hours, For he roves up and down Like a '* man upon town," "With a natural taste for flowers.' 1 1 Flunkey ' is the Old French Jlanchier, one who waited, or ran, at his master's Jtanc, or side, and so is literally ' a flanker,' just asjianqueur denotes one who fights on the flank. It is from Jianquer, 6 to run aloDg by the side of, to be at one's elbow for ete* assimiles a une petite et jolie fleur. II y avait un verbe fleureter, qui signifiait babiller, dire des riens.' Fleurelte also = ' Conteur de fleurettes, homme volage qui en conte a toutes les femrnes. En general, compliments, choses flatteuses.' 1 ' One of Them,' ch. vii. Quite recently we have seen much more serious charges brought against the bee than that of being merely ' a flirt.' Apropos of the ravages which he has been convicted of making on peaches and other wall-fruit, and the ill-repute into which he has fallen in some quarters in consequence of his incon- tinence, we are told, 'The fairy-like recesses of the purple bloom of the heather no longer content this newly-developed rake ; and, to the shame of his origin and his backers, he turns his wings from the broad masses of borage, whose blue flowers have been purposely cultivated for him, and plunges his dainty tooth into the ripening cheek of a prize nectarine.' Accordingly the once favourite * busy bee ' is denounced not only as ' a cormorant, an idler, and & flaneur,' but as ' a sensualist, a greedy loafer, — in fact, a roue of the worst and most dangerous sort.' See adively article in the ' Standard' of Oct. 4, 1875. HENCHMAN. 41 a help at need ' (Cotgrave). 1 ' And flunkies shall tend you wherever you gae' (Auld Robin Gray). The phrase tegere latus in Latin is of quite the same import, and we might with the most literal accuracy translate Horace's query, ' Utne tegam spurco Damre latus ? ' — Am I to flunkey filthy Dama? Martial actually uses latus, side, for a companion or constant attendant — ' Inter Bajanas raptus puer occidit undas Eutychus, ille tuum, Castrice, dulce latus.' 2 Compare our c sides-men/ parish-officers ap- pointed to assist the churchwardens. Legate a latere, a cardinal whom the Pope sends as his am- bassador to foreign courts, is as much as to say a ' counsellor always at his elbow ' (Bailey). Similar expressions are c henchman,' 3 he who stands at a person's haunch to support and second him ; c ambassador,' It. ambasciadore, from the Low Latin ambactia, charge, business, and this again from ambactus, a servant. Ambactus repre- sents the 0. H. Ger. ambaht, Goth, andbahts, which Grimm resolves into and, and bak, back. So it 1 Mr Wedgwood surely let himself be led away by the dazzling appearance of the superfine menial of modern Belgravia when he connected the word with Ger. flunke, a spark, Dutch flonkeren, to glitter. 2 Epigrams, vi. 68, ' De Morte Eutychi,' 11. 3, 4. 3 Formerly sometimes spelt 'hancheman,' e.g., among the dresses prepared for the coronation of Edward VI. were ' two cotts of hanchemen ' (The Losely MSS., p. 68). To kench, on the other hand, in Cumberland is to jerk a stone from the haunch. 42 SCORN. means originally a * back-man,' one who backs up and supports another. Cf. It. codiatore, a man's follower or attendant, from coda, the tail or back. The verb ' to side ' was once used like Jianquer in the sense of accompanying. * Every masquer was invariably attended by his torch-bearer, who preceded his entrance and exit, and sided him (though at a distance) while in action.' B. Jonson, vol. vii. p. 7. Compare the Old French term costereauls, i a nickname given unto certain footmen that served the kings of England in their French wars ' (Cotgrave), which is akin to the verb costoyer, 6 to accoast, side, abbord ; to be, or lie, by the side of:' Eng. 'to coast,' to go by the side of, approach ; ' 6 to cote,' to go by the side of, pass by {e.g., i We coted them on the way,' Hamlet, ii. 2), all from Fr. cote, anciently coste, Lat. costa, the side. 6 Scorn ' is the Italian scornare, Fr. escorner, 1 to ruin, deface, or disgrace. The original mean- ing of the latter, as we find it given in Cot- grave, is 'to unhorn, dishorn, or deprive of horns ; to cut, pull, or take from one a thing which is (or he thinks is) an ornament or grace unto him ; to lop or shred off the boughs of trees.' The past participle escornt, unhorned, means also, he tells us, ' melancholike, out of heart, out of countenance, ashamed to shew himself, as a Deere is, when he 1 We need not, perhaps, suppose any direct connection with the German sckerno, 0. H. Ger. skernon, Fr. escharnir. SCOKN. 43 hath cast his head ; l . . . and hence, defaced, ruined, scorned, disgraced.' So Pliny, in his account of that animal — * The males of this kind are horned, and they (aboue all other liuing creatures) cast them euery yeare once, at a cer- taine time of the Spring : and to that purpose, a little before the very day of their mewing, they seek the most secret cor- ners, and most out of the way in the whole forest. When they are pollards they keep close hidden, as if they were disarmed.' Holland's Trans., vol. i. p. 214 (1634). Florio, in his i New World of Words,' 1611, gives a like account of the Italian scornare, 'tounhorne, to dishorne. Also to scorne, to mocke, to vilifie, to shame.' Both these words come from a Low Latin form, discornare or excornare, to render ex-cornis, or destitute of horns. And inasmuch as to deprive an animal of its horns is to deprive it of its chief glory and ornament, to render it quite defenceless and despicable, 2 the word by an easy transition be- came applicable to any species of contemptuous and dishonourable treatment, e.g., c Sothli Eroude with his oost dispiside him and scornyde him clothid with a whit cloth' (WyclifTe, Luke xxiii. 11). 1 Camden, in his ' Remains,' mentions an imprese he had seen, ' a Bucke casting his homes with inermis defoemis over him ; and under him cur dolent habentes '' (p. 358, ed. 1637). * Escorchie I'ont comme buef escorne ' (Jourdains de Blaivies). In the French argot, ecorner=injurier (Fr. Michel, Etude sur 1' Argot). a The expression an ' humble ' deer, an ' humble ' ewe, is applied to one without horns ; but this is a corruption of hummel' d, from prov. Eng. hummel, hammel, 0. N. hamla, to mutilate, lop, A. -Sax. hamelan, to hamstring. 44 SCORN. In Spenser's i Faerie Queene,' when. Diana and her nymphs detected the prying Faun, ' Forth they drew him by the homes, and shooke Nigh all to peeces, that they left him nought ; And then into the open light they forth him brought.' Or, in other words, as his treatment is described a little afterwards — ' They mocke and scorne him, and him fonle miscall ; Some by the nose him pluckt, some by the taile, And by his goatish beard some did him haile,' Bk. VII. canto vi. 47, 49. The secondary sense of the word — not so much to make one hornless, as to regard him as such, to despise him as unarmed — may be illustrated by a passage from the Epigrams of the same author, in which Cupid exclaims, when smarting from the sting of a bee, before heedlessly set at nought by him — ' The Fly, that I so much did scorne, Hath hurt me with his little home.' It will be remembered that amongst the Hebrews the horn was regarded as the natural symbol of power and honour, 1 and to break or bring down one's horn was to degrade and humble him, e.g., " All the horns of the wicked also will I cut off, but the horns of the righteous shall be exalted ' 1 ' The horn, the horn, the lusty horn Is not a thing to laugh to scorn.' As You Like It, iv. 2. Cf. ' Addis cornua pauperi.' Hor. Od. iii. 21, 18. SCORN. 45 (Ps. Ixxv. 10), q.d., < I will scorn the "wicked.' Similarly, to cut off the hair and beard, which are the natural ornament of the human head, just as horns are that of the beast, was an act expressive of contempt and mockery (2 Sam. x. 4), and to have one's head so denuded was to be made a sub- ject of derision (2 Kings ii. 23). In Jeremiah (ix. 25; xxv. 23; xlix. 32, marg.), a common term of reproach for the Arabian nations is, l the men with shorn-off whiskers ' (Gesenius). So the Sanskrit munda, shorn, hornless (from mund, to shave), a baldpate, means also low and mean. The Gaelic maol, without horns, bald, is also i foolish, silly ; ' maol-ckeannack, bald-headed, stupid, sheepish ; Irish maol, shaved, bald, also obtuse, humble, a servant. Compare the Eng. word ' dod,' ' Doddyd, wythe-owte hornysse, De- cornutus, incornutus' (Prompt. Parv.) ; of trees = lopped of its foliage, decomatus ; i dodderel,' a pollard ; ' doddypate ' or ' doddipoll,' a blockhead or numskull ; - 1 Frisian dodd, a simpleton. We may also, perhaps, compare ' to contemn/ Lat. contemno, temno, which is the representative of the Greek Umno (refiva)), to cut off; and the Greek verb koldzo (fcoXafo), to check or chastise, coming from kolos (koXos), docked, clipped, hornless. 1 ' Doddy-poll was originally applied to a person who had his hair cut very short, or to a tonsured priest.' Atkinson, Cleveland Dialect, b.v. ' Dodded.'' ( 46 ) CHAPTER III. THE WORD 'TRY' THE WORDS { FLATTER' — ( ADU- LA TION ' — ' PERSUADE ' — 4 INDULGE; ETC. Words, like photographs of our friends, have a natural tendency in process of time to fade and lose the sharpness of their outlines. Many, which once on a time conveyed to the mind a distinct and vivid picture, lose their chief characteristics after a while ; and thus, as the lights grow dark and the shadows grow pale, a word becoming quite general and undefined in its meaning assumes an inexpressive aspect of colourless monotony, like one of those blanched and pallid likenesses which have ceased to interest us. It is only with effort, and by holding the word, as it were, in a favour- able light, that we can trace again the imprint of individuality which formerly it possessed. Of the multitudes of such dulled and exhausted words which are stored up in the crowded album of faded pictures which we call a dictionary, we will bring out one for examination in the present chapter. We will take the word ' try,' in such a sentence as i Jack is trying to skate' — a use of the word, TRY. 47 by the way, which appears to be quite modern ; for often as it occurs in the authorised version, it is never found with a dependent infinitive in the sense of attempting to do a thing. The verb here is so simple and transparent in its mere auxiliary position, that we would not expect it to have been impressed once with a graphic and full-toned significance. Let us see if we can revive the picture. To 'try' is the French trier, (Pro v.) triar (to pick, cull out), (0. It.) triare, (It.) tritare (to triturate, sift, examine), from (Lat.) tritare, fre- quentative of terere (to thrash). The original meaning therefore of i to try,' or, according to the old phrase, i to try out,' was to separate the grain from the straw and chaff by thrashing and winnowing, to distinguish the worthless from the good ; then, in a secondary sense, to sift out the truth by examination, to put to the test, to make assay or experiment of, to attempt. 1 Accordingly, in our pattern sentence the full and fundamental meaning would be, Jack is dis- criminating, or learning by experience the differ- ence, between skating and not skating — distin- 1 "With ' trial' = affliction, &c, cf. the very similar word 'tribu- lation.' Trench, Study of Words, Lect. II. Milton speaks of a life * Tried in sharp tribulation, and refined By faith and faithful works.' Far. Lost, xi. 63. 48 TRY. guishing what is from what is not in his power — and following up the discovery thus made by a correspondent effort, perhaps a painful one. The word is frequently used in its primary sense in old writers, e.g. — ' Euentilare, to winnow or trie in the wind. 1 Florio, New World of Words, 1611. ' The wylde come, beinge in shape and greatnesse lyke to the good, if they be mengled, with great difficultie wyll be tryed out, but either in a narowe holed seeve they wyl stil abide with the good corne,' &c. Sir T. Elyot, The Governor. Bk. II. c. 14 (Richardson, Diet.) ' I let all go to losse, and count the as chaffe or refuse (that is to say, as thinges which are purged out and refused when a thyng is tryed and made perfect), that 1 might wynne Christ.' Tyndall, Works, p. 219 (Richardson). ' Alas, now when the trial doth separate the chaff from the corn, how small a deal it is, God knoweth, which the wind doth not blow away.' Ridley, quoted in Palmer's Eccles. Hist, p. 272. ' Gods (temptation) is like the tryall of gold, 1 Pet. i. 7, which the oftener it is tryed, the purer it waxeth ; the devils, like that of Manna, which stinketh and corrupteth by tryall. Gods is like the tryall of the fanne, Matth. iii. 12, the devils like that of the scive, Luke xxii. 31, which lets goe the flower and keepes the branne.' Bp. Andrewes, Temptation of Clirist, p. 11 (1642). Compare this also, from the works of Isaac Williams — ' The fidelity of Luke here appears in sad contrast with the falling away of Demas. . . . Now the trial had sifted the chaff and the wheat, and they are parted asunder. How awful is this separation ever going on between the good and the bad ! ' Sermons on Saints 1 Days, p. 332. TRY. 49 So ' a try' is an old word for a sieve or riddle. 1 i This breaking of his has been but a try for his friends ' (Shakspere, Tirnon, v. 1), meaning his bankruptcy is only a device for distinguishing his true friends from the false. ' To try tallow ' is, I believe, still the technical phrase for separating the fat from the refuse by melting it. This word was also used especially for the testing and purify- ing of gold by smelting it in a furnace, and thus separating it from all dross and baser admixture. Then in a figurative sense it was applied to the testing of a man's faith and patience under the fiery heat of temptation (1 Pet. i. 7). In the Old Testament Scriptures the Hebrew word tzdrap/i, 2 to melt a metal, and so free it from dross (Ps. xii. 7 ; Isa. i. 25), is often used for the proving and purifying of the human heart (Ps. xvii. 3, xxvi. 2, cv. 19; Dan. xi. 35), and our word £ try/ when employed to translate it in those passages, must no doubt be understood in its proper and original sense — ' to sift and separate from impurity.' * Compare their temptations to a fire which burns out dross and corruption, and makes the metal purer, and so God may he said to tempt, " I will sit as a refiuer and purifier of silver ; " because by this fiery trial the virtues of His children are made the clearer, their vicious inclinations beiug separated 1 Vide quotation from Holland in Trench, Deficiencies in English Dictionaries, p. 17. 2 C^ # 50 TRY. and removed. " When He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold."' Bp. Nicholson on the Catechism, 1661. A comparison of the following verses in our authorised version, in each of which the word we are examining occurs, will show conclusively that the primary meaning was ever present to the minds of the translators : — Job xxiii. 10 ; Ps. xii. 6, lxvi. 10, cxix. 140 (marg.) ; Prov. xvii. 3 ; Jer. ix. 7 ; Dan. xii. 10 ; Zech. xiii. 9 ; 1 Cor. iii. 13 ; 1 Pet. i. 7 ; Eev. iii. 18. In each and all of these passages there is a direct reference to the refining of silver or gold in the furnace, and this idea, though few persons know or remember it when reading them, is accu- rately conveyed by our verb ' to try.' So Shaks- pere, in his lines on the silver casket — * The fire seven times tried this : Seven times tried that judgment is, That did never choose amiss.' Merchant of Venice, ii. 9. ' Shall I think in silver she's immured Being ten times undervalued to tried gold 1 ' Ibid. ii. 7. Similarly, to c put a person to the test/ or to 'test' him, meant originally to place him in the test, which is an old word for the crucible or melt- ing-pot of the refiner, wherewith he assayed the TRY. 51 quality or value of a metal submitted to him (It. testo, Lat. testa, an earthen vessel). 1 Those who have * Beguiled with a counterfeit, . . . which, bei: Proves valueless,' 2 which, beiug touch'd and tried, and whose virtue, therefore, has failed under the test or fiery trial, carrying out the figure, were called c reprobate ' — a word properly applied to metals which do not stand the proof, and are therefore condemned as adulterate, or rejected as spurious (Lat. reprobus), 3 e.g. — 1 Keprobate silver shall men call them, because the Lord hath rejected them.' Jer. vi. 30. This comparison of trials or afflictive dispensa- tions to the fierce action of fire, which exercises, nevertheless, an ameliorating and purifying virtue, by consuming whatever of worthless may be mingled with the good, is common to many languages. For example, Kidd, in his work on China (p. 44), tells us that the Chinese symbol meaning < to refine metals ' is ' compounded of ho, fire, and keen, to separate, which exhibits both the act of 1 Cf. It. coppellare, * to refine or bring gold or silver to his right and due test or loye ' (Florio), from copjoella, a cupel or melting- pot. 2 Shakspere, King John, hi. 1. 3 Eastwood and Wright, Bible Word-Book, sv. It translates Gk. ddoKi/xos, opp. to doKifios, and So/ct^udfw, which latter is the word for trying and proving a metal, &c, in 1 Cor. iii. 13 j 1 Pet. i. 7, &c. 52 TRY. separating the dross from the pure metal, and the agent (fire) by which that separation is effected ; the moral use of which, collated with that beauti- ful passage, 1 " He will sit as a refiner's fire," is illustrated in the (Chinese) phrase, " to try men's hearts," by afflictive events or prosperous circum- stances ; that is, to test human character by means of providential dispensations.' 'Another symbol is formed of metal and to separate. This is expres- sive not only of refining metals in the furnace, but of man undergoing a trial for the purpose of proving and benefiting him : whence it is used to denote experience, maturity, expertness, but whether in a good or bad sense depends upon the context ' {Id. p. 45). ' By many a stern and fiery blast The world's rude furnace must thy blood refine.' Keble, Christian Year. The same idea is beautifully developed in Miss Proctor's well-known poem of ' Cleansing Fires ' — 1 Let thy gold be cast in the furnace, Thy red gold, precious and bright ; Do not fear the hungry fire, With its caverns of burning light : And thy gold shall return more precious, Free from every spot and stain ; For gold must be tried by fire, As a heart must be tried by pain ! ' Poems, i. 63. 1 Mai. iii. 2, 3. T RY. 53 These lines, and still better the following — 1 The fettered spirits linger In purgatorial pain, With penal fires effacing Their last faint earthly stain/ Poems, ii. 190. bring out in a very clear and striking manner the connection and ultimate identity of the words ' fire,' ' pain,' l penal,' ' pure/ and c purgatory,' all of which have sprung, philologists tell us, from one and the same root — the Sanskrit root pu (to purify). For hence come (1) Lat. purus, ' pure,' pur go (i.e.,pur-igo), Ho cleanse/ ' purgatory ' x (the place of cleansing) ; (2) (Sans.) puna, punt, (Lat.) punire, (to make pure, punish — cf. castigo, to make chaste, chastise), Gk. poine (jroivrj), Lat. poena, 'pain/ 'penal/ (Goth.) /on (gen. funins) = fire; (3) Gk.pur (irvp), (A.-Sax.) fyr, 'fire.' Max Miiller quotes from the ancient Sanskrit Hymns, entitled the i Atharva-Veda/ an address to the God of Fire — * The prophets carry thee as the Purifier (pavitram) : purify (puniM) us from all misdeeds ' (Chips, vol. iv. p. 228). And how true it is that fires, which seemed only to punish, are overruled and made to purify and refine — that the fiery heat of pain, persecution, and temptation, if entered into, and borne, with a 1 With the penal fires of pwrgatory compare, 'Infectum eluitur scelus, aut exuriturigni.' Virgil, JEn. Lib. VI. 742. 54 TRY. faithful and unswerving heart, will be made unto us, not only an effectual means of deliverance from bondage and oppression, but even of furtherance, and advancement to heights hitherto unattainable, we may learn from the history of the Three Holy Children. When they were i tried as the gold in the fire,' and their faith and allegiance to God were tested in the glare of the seven-times heated furnace, so far from destroying them, it became to them the very presence-chamber of their God, wherein He revealed Himself to them sensibly, as He had never done before ; it served but to burn away the bonds with which they were before held fast, for whereas they were cast in bound, they now walked about loose; and eventually it restored them unharmed, so that all men marvelled, many were turned to believe in Him that had such power to save, and they themselves were pro- moted to very great honour. When they called, therefore, upon the whole creation to join them in their song of thanksgiving — that earliest anthem of Te Deum — well might they address that con- suming element above all, which, in their hour of sorest need, had sheltered them in a canopy of flame, and say, " ye fire and heat, bless ye the Lord ; praise Him, and magnify Him for ever ! ' Accordingly the lesson which this word ' trial ' has for us in the fulness of its meaning, as literally exemplified in the case of the Three Children, may SEARCH. 55 be drawn out in these words of the wise Son of Sirach — i My son, if thou come to serve the Lord, prepare thy soul for temptation. For gold is tried in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity.' 1 For though, in the words of another apocryphal writer, ' He hath not tried us in the fire, as He did them, for the examination of their hearts, neither hath He taken vengeance on us,' yet, ' the Lord doth scourge them that come near unto Him, to admonish them.' 2 ' But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch them. And having been a little chastised, they shall be greatly rewarded ; for God proved them and found them worthy for Himself. As gold in the furnace hath He tried them, and received them as a burnt- offering. And in the time of their visitation they shall shine.' 3 If, as may be conjectured, the word ( search,' though itself of quite another origin, 4 has been ap- proximated both in form and meaning to the Old English c searce,' a sieve, it would afford a close parallel to the words ' try,' to sift, ' try/ a riddle. Compare the French c sasser, to sift, searce ; ' ' sas, a ranging sieve, or searce ; ' tamiser, to searce, to boult, to pass or strain through a searce' (Cotgrave). 1 Ecclus. ii. 1,5. 2 Judith vii. 27. 3 Wisdom iii. 1, 5-7. 4 From the Fr. ckercher, It. cercare, Lat. circare, to go around, from circus, a circle. 56 DISCRETION. ' The men of Bercea would not receive Pauls Doctrin before they had tried it : and how did they try it ? It is said that they searched the Scripture. II. Smith, Sermons, p. 145 (1657). They sifted and examined the apostle's statements, and only accepted them when they had been passed through the scarce of Scrip- ture. ■ Let vs search deepe and trie our better parts.' Sir John Beaumont (d. 1623), The Miserable State of Man. 6 To sift, to search, also to chuse or cull out,' is Florio's definition of the Italian cernere. The synonymous word in Latin yields us our verb ' to discern ' (Lat. dis-cernere), meaning origi- nally to sift apart, or separate by riddling, the good from the refuse. 1 A person who is careful in thus making a difference, who knows how to discriminate in doubtful cases, refusing the evil and choosing the good, is said to have ' discretion ' (Lat. discretio). Fuller, in his ' Church History,' says of a certain legendary story of doubtful credit, that it ' calleth aloud to the discretion of the reader to fan the chaff from the corn ; and to his industry, to rub the dust from the gold which 1 Compare the Sp. cernir, to sift meal, cierna, the flower or best of anything; It. cerna, a culling or choosing out; Lat. cribrum, a sieve, whence Fr. cribler, to sift, our ' garble.' Akin is the Gk. krino> to separate, distinguish between good and bad, decide, try ; Sans. Jcri, to separate. But see Pictet, i. 203. SKILL. 57 almost of necessity will cleave to matters of such antiquity' (vol. i. p. 23, ed. 1868). Many other instances might be adduced of words which, having a primitive signification of winnowing, separating, or dividing, have come to be used in ordinary language in the sense of examining, trying, un- derstanding, or perceiving. For example, if we say one is a man of science, of skill, or of intelli- gence ; i science ' (Lat. scientia, knowledge) is from scio, to know, which is from Sanskrit root k'hd, to divide, seen also in the Greek verbs keid, kedzo, to cleave ; 1 ' skill ' is the 0. Norse skil, separation, discrimination, Dan. skille, to sever, put asunder. 2 To skill in Old English means to matter, or make a difference, as well as to know or understand ; in some of the provincial dialects it signifies to hull oats ; and spelt skile, it means to separate. While ' intelligent,' from the Latin intelligere {i.e., inter- legere, to pick out here and there), is applicable to a person who exercises judgment in select- ing, and putting this and that together. A schoolboy who is quick in construing, in picking out the verb and the nominative and dependent genitive, when dispersed over a long and involved Latin sentence, might be accurately described as i intelligent.' With ' skill ' we may compare the 1 Ferrar, Comparative Grammar, vol. i. p. 71. 2 Scale, shell, skull, shield, and inauy other words are con- nected. 58 discuss. Sanskrit word patu, skilful, coming from pat, to divide (originally j^cirt, Lat. par(t)-s)} In Hebrew, bin, to separate, means also to dis- cern, distinguish, understand, or know ; and the participle ndbon means intelligent, skilful. Simi- larly, Lat. video, to see, akin to Gk. vid-ein (fiSelv), Ger. wissen, our l wit,' Sans, vid, to know, probably signified originally to separate or dis- tinguish one thing from another. Compare Lat. divido, to divide. In Hebrew, bdqar, to cleave, in a secondary sense means to inspect, consider, think upon. In the passage Psalm cxxxix. 3, rendered by Gesenius, ( Thou hast searched me in my walk- ing and in my lying down,' the verb in the ori- ginal implies ' Thou hast winnowed me,' — zdrdh, to winnow, then to shake out and examine thoroughly. Beside this we may set our word c to discuss,' coming, as it does, from the Latin verb discutio (dis-quatio), to shake asunder. Its proper signifi- cation is to separate and loosen by shaking, to disentangle and clear a subject by getting rid of the extraneous matter with which it has been encumbered. Spenser uses the word in its primi- tive sense — 'All regard of shame she had discusV {i.e., shaken off). Faerie Queene, III. i. 48. In old medical writers it means to disperse 1 Ferrar, Comparative Grammar, vol. i. p. 337. CANVASS. 59 humours. Holland tells us that a decoction of Parthenium is good ' to discusse all inflammations ' (< Translation of Pliny,' vol. ii. p. Ill, 1635). Our verb ' to canvass ' meant originally to sift or examine by passing through canvas. 1 Wening it perhaps no decorum that shepheards should be seene in matter of so deep insight, or canvase a case of so doubtful judgment.' General Argument to the Shepheard's Calender. Compare Fr. ' berner, to vanne or winnow corn, also to canvass or toss in a sive ' (Cotgrave). Somewhat similarly, Lat. putare, to think, comes from the adjective putus, pure, unmixed, clean, and this from the root pu, above. It meant first to expurgate or cleanse from all superfluous ad- mixture ; then to clear up a matter, to reckon up and balance an arithmetical account, as we speak of clearing fractions, or liquidating accounts; then, of mental operations, to distinguish clearly. The verb to ' distinguish ' itself meant once on a time to prick off, 1 as the markers at the uni- versity, when calling the roll, mark off with a pin the students who answer to their names. A man of ' distinction ' is one separated from the com- mon herd, and set apart as superior to his fellows. Compare Heb. ndqad, to prick, mark with points, 1 Stinguo, to prick, is from the root stig, which is also seen in ' stimulate/ Lat. sti(g)mulus, ' instigate,' ' instinct,' ' extinct,' 'stake,' 'sting,' Gk. stizo, 'stigma,' &c. 60 FLATTER. also to select or set apart things which are of a better quality than the rest by marking them off (Gesenius). In like manner, when we give special attention to anything that comes under our notice, affixing, as it were, a mental asterisk to it, or ticking it off in the tablets of ourmemorj', we are said to ' mark,' or ' remark ' it, Ger. merken. To take another case of a word which had once a sensible image, that now eludes general cognisance, but which only needs to have a de- veloping solution applied to it (so to speak) in order to bring out the latent picture, let us sub- mit the verb 6 flatter ' to the philological ' bath,' and note the interesting results of the process as it grows into a concrete distinctness. * Flatter,' the French flatter x (to pat, stroke, caress, flatter) audflater (' to flatter; sooth, smooth; also, to claw, stroke, clap gently] Cotgrave), (Pro v.) flatar, is a derivative from ' flat ' (A.- Sax. and 0. Norse) flat, (0. H. Ger.) A*, (Gk.) pldx (77-Aaf), 1 Placare would probably be in Latin the etymological represen- tative oi flatter, with a primitive meaning of flattening or smoothing. "We frequently read of a sea-god in Ovid or Virgil cequora placat, he smoothes the waters. Compare plac-enta, a flat cake ( = 0. Eng. Jlathc, 0. H. Ger. flado), pldga, a flat surface, planus for plac-nus, planca for plac-na, a flat board, a ' plank.' The root is plac or plag, seen in Gk. plak-s, Fr. plaque and plat, Ger. flach, ' flat,' jlachen, to flatten. Of the same origin, beyond doubt, and affording an interesting parallel to ' flatter,' are the words Jlatch, in the dialect of Cleveland a flatterer, Danish flegrc, Swed. Jleha, Scotch fleech or flcich, to flatter. FLATTER. 61 (Fr.) plat (flat), ' Bailler du plat de la langue, to sooth, flatter ', A metaphor from a dog's licking ■ (Cotgrave). The form i to flat • is found in Gawin Douglas's translation of the < JEneid ' (1553)— * Quhat sliclit dissait quentlie to flat and fene.' Prologue of the Fourth BoJce. Accordingly the meaning of the word would have passed through the following transitions : — (1) To make flat or even ; (2) to smooth down the hair of an animal, to lick; (3) to stroke, caress; 1 (4) not to go against the grain, but to humour a person's weaknesses, to flatter, or as Burns ex- presses it — ' For G — d sake, sirs ! then speak her fair, An' straiJc her cannie wi } the hair.'' Tennyson, therefore, would seem to have divined the true force of the word when he wrote — 1 Then to his proud horse Lancelot turn'd, and smooth'd The glossy shoulder, humming to himself. Half-envious of the flattering hand, she drew Nearer and stood.' Idylls of the King, p. 165 (ed. 1859). So ' to stroke ' in prov. Eng. means to soothe, to flatter (Wright, Prov. Diet.), and * stroker ' is 1 Gk. Karappifa. M. Littre quotes the following instances of flatter being used in this sense : — ' Ton cou nerveux [d'un cheval] de sa main fid flatte' (Millev.); * De la main qui leflatte il se croit redoute' (Voltaire). 62 FLATTER. used for a flatterer by Ben Jonson. 1 Compare the following : — 'Campian . . . being excellent at the flat hand of Ehetorick (which rather gives pats then blows), but he could not bend his fist to dispute.' 2 Fuller, Holy State, p. 60 (ed. 1648). 1 This is a fairing, gentle sir, indeed, To soothe me up with such smooth flattery.' Greene, Friar Bacon (1594), p. 157 (ed. Dyce). ' His [the flatterer's] Art is nothing but a delightful coozen- age, whose rules are smoothing, and garded with perjurie ; whose scope is to make men fooles, in teaching them to over- value themselves, and to tickle his friends to death.' Bp. Hall, Characterismes of Vices, p. 173 {Works, 1634). ' Let not his smoothing ivords Bewitch your hearts . . . . . for all this flattering gloss He will be found a dangerous protector.' Shahs., 2d Ft. Henry VI., i. 1. 1 Dangerous peer That smoothest it so with king and common-weal.' Shake., 2d Ft. Henry VL, ii. 1. 'His [Henry III.'s] expression, "licking the chancery," hath left posterity to interpret it, whether taxing him for ambition, liquorishly longing for that place; or for adulation, by the soft smoothing of flattery making his way thereunto.' Fuller, Worthies, vol. i. p. 117 (repr. 1811). There are numerous instances of words expres- 1 Magnetic Lady, iv. 1. Cf. ' To wipe a person down,' to flatter or pacify (Slang Dictionary). 2 There is an evident reference here (as pointed out by the brothers Hare, ' Guesses at Truth,' 1st Ser. p. 137, 3d ed.) to Zeno's illustration, ' Cum autem diduxerat, et manum dilataverat, palmse illius similem eloquentiam esse dicebat ' (Cic. de Orat., 32). FLATTER. 63 sive of the idea of flattering having originally meant to smooth, 1 or stroke down, e.g. — 1. ' To claw ' is very commonly used in old writers for to flatter — 1 Claw no man in his humour.' Shaks., Much Ado About Nothing, i. 3. 1 Some object that he [Cambden] claws and natters the Gran- dees of his own age.' Fuller, H. State, p. 137 (1648). 'Why the King cajoleth the great Monasteries ... in the foresaid preamble the King fairly claweth the great Monas- teries.' Fuller, Church Hist, ii. 211 (ed. 1842). So c clawback ' was used for flatterer, e.g. — 1 Parasite, a clawback, flatterer, soother, smoother, for good chear sake.' Cutgrave. 2. 6 To curry/ or c curry favour,' originally to e currg Javel, 2 (Fr.) etriller fauveau, to curry the chestnut horse, to soothe an animal by rubbing him down and combing him, to flatter. ' Thei curreth kynges and her back claweth.' P. P. Creole, c. iii. So we meet (Dut.) streelen, to flatter, soothe, from sir eel, a curry-comb. 3 3. ' To glaver,' or 6 glafTer ' (prov. Eng.) = to flatter, connected with (Welsh) glaf (= smooth), (prov. Bug.) glafe^ (Lat.) glaber (smooth), 'glib.' 1 So the Latin verb calvor, to deceive (whence calumnia), seems to contain the root of calvus, smooth. 2 Vide Douce's Illustrations of Shakspere, p. 291. 3 Philolog. Soc. Proceedings, g vol. iii. p. 149. 64 FLATTER. 4. (Russ.) gladit (to flatter, smooth, stroke), (Boliem.) Idaditi, connected with (Dut) glad, (Ger.) glatt, (Bohem.) hladhj (= smooth), cf. l glatte worte' = flattery (Ger., Prov. ii. 16). So (Swed.) sliita ord (smooth, i.e., flattering, words), from slkt (smooth), (Goth.) slaihts, (Ger.) slicht, l sleek.' * Compare — ' The schilling vissage of the god Cupicle, And his dissimilit slekit wourdes quhyte.' Gawin Douglas, Bulces of Eneados (1553). 5. (Fr.) palper (' to handle gently, stroak softly, also to flatter, sooth, cog,' Cotgrave), (Lat.) palpari? 6. (Fr.) chatouiller, 'to tickle, touch gently, also to flatter, claw, smooth, please with faire words/ (Cotgrave). 7. (It.) lisciare (' to smooth, to sleeke, to stroke, or claw smoothly and softly. Also, to flatter or cog withall,' Florio), from liscio (smooth), Gk. \iaaos. 8. (Prov. Eng.) rchane (to stroke, to coax), Tchanter (to flatter), (North). — Wright. (Cleve- land) wholly, to stroke the back of an animal gently, also to wheedle or cajole a person (Atkinson). 1 Cf. Ps. xii. 2 ; Prov. vi. 24, where the original implies smooth speeches, &c. 2 Cf ' Cui male si palpere recalcitrat undique tutus' (Hor. Sat. ii. 1, 20). So Buttmann connects Gk. airarav (to deceive) with d.Tra.(petv and dirreadai (to touch, handle), (Lexilogus, s. v.) FLATTER. 65 9. (Ir.) sliomaim, (Gael.) sliom (to flatter), from sliom (smooth, sleek, ' slim '). 10. (Lat.) mulcere (1, to stroke down ; 2, soothe, flatter), connected with mulgere (to milk a cow), dfieXyco, (Ir.) miolc (milk) ; and near akin are the (Ir.) miolcaim} (to flatter, soothe) and 11. (Lith.) milzu (1, to stroke down, milk; 2, cajole, persuade). 12. (Ir.) bladairim (I flatter), bladar (flattery, soothing), {cf, 6 blether ' and ' blather') from bladh (smooth, flat, also flattery). With n inserted, blandar, blandaraim, which seem to account for the Latin blandus, blandior (to flatter.) ' Blan- disseur, sl soother, smoother, flattering sycophant, or claw-back ' (Cotgrave). 13. (Ger.) schmeicheln, (Dut.) smeecken, (Dan.) smigre (= to flatter), Eng. ' smicker,' (Swed.) smeka (to stroke, caress), smickra, to flatter. Skinner (Etymologicon, 1671) gives Eng. to 6 smuckle ' = to flatter. 14. (Heb,) chdlaq 2 (to be smooth), Hiphil (1) to smooth, (2) to flatter (Prov. xxix. 5 ; Ps. xxxvi. 3), (? cf. Ko\a%). A cognate word is — 1 Cf. (Ir.) bleacktaire (1, a milker; 2, a soother), Ueachd (milk), &c. Similarly (Gk.) dwirrio (to flatter, orig. to caress or stroke with the hand), has been traced to the Sanskrit root duh (to milk). M. Miiller quoted by Pictet, Orig. Ind. ii. 25. 2 P?n. E 66 FLATTER. 15. (Heb.) cMld/c 1 (to be smooth), Piel (1) to stroke or smooth anyone's face, (2) soothe, caress, flatter. Thus we are told in a curious anthropo- morphic phrase in Zech. vii. 2, that Sherezer and others were sent ' to stroke the face of Jehovah, i.e., to conciliate or entreat His favour. 2 16. (Esthon.) libbe (smooth, flattering), con- nected with libbama (to lick). Cf (Prov.) lepar (1, to lick ; 2, to cajole, flatter). 17. (Prov.) lagot (flattery), (Sp.) lagotear (to flatter), connected with (QoW\.)\>i-laigo7i (to lick), Diez. Compare ' I learn that smooth-tongu'd flatteries are False language.' Quarks, Grammar of the Heart. And the German proverb, ' Schmeichler sind Katzen, die vorne lecken und hinten kratzen.' And so Macaulay — ' The amiable king had a trick of giving a sly scratch with one hand, while patting and stroking with the other.' Essay on Frederick the Great. * It is observable that which way soever a wicked man useth his tongue, he cannot use it well. Mordet detrahendo, lingit adulando : He bites by detraction, licks by flattery ; and either of these touches rankle ; he doth no less hurt by licking than by biting.' Thos. Adams, Sermon on the Taming of the Tongue. 1 n ^- 2 Vide, Keil on Minor Prophets, in he, vol. i. (Clark, Trans.) ADULATION. 67 Synonymous with flattery is i adulation/ the Latin adulatio, from adulor. This last word has sorely perplexed almost every etymologist that has attempted to analyse it ; and yet, if I am not mistaken, the true explanation of it is neither dif- ficult nor recondite. The most absurd and con- flicting derivations have been suggested; for example, ad aulam (from i standing in the hall ') by Wedgwood, ad and a supposed word via (= Greek ovpa, ' tail '), from a dog wagging its tail, 1 by Donaldson (Varron., p. 259), adoro (pray to) by others. It is much more probable, I think, that adulor represents the Greek d&uXlfo (Jiadulizo), from aSvkos (Jiddulos), Doric forms of rjBu\l^co, 1 As 'wheedle 'is the (Ger.) wedeln (to wag the tail), cf. (It.) codiare (Florio). This is the origin that Wedgwood adopts for 'flatter,' connecting it with (0. Norse) Jladra (to wag the tail). He might have quoted in support of his view the following from Bp. Keynolds, where, speaking of the ' flattery of dogs,' he quotes — 1 Ovprj fih p 6y Zo-yve, xal oUara /ca/3/3a\ev &fj.(pu. Od. p. 302. For wanton joy to see his master near, He wav'd h\s, flattering tail, and toss'd his ear.' Works, vi. 32 (ed. 1826). Beaumont and Fletcher speak of ' Lying, or dog flattering, At which our nation's excellent.' The Mad Lover. King Charles I. confessed to Sir Philip Warwick that he loved greyhounds better than spaniels, ' for they equally love their masters, and yet do not flatter them so much ' (Mem. of Charles I. p. 365). The type of the 'flattering sycophant,' says the great puritan divine Thomas Adams, is ' the fawning spaniel, that hath only learned to fetch and carry, to spring the covey of his master's lusts, and to arride and deride him ' (Works, vol. ii. p. 119, Kichol's ed.) 68 PERSUADE. ?;8u\o?, from rjSvs (sweet), and so means to say sweet things, "be sweet upon a person (cf. rjSuvco, rjSvXoyeco). 1 So our ' soothe ' is without doubt the verbal form of (0. Eng.) ' soote,' ' sote ' (sweet), 2 Dan. sod, and meant originally to sweeten ; (Goth.) sutkjan, connected with sutis (sweet), (Dut.) zoet, (A. -Sax.) swet, swaes, (Ger.) suss, (Gk.) tfSvs, (Sans.) svddu (sweet, tasty), from the root svdd (to taste, eat). Hence also ' to soother ' (Devon.), i sooter ' (to court) ; (A.-Sax.) swadkrian, from swaes (sweet). Cf. — 1 Witli sothery butter theyr bo-dyes anoynted.' The Four P's, 0. PL v. 87 (i.e., sweet, savoury. "Wright, Prov. Diet., s.v.) 1 Jellies soother than the creamy curd.' Keats, Eve of St Agnes, xxx. And Shakspere uses ' words of sooth ' for ' words of sweetness' (Richard II. iii. 3.) The (Sans.) svddu (sweet) also appears in the Latin suadere (lit. to soothe or sweeten), per- suadere, ( to persuade ' (lit. to sweeten thoroughly and effectually, per intensive) corresponding to an Eng. ' to for-soothe.' ' To sweeten ' was once used pretty nearly in the same sense, e.g. — 1 Since writing the above, I have found that the same origin had been previously suggested in Richardson's Diet. The long u in adulor, it must be admitted, remains a difficulty. * ' The rose wexeth soote, smooth, and soft.' Chaucer, Trollus and Creseide. PERSUADE. 69 * Amadouer, To flatter, to smooth, to gloze with . . . ; to sweeten, or appease a harsh or angry spirit with faire words.' Gotgrave, 1660. 1 The Holland Embassador here do endeavonr to sweeten us with fair words.' Pepys' Diary, June 16, 1664. Closely akin is the Latin suavis (sweet, for suad- vis, (Sans.) svad, svddu), which gives us our ■ assuage ' (from the 0. Fr. assouager, through a Latin assuaviare), ( to sweeten, soothe, or soften.' Cf— 1 Al my breste Bolleth* for bitter of my galle ; May no Suger so swete' a-swagen hit vnnethe.' Vision of P. Plowman (1362), Pass. v. 1. 100 (E.E.T.S., Text A). As flattery pleases, or, as we sometimes say, tickles a person's vanity and self-esteem pretty much in the same way that sweetmeats and dain- ties gratify his palate, it was a natural mode of expression to call such plausive language ' sweet or sugared speech,' i soothing,' ' soft sawder ' (pro- bably for 6 soother '), ' suasion,' or 6 adulation,' words all having in common the same idea of sweetness, and all springing from the same root. Compare also (A.- Sax.) swaes-sprdec (sweet-speech) = flattery, swaes-laecan (make-sweet), to flatter. 1 Sin, the mind's harlot,' says Thomas Adams, ' preaches according to the palate of her audience, placentia ; nay, it is placenta, a sweet cake, whose flour is sugar, and the humour that tempers it honey, sweet, pleasant.' TJie Fatal Banquet. 70 PERSUADE. In the curious old comedy of ' The Conibate of the Tongue and the Five Sences for Superiorities the heroine soliloquises as follows : — 'Fie Lingua wilt thou now degenerate? Art not a woman 1 do'st not loue reuenge ? Delightful speeches, sweete persuasions ? Oft have I seasoned sauory periods With sugred words, to delude Gustus taste.' Lingua, i. 1 (1632, sig. A 3). (She) ' The selie soul ycaught hath in her nette Of her sugred mouth alas ! nothing ware.' Chaucer, Remedy of Love. Phineas Fletcher describes Colax the flatterer as one that ' All his words with sugar spices.' The Purple Island, canto viii. 44. ' Her she soone appeas'd With sugred words, and gentle blandishment.' Spenser, F. Q., Bk. III., canto vi. 25. 1 Your fair discourse hath been as sugar, Making the hard way sweet and delectable.' Shaks., Richard II, ii. 3. 1 Hide not thy poison with such sugar d words* U Ft. Henry VI., iii. 2. { So I have seen an unblown virgin fed With sugar'd words.' Quarks, Emblems, Bk. I. ii. Other examples are the following : — 1 Amieller, To sweeten ; intice, allure, inveagle with honeyed words ; ' INDULGE. 71 and ' Emmieller, To behoney, to sweeten, . . . pacifie, or ap- pease, with sweet means.' Cotgrave. Both from miel. So c to honey ' was used by the Elizabethan writers with the signification of coax- ing or flattering. ' Cans't thou not honey me with fluent speach.' Antonio and 3/ellida, A 4 (in Nares). Compare the Gk. ixeCkiaao), fjueXlaaco (to soothe), connected with fiekca-aa, fiiki (honey) ; and the phrase, < Tiro t y\vKaLveLv pyjuarcoh ixayeipiicois, i.e., as De Quincey renders it, ' to wheedle the people with honeyed words dressed to its palate ' (Aristophanes, Knights, 216). (0. Norse) milda (to soothe, appease), mildr (gentle, 'mild'), are connected with (Gael.) mills (sweet), (Ir.) mills, and mil (honey), (Lat.) mel. So (Lat.) mulceo, mulsus (to soothe, flatter, also to sweeten drinks, &c), would seem to have been in- fluenced by, if not directly derived from, mel, mulsum (mead). ' Indulge,' (Lat.) indulgere, is for indulcere (to be sweet to a person), connected with dulcis (sweet) ; and (Fr.) adouclr, (Sp.) adulcir, (It.) addolcire, from a Latin form dulcire, ' to sweeten, smooth, asswage, appease, pacifie ' (Cotgrave), 1 are similar formations. In like man- ner, douceur (a gift) is the Lat. dulcor (sweet- 1 From adoucir, through a Swiss form adauhir, comes the 0. Eng. ' adaw ' in Spenser, to abate, soften (Wedgwood). Cf. ' as- suage,' supra. 72 INDULGE. ness), 0. Eng. dolce, a gift, 1 and exactly corre- sponding to this is the Gk. ehva (gifts), from the Sanskrit svad, sv&du (sweet), lit. ' sweet things wherewithal to "persuade.'' Cf. (Fr.) pot-de-vin and our l bribe,' which originally meant a piece of bread, (Fr.) bribe, as it were a ' sop to Cerberus,' (Gk.) fjieiXia, gifts, lit. i soothers.' See fjueiXicraa above. The following apt illustration is to be found in Lord Campbell's ' Life of Lord Lyndhurst ' (1869) :— 'He never condescended to anything like direct flattery, but he felicitously hit upon the topic which he knew would tickle the amour propre of those whom he wished to dulcify ' — i.e., to soothe, l swage,'' persuade, or sweeten. 1 I give this word on the authority of Wright's ' Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English.' [ 73 ] CHAPTEK IV. THE WORDS ' TREE ' AND AND ' TRUE' — ' VICE, VITIS ' — ' BAD ' — ' VETCH, ' VITIUM ' AND ' VITIS ' — ' BAD - ' WICKER ,' ' WEAK,' AND ' WICKED. 1 What a noble object is a full-grown tree ! How stalwart in its gnarled bulk, how lofty in its sturdy independent growth ! What a staid and reverend aspect they wear, i those green-robed senators of mighty woods/ hoary with eld, wrinkled and scarred by numberless years ! Stand at the foot of an ancient tree, whether it be a stately elm or a rugged oak ; look up at its towering expanse of branches, observe its whelked and furrowed bole, and try to clasp it round. 1 One feels overwhelmed almost with a sense of his own weakness and di- minutiveness, compared with the grandeur of its majestic height, its massive proportions, its sem- piternal duration. It seems, too, the very emblem of stability. Let the stoutest athlete try his strength against a tree (like Milo of old), and with 1 The Marton Oak at Prestbury, in Cheshire, is no less than 64 feet 5 inches in girth at the bottom (N. and Q., 5th S. ii. 366). 74 TREE AND TRUE. what a grim stolidity of indifference it smiles down at his puny efforts — contemptuous in its immo- bility. And it is almost the same in its warfare with the forces of nature. It may indeed so far comply with ' the season's difference ' as to sur- render its crown of leaves ; but the powers of life are still strong at its heart, and are ever adding new circles to its girth. A tree is no time-server. The veteran of the forest lifts its head as erect into the azure calmness of the summer sky, as towards the threatening gloom of winter when the heavens are gathering blackness ; when the storm breaks and roars against its branches, it seems to exult in its unshaken might — as the winds bluster and spend their force, the rooted giant, swaying its huge arms aloft, seems to grapple with its adver- sary and return blow for blow. It may, perhaps, be altogether overborne and laid prostrate by the violence of the tempest; but it is incapable of bend- ing, it scorns to yield to hostile pressure. If it falls, we deplore its untimely fate with something of human sympathy, accounting it an irreparable loss when a lordly tree is torn up from its roots and stretched along upon the earth, battered and disfigured. It seems like the overthrow of a mighty man of valour, of a king who had survived a hundred well-fought battles, and has now met his doom at last, and fallen in the fulness of his strength. TREE AND TRUE. 75 Indeed, this heroic vigour and strength of character so apparent in trees has often been com- pared to the corresponding qualities in men. 1 Some men/ says George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, ' have the nature of tall, sturdy oaks, to flourish and spread in wisdom and strength.' As we delight in applying the phrase 6 hearts of oak ' to our brave sailors, so did the Eomans apply the word robur, expressive of the strength or robustness of the oak, to the courage of their invincible soldiery; and in Italian, according to Florio's definition, robore is ' an oake, also courage, hardi- nesse or stoutnesse of minde.' In his i Essay on Gardening,' Shenstone the poet remarks that ' all trees have a character analogous to that of men : oaks are in all respects the perfect image of the manly character: in former times I should have said, and in present times I think I am authorized to say, the British one: As a brave man is not suddenly either elated by prosperity or depressed by adversity, so the oak displays not its verdure on the sun's first approach, nor drops it on his first departure. Add to this its majestic appear- ance, the rough grandeur of its bark, and the wide protection of its branches.' He further expresses the opinion, in which most people will coincide with him, that i a large, branching, aged oak, is perhaps the most venerable of all inanimate objects.' That these heroic qualities of vigour and strength 76 TREE AND TRUE. so remarkable in trees were shared by them in common with men was noticed by the most ancient writers, and it was even supposed that the stoutest warriors derived their origin from certain of the hardest kinds of trees. Thus Hesiod 1 states that the third generation of articulately-speaking men were made by Father Zeus out of ash-trees — a proper material for a tough and hardy race. It was out of the sacred ash, Yggdrasil, that the first man was believed to have been created in the Northern mythology ; and in Anglo-Saxon, cesc, an ash, is also the word for a man, a warrior. The Arcadians 2 were said to be a race of men sprung from the trunks of hard oaks ; while Isaiah, it may be remembered, styles the warriors of the invading Assyrian army ' trees of the forest ' (Ch. x. 19. Compare Amos ii. 9). 3 Of things endued with life, the largest, and beyond all question the longest-lived, is a tree. So far as any earthly thing can be, it is the emblem of changeless duration, of immortality. 4 1 Works and Days, 11. 143-145. 2 Virgil, ^En. VIII. 315. 3 In Icelandic, skati, a poetical term for a towering, lordly man, is said to be cognate with the Swedish skata, the top of a tree (Cleasby, Diet, s.v.) 4 Hence, doubtless, it was that such trees as the ' Trusty yew, Cheerless, unsocial plant, that loves to dwell Midst skulls and coffins, epitaphs, and worms/ have been from time immemorial adopted as appropriate denizens of Christian burying-places. TKEE AND TRUE. 77 The way in which it seems to defy tne attacks of all-destroying Time is perfectly marvellous. Generations of men may come and go, but it makes no difference to it. Dr Holmes, speaking of a leafy veteran blown down in the year 1852, and counting its years by its rings, moralises as follows : — 'Here are some human lives laid down against the periods of its growth to which they corresponded. This is Shake- speare's. The tree was seven inches in diameter when he was born ; ten inches when he died. A little less than ten inches when Milton was born ; seventeen when he died. Then comes a long interval, and this thread marks out Johnson's life, dur- ing which the tree increased from twenty-two to twenty-nine inches in diameter. Here is the space of Napoleon's career ; the tree doesn't seem to have minded it. ... It remembers all human history as a thing of yesterday in its own dateless existence.' x Autocrat of the Breakfast- Table. One or two instances of their remarkable longe- vity may be mentioned. The tree known as the Tortworth Chestnut is calculated to be not less than 1100 years old. 2 A fir-tree near Mont^ Blanc, called the Chamois Stable, has been ascertained to be more than 1200 years of age. 3 1 Compare Cowper's address to the Yardley Oak — ' By thee I might correct, erroneous oft, The clock of history, facts and events Timing more punctual, unrecorded facts Recov'ring, and misstated setting right — Desp'rate attempt, till trees shall speak again » ' 2 Notes and Queries, 1st S. iv. 401-403, 488. 3 Id. vi. 45. 78 TREE AND TRUE. The Salcey-Forest Oak, in Northamptonshire, is believed to have weathered the gales of more than fifteen centuries. 1 A few of the olive-trees at present to be found at Gethsemane, it is supposed, may have been witnesses of the Agony in the Garden. Even a greater antiquity has been claimed for some of the cedars of Lebanon ; and the gigantic terebinth, or ' oak,' of Mamre, beneath which the Patriarch Abraham pitched his tent (Gen. xiii. 18), used to be pointed out in the time of Josephus, was still standing and revered in the days of Constantine the Great, and its trunk was actually still visible, it is said, in the seventeenth century. 2 Evelyn mentions a cypress in Persia which was reputed to be 2500 years old (Silva, Bk. III. ch. 3). 1 Grindon, Trees of Old England, p. 18. Other historic tree3 are the ' Shire Oak ' at the meeting of York, Nottingham, and Derby shires ; and ' Orouch Oak ' at Addlestone, Surrey, beneath which Wicliffe is said to have preached. 2 Stanley, Jewish Church, vol. i. p. 33. * II y a aux bains de Casciano, en Toscano, entre Pise et Florence, un cheue qui e"tait de'ja fameux par sa masse et par sa vetuste dans les guerres de 1300 entre les Pisans et les Toscans. II n'a pris un jour ni un cheveu blanc depuis ces cinq siecles. Sa tige s'eleve aussi droite, sur des racines aussi saines, a quatre-vingts pieds du sol : et ses bras immenses, qui poussent d'autres bras iunombrables comine un polype terrestre, n'ont pas une brauche seche a leurs ex- tremites. II a mille ou douze cents ans, et il est tout jeune. C'est assis sous ce chene de Casciano que j'ecrivis cette Harmonic, en 1826. J'ai vu depuis le platane de Godefroi de Bouillon, dans la prairie de Constantinople ; les croises camperent a ses pieds, et un regiment de cavalerie tout entierpeut encore aujourd'huis'y ranger a l'ombre en bataille. J'ai vu depuis les oliviers de la colline de Golgotha, vis-a-vis de Jerusalem, qui passent peur avoir etc* temoins de l'agonie et de la sueur de sang du Christ.' Lamai'tine, Harmonies Poetiques, p. 137 (Paris, 1863). TREE AND TRUE. 79 The sacred Bo-tree of Ceylon (Ficus religiosa) is still reverenced as the identical one planted on the introduction of Buddhism, 307 years before the Christian era (Tennent, Christianity in Ceylon, p. 335). But even these, ancient as they were, are but babes compared with others that naturalists make men- tion of. Humboldt, in his 6 Yiews of Nature ' (pp. 268 seq., ed. Bohu), records an instance of a bao- bab-tree estimated to have reached the astonishing age of 5150 years, 1 while that known as the dragon- tree, and found in Madeira and the other ' islands of Atlantis,' is put down by the same writer as attaining to just double^that number of years. One particular tree of the latter species, which existed 4000 years ago, is declared to be in life at this day, identified by historical description. This dragon-tree is a vegetable relic of an earlier world, says M. Pegot-Ogier, and cohabitant with the monstrous animals which have long since vanished from the scene. 2 And such is Mr Macmillan's opinion with respect to the still living gigantic cedars of the Sierra Nevada — ' They seem relics of " the reign of gymnosperms," a fragment of the an- 1 Dr Livingstone called attention to the extraordinary vitality of the baobab-trees he met in South Africa, some continuing to grow even after they were cut down. One which he measured at three feet from the ground was eighty-five feet in circumference. Missionary Travels in S. Africa, p. 162. 2 The Fortunate Isles ; or. The Archipelago of the Canaries. 80 TREE AND TRUE. cient carboniferous epoch preserved in this lonely solitude, amid all the cosniical changes elsewhere going on, keeping in their annual rings of wood the imperishable record of their growth, while human races and dynasties sprang up and perished around them. And still, though the shadows of forty centuries are sleeping under their boughs, their vital processes are as active as ever, they exhibit no signs of what can be regarded^ physio- logically as old age.' 1 The same to-day that they were at the beginning, we discern something of absolute excellence in their ' serene and invulnerable perfection.' And therefore, as Dr Grindon truly remarks, ' trees are adapted by their original and inalienable constitu- tion to serve as metaphors for almost everything great and good and wise and beautiful in human nature. Hence the countless citations of trees in Holy Writ ... on account of their being the absolute representations and pictured forms in the temporal world of the high and sacred realities that belong to the invisible and eternal.' 2 * They stand still in quiet dignity while we talk of four- score as a wonderful lifetime, and for their own part watch the rise and fall of nations. . . . Hence it is that the grand scriptural image acquires such richness and force, "As the days of a tree 1 Macmillan, Bible Teachings in Nature, p. 88. 2 The Trees of Old England, by Leo Grindon, p. 3. TREE AND TRUE. 81 are the days of my people " (Isa. lxv. 22). Hun- dreds of trees are standing at this moment that were alive when those words were written.' 1 It is not surprising, therefore, that among the heathens, and sometimes even, as we know, among the early Christian converts, trees were regarded with religious veneration as the aptest emblems of eternity and changeless existence, ' tanquam sacras ex vetustate.' 2 ' Eelics of ages ! Could a mind, imbued With truth from Heaven, created thing adore, I might with reverence kneel, and worship thee. It seems idolatry with some excuse, "When our forefather Druids in their oaks Imagined sanctity.' 3 Another most striking feature in the growth of many kinds of trees is their exact uprightness. It is so in the poplar, the fir, the cedar, and the pine. Mr Ruskin 4 calling attention to the straightness and rounded uprightness of the last as its two chief characteristics, observes that, placed nearly always among scenes disordered and desolate, it brings into them all possible elements of order and precision. c Let storm and avalanche do their worst, and let the pine find only a ledge of vertical precipice to cling to, it will nevertheless grow 1 The Trees of Old England, by Leo Grindon, p. 5. 2 Quintilian, vide Evelyn's Silva, ch. 3. 3 Cowper, The Yardley Oak. 4 Modern Painters, v. Pt. VI. ch. 9. 82 TREE AND TRUE. straight. Thrust a rod from its last shoot down the stem ; it shall point to the centre of the earth as long as the tree lives. . . . Other trees/ he adds, in his usual eloquent style, ' tufting crag or hill, yield to the form and sway of the ground, clothe it with soft compliance, are partly its sub- jects, partly its flatterers, partly its comforters. But the pine rises in serene resistance, self-con- tained ; nor can I ever without awe stay long under a great Alpine cliff, far from all house or work of men, looking up to its companies of pine, as they stand on the inaccessible juts and perilous ledges of the enormous wall, in quiet multitudes, each like the 'shadow of the one beside it — upright, fixed, spectral, as troops of ghosts standing on the walls of Hades, not knowing each other, dumb for ever. You cannot reach them, cannot cry to them; those trees never heard human voice ; they are far above all sound but of the winds. No foot ever stirred fallen leaf of theirs. All comfortless they stand, between the two eternities of the Vacancy and the Rock ; yet with such iron will, that the rock itself looks bent and shattered beside them — fragile, weak, inconsistent, compared to their dark energy of delicate life, and monotony of enchanted pride ; — unnumbered,, unconquerable. ' In another place he speaks of ' their right doing of their hard duty.' And therefore in the pine, to use the words of a more recent writer, i we have the highest TREE AND TRUE. 83 moral ideal of trees, 1 which is dependent on their right fulfilment of their appointed functions amid the greatest difficulties. . . . Poverty - stricken, hunger-pinched, and tempest-tortured, it maintains its proud dignity, grows strong by endurance, and symmetrical by patient struggle.' 2 No marvel that the early settlers in India honoured the loftiest and noblest of the conifers they there met with, with the title of the 'deodara,' i.e., devaddru, the divine or godlike tree, even as David styled the cedars of Lebanon ' the trees of the Lord ' (Ps. civ. 16; lxxx. 10). 3 That these noble qualities of uprightness, dura- bility, stability, and strength, so conspicuously displayed by the ' kings of the woods,' and gene- 1 As an instance of a moral conception being embodied in the name of a tree may be mentioned the aspen, A. -Sax. aepse, if, as seems very probable, that be the same word as A. -Sax. ajse trembling, aepsenys disgrace, dishonour, shame. There is a common tradition that the cross of our Lord was constructed out of the wood of this tree, and that ever since it has never ceased to shiver like a guilty thing at the remembrance of the crime to which it was made accessary. (French, le tremble.) 2 Macmillan, Bible Teachings in Nature, p. 69. 3 Hengstenberg observes that the cedar, as the loftiest among created things, symbolises the elevation and majesty of God ; the hyssop, on the contrary, as the least, His lowliness and condescen- sion ; and hence he supposes they were both symbolically employed in the Sacrifice of the Red Heifer (Num. xix. 6). — Egypt and the Books of Moses, p. 175. Other instances of trees similarly consecrated are the bogaha or god's tree of Ceylon, the shejcret allah of the Arabs, the diu-dar of the Persians, the jambu of the Buddhists, 'Jove's stout oak' (Tempest, v. 1), which Herrick calls the ' holy-oke or gospel tree ' (H. C. Barlow, Essay on Sym- bolism, p. 92 seq.) 84 TREE AND TRUE. rally characteristic of ' treeship,' should have been present to men's minds, and influenced them in selecting an appropriate name for the entire class, is no more than might have been expected. Thus in Hebrew itz, the word for a tree, is derived from a root dtzdh, to be hard and firm, which also sup- plies the word dtzeh for the backbone, so called from its firmness and erectness. Similarly, the English ' tree,' A.-Sax. tre, Goth, triu, Gk. drus, Sans, dru, come without doubt from the root drih, to be firm and strong, 1 to increase, dru, to grow. There is another root of the same significance as drik, and differing but slightly in the initial letter, which may probably be regarded as ultimately identical with it. This is the root dhri, to be firm and stable, other forms being dhru, dhruv, d/iar, to stand fast, be established. Thence comes the Sanskrit word dhruva, meaning (1) what is firm, stable, solid, lasting, permanent ; (2) what is true ; (3) a post, stock, the trunk of a tree, cer- tain plants. We thus arrive at the curious and interesting result that the word i tree ' and the word c true ' are at bottom really the same, and contain the one 1 The derivation of dru, a tree, from the root dri, dar, to divide, rend, or split, either supposing it to mean that which is fissile (as Pictet), or that which can be stripped of its bark (as Kuhn), seems very improbable. Vide also Ebel, Celtic Studies, p. 110. TREE AND TRUE. 85 radical conception of permanence and stability. 1 That which cannot be shaken, but is unalterably fixed and unchangeable by time, is i truth.' That which cannot be shaken, but is unalterably fixed and unchangeable by time is a ' tree.' Of all things that excel in strength, truth, as King Darius rightly gave his decision, is strongest — 'As for the truth, it endureth, and is always strong : it liveth and conquereth for evermore. . . . She is the strength, kingdom, power, and majesty of all ages. . . . Great is truth, and mighty above all things.' 2 1 Esdras iv. 38, 40, 41. Truth, says a Spanish proverb, is an evergreen, La verdad es siempre verde. In fact, says Dr Holmes, with exact, but no doubt unconscious, etymological insight, * there's nothing that keeps its youth, so far as I know, but a tree and truth.' 3 1 Les sillons, oil les bles jaunissent Sous les pas changeants des saisons, 1 1 am not aware that this relationship of ' tree ' and ' true ' has been made the subject of remark by any of the great German philologers. A competent scholar of our own, however, Dr Prior, has noted it in his ' Popular Names of British Plants,' s.v. Tree. It was a happy guess of Dr Richardson, though certainly nothing more, when he suggested that 'tree' was akin to the A. -Sax. treowan (confirmare), and defined it as ' a plant advanced to firm growth, strong, steadfast, established — with a strong stem, trunk, branches.' 2 ' Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple ; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?' MUton, Areopagitica. 3 Autocrat of the Breakfast- Table. 86 TREE AND TRUE. Se de'pouillent et se vetissent Comme un troupeau de ses toisons ; Le fleuve nait, gronde et s'ecroule ; L'hiver effeuille le granit ; Des generations sans nombre Vivcnt et meurent sous son ombre : Et lui 1 voyez, il rajeunit ! ' What Lainartine, in these lines, has said of a tree may with equal correctness be affirmed of the truth — it also possesses the secret of rejuvenescence. Heaven and earth may pass away, but the truth is immortal, and doth not pass away. 1 Truth crushed to earth shall rise again : The eternal years of God are hers ; But Error, wounded, writhes with pain, And dies among his worshippers.' 1 Accordingly, the early Aryan, as he roamed the primeval forests, not only, like the lover of the greenwood, found < tongues in trees/ but further- more, found truth there, the notion of a stable and immutable principle ; and evolving two kindred ex- pressions from a verbal radical which he already possessed, the principle he called l truth,' the subtantial type he called a ' tree.' For ' true,' Sanskrit d/iruva, stands in the same relation to d/iri, dkru (firm, stable), that ' tree,' Sanskrit dru, does to drih (firm, stable), 2 two roots whose approximation and identification has been 1 Bryant, The Battle-field. 2 Hearue would seem to have had some hazy notion of the cog. TREE AND TRUE. 87 proposed above. As to the form of the two words in question, a striking correspondence is observable in most of the Indo-European languages. In Old English, to begin with our own, treowe 1 is true, and treow a tree; treu is faith, trust, and treu a tree ; trywe is true, and tryw a tree ; truwa is trust, faith, and trurcung a prop or stay, (compare ;he Hebrew dman (1) to prop or stay, (2) to be firm, (3) be true). When Moses cast the tree into the bitter waters of Marah, according to the * Story cf Genesis and Exodus' (1. 3301, ab. 1250)— ' A funden trew ^or-inne dede Moyses.' In other lan^ua^es the words are found as Tree. tre. tra. trae. dar, derw. nation of the words * tree ' and ' true,' when he jotted down in hi3 journal the remark — ' Some groves now in Scotland held sacred ; nor will they permit the trees to be cut down ; stones in some of them. Dru, alias trou, in the German and British tongue signifies faith ; and the old Germans called God Drutin or Trudin; hence Drutin signifies a divine or faithful person. Reliquce Eearniance, Oct. 15, 1718. From the same root come the A.-Sax. trum, firm, strong, sound ; trymian, trymman, to strengthen, confirm, set in order, dispose fitly, 'trim.' Whether the Irish trean, treun, strong, be related is questionable. Compare French dru, thick, close, luxuriant. 1 Treoioe is frequently applied to things that are immovable, sure and steadfast. It is used of a hill in an old luue ron, or love- song, where it is said of a house, ' Hit stont vppon a treowe mote ' (Old English Miscellany, E.E.T.S. p. 97). follows : — True. 0. Icel. trtir. Swed. tro. Dan. tro. Welsh dir. 88 TREE AND TRUE. True. Tree. Irish dir, dior, direach. dair, darach (cf. Pers. dirach). Goth. triggivs, tranan. triu. 0. Fris. triuwe, trouwe. trS. 0. L. Ger. triuui. trio. 0. Eng. treowe, trewe, triwe, trig. treo, trcou, trew } treowe, trowc. 0. H. Ger. trtiwer. Bav. ~der, -ter. With ' true ' we may also compare the Irish drotk, constant (Pictet, Langues Celtiques, p. 69). In the identification of these words we mar adduce, as strongly confirmatory of it, the Sanskrit word bhaw/a, denoting that which is, what exists, the truth, 1 and also a tree. That the truthfulness of trees has not failed to attract attention, ths following extract from a letter of Horace Walpole proves. Writing from Houghton in 1743, he says — c My flatterers here are all mutes. The oaks, the beeches, the chestnuts seem to contend which shall best please the lord of the manor. They cannot deceive. They -will not lie.' Our surprise at discovering that the word ex- pressive of a high moral conception, 2 and the term 1 So ' sooth,' A. -Sax. sddh, is for santh, Lat. sens (part, of sum in prcB-sens, Sec.) = being, existing. Cf. ' tooth ' and dens, ' goose ' and gans, &c. 2 Other ethical words yielded by the root dhri, dhar (to stand firm), are the Sanskrit dharma, something established as an in- variable rule, law, justice, duty, virtue ; dhdrd, custom ; dhrtvan, virtue; dhtra, firm; Irish dir, just, dior, direach, just, honest, dior, law ; Lith. dora, dermic, duty, doras, virtuous. (Pictet, Orig. Indo-Europ., vol. ii. p. 427). Compare statue and statute, something set up for a memorial or TREE AND TRUE. 89 for the mere vegetable product of the earth, are of kindred origin, is lessened when we find that in Hebrew the words for a tree and for the Divine Being Himself are quite as intimately connected. For there the name El, God, and eldh the terebinth, elon the oak, Slim trees, come alike from the root ul or il, strong, mighty. 1 On this no better com- mentary is needed than the exclamation of the same poet already quoted as he stood beneath the branches of an aged oak — ' Seigneur, c'est toi seul, c'est ta force, Ta sagesse et ta volonte, Ta vie et ta fecondite, Ta prevoyance et ta bonte ! Le ver trouve ton nom grave sous son ecorce, Et mon oeil, dans sa masse et son eternite ! ' He adds in a note — 1 II n'y a pas plus de mesure a la force et a la duree de la vegetation qu'il n'y eu a la puissance de Dieu. II joue avec le temps et avec l'espace. L'homme seul est oblige de compter par jours. Ces arbres comptent per siecles, les rockers par la duree d'uu globe, les etoiles par la duree du firmament. Qu'est- ce done de Celui qui ne compte par rien, et pour qui toutes ces durees relatives sont un jour qui n'a pas encore com- mence ? ' The ' truth ' of the Almighty is an expression a rule, Sanskrit stheya, a judge, all from sthd, to stand, the radical idea being the fixedness of legal decisions. So the Hebrew shophet, a judge, Punic suffes, is traced to a root meaning to set up, to erect. 1 In Johnson's ' Persian Dictionary ' the word ddr is said to be a name of God, as well as meaning a tree. 90 TREE AND TRUE. frequently used in Holy Scripture to denote the constant, stable, and unchangeable nature of His mercy and goodness (e.g., Gen. xxiv. 27, xxxii. 10 ; Deut. xxxii. 4). It would be fanciful, perhaps, to see an allusion to the similitude of a tree in other expressions, such as these, that His truth 'shall spring out of the earth' (Ps. Ixxxv. 11), 1 reacheth unto the clouds ' (Ps. lvii. 10), ' is fallen in the street' (Isa. lix. 14). At all events, there is no doubt that Abraham planted a tree at Beer- sheba as an appropriate sign of the perpetual troth 1 and covenant between himself and ' the Everlasting God,' El-olam (Gen. xxi. 33). « The hardiness of the tree, its long endurance, and the perpetual greenness of its leaves, rendered it a fit emblem of Him to whom the place was dedi- cated.' 2 Joshua's dying act of setting up the tables of the law as a memorial under an oak, according to Mr Grindon, had a similar meaning. That tree was chosen, because of its symbolic sig- nificance of permanence and endurance, to be a 1 ' The Tree of Troth ' was an appellation given to a tree in the garden of Sir Thomas More, at which, if Fox the niartyrologist is to be believed, several of the Reformers underwent flagellation under his superintendence. See Lord Campbell's ' Lives of the Chancellors,' vol. i. It is very remarkable that in Hebrew the same word dldh, elah, is used for an oath, a covenant confirmed by an oath {e.g., Gen. xxvi. 28) and for the oak. Mr H. C. Barlow observes that this tree is the natural symbol of the divine presence and a divine covenant, and that for this reason we find frequent instances in Germany of decrees being ratified and dated beneath its branches, sub quercu (Essays on Symbolism, p. 89). 2 Bishop Wordsworth, Comm., in loc. TREE AND TRUE. 91 witness to the people that the ' laws of truth ' K v)l w&ZQ given to last for ever (Joshua xxiv. 26). * y ^The Shemitic conception of truth seems to have LP - been primitively that of straightness and steadfast- ^n ess*}) such as might be suggested by a pine or ^"palni-tree. For instance, the Hebrew emeth, truth, £ is from dman, to be firm and unshaken, whence also amen, truly, a word naturalised by the Church ; tzddaq, to be just, righteous, originally to be straight, in the Arabic to be stiff and rigid like a lance, means also to be true ; qoshet, truth, from qdshat, to be hard, inflexible, unwavering. Compare these words from an ancient poem sup- posed to have been made on Eobert Vere, Earl of Oxford — 1 He hovyth ne lie wanyth for wynde ne Waste, He dredeth no mystys, ne stormys, ne schowrys ; But standyth styffe in tryeuth, stronge as a maste.' 1 The Egyptian tr, ( the shoot of a palm-tree,' corresponds to the Coptic tar, i the shoot of a tree,' and tor, 6 to stand upright,' ' fixed in the ground ' (Osburn, Monumental History of Egypt, vol. i. p. 157). ' Upright as the palm-tree ' is the comparison that naturally occurs to Jeremiah (x. 5). In early Christian art it was the recognised symbol, some 1 Todd, Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer (1810), p. 304, 8vo. 92 TREE AND TRUE. say, of strength, durability, and virtue ; 1 and from a notion that the more heavily its branches were weighted the more rapidly it increased in stature, this tree was especially adopted as an emblem of virtue oppressed and suffering wrongfully, but lifted heavenwards by the very means employed to keep it down. 2 Home Tooke's well-known heretical views as to the nature and origin of truth have often been re- futed. 3 Supposing that 6 truth ' is only what each man c troweth,' he maintained that it had no objec- tive existence per se, and that it was only relatively to the percipient that any proposition could be pro- nounced to be true or not true. What is true to one man is false to another, and so the same thing may be true and not true at the same time. Thence he inferred that there can be no truth apart from mankind of a necessary and immutable nature. If it has any existence, it must be a re- lative, not an absolute and essential, one. This attempt to prop up bad philosophy by bad philology was, in the fullest sense of the term, preposterous. A thing is truth, not merely because a man troweth it ; but on the contrary, a man troweth it when he 1 M. Tournal, in Didron's * Christian Iconography,' vol. i. p. 357. 2 An instance of the palm-tree, with the motto Crescit siibpondcrt virtus, emblematically applied to the royal captive Charles I., will he seen in the frontispiece to the ' Eikon Basilike,' 1649; the notion is embodied in Vaughan's ' Silex Scintillans,' Pt. II. p. 12. 3 See his Diversions of Purley, p. 401 (4to, 1798). TREE AND TRUE. §3 believes or holds it to be truth— trowan from trow, not trow from trowan. His conception of what is fixed and immutable may change and fluctuate, and still the fixed and immutable loses none of its essential attributes. His subjective truth is uncer- tain, variable, and often false ; the objective truth is steadfast, consistent, and always true. As we drive rapidly by the skirts of a wood, the trees, according to their nearness or remoteness, seem to our eyes to shift their relative positions, and thread the figure of a mazy dance. The panic- stricken tyrant believed that he saw Birnam Wood in motion, and advancing to hem him in. The in- experienced eyes of the man but newly gifted with sight knew not whether in the moving objects be- fore them they beheld menlike trees, or treelike men. It would be a hasty conclusion, however, to take these as the standards of correct vision, and assume that trees may forego their rooted fixedness and share in the weakness of human mobility, moving hither and thither as men run to and fro. It was only the hastiness, the passion, the ignorance of the observers that made those im- passible natures seem like our own. And so it is with truths — which partake (as their name im- ports) of the stability and steadfastness of trees. They may seem to move and vacillate, they may appear to change their nature and veer from their own position ; but if they do ; the fault lies in our- 94 TREE AND TRUE. selves, the observers, we may be sure, and not in them. Truth rests unmoved, the same in all times and places, being the Sanskrit d/iruva, fixed, established, certain. That the word, however, was occasionally used by early English writers in a sense such as Tooke would assign to it as its primary one, and denoted any belief whether correct or otherwise, may be proved by many passages. In Langland's 6 Vision concerning Piers the Plowman ' (1393) we even meet a phrase so strange to modern ears as 6 false truths.' When Lechery armed himself 1 He bar a bowe in hus honde, and meny brode arwes Were fetherede with faire by-heste and many a fals treuthe.' l So in Hampole's i Pricke of Conscience ' (ab. 1340), Antichrist says — ' Thai ly ved in fals troivthe alle That has bene fra the worldes bygynnyng Until the tyme of his commyng.' LI. 4228-30. Dr Morris quotes a parallel to this from the Harleian MS. — < That fals Crist as I telle the In the flum sal baptist be, To save man sWles he salle be send, And alle fals trowth he salle defend.' The Three Kings, therefore, in the 6 Cursor Mundi' (ab. 1320), were guilty of no tautology 1 Pass, audit 11. 117, 118, E.E.T.S., ed. Skeat, text C. vice. 95 when they declared that they were come to the new-born Saviour, prepared to 1 Honur him wit tiicthes tru. 1 In the following, from the prose treatises of Richard Rolle de Hampole (died 1349), ' truth ' occurs where we now would use i faith.' 1 Sayne Paul sais that als lange als we ere in this "body we ere pilgrymes fra owre Lorde. ... we go by trouthe, noghte by syghte, that es we lyff in trouthe, noghte in bodily felynge.' 1 Burke, in his ' Treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful,' observes that trees generally manifest much more of the former quality than of the latter, being deficient in those features of delicacy and softness which he holds as essential to the true ideal of beauty, and remarks as conspicuous in flowers and women. ' It is not the oak,' he says, ' the ash, or the elm, or any of the robust trees of the forest, which we consider as beautiful ; they are awful and majestic, they inspire a sort of reverence/ Though i the excellence of a strong, independent life, which is the exception among flowers, is the rule among trees/ 2 there are cer- tain of these latter, however, of a smaller stature, and less harsh and rugged outlines, which par- take more of the character of womanish softness and pliability than of masculine sternness and in- !P. 34. E.E.T.S. 2 Saturday Review, Oct. 2, 1869, p. 439, Tree v. Flowers. 96 vice. flexibility. Such are the drooping willow, the feathery larch, the limber sallow, the clinging vine, the golden-chain laburnum, the soft-leaved lilac, and many others of those which bear fruit and flowers. These are suggestive of feminine beauty and bending grace. Their characteristics, for the most part, are weakness and buxomness, contrasted with the strength and rough rigidity of their forest brethren. The vine, as is well known, was regarded by the Latin poets as standing to- wards the supporting elm in the dependent rela- tion of a wife wedded to a husband, and suggested to the Psalmist a similar comparison (Ps. cxxviii. 3). So Spenser speaks of i the cedar proud and tall/ but l the eugh obedient to the bender's will.' 1 Again, it has been said that c no one can look at the Norfolk Island pine without being angry with it that so much beauty should be combined with so much effeminacy. Perhaps we blame and punish other weaknesses and unrobust idiosyncracies with the same degree of reason and justice as we should exercise in scolding the delicate araucaria 1 Faery Queen, I. i. 8, 9. Compare the following, which I ex- tract from Mr Jacox's 'Shakspere Diversions :' — ' Lady Percy has alone been characterised as one of those women that Shakspere has painted — timid, restless, affectionate, playful, submissive — " a lovely woodbine hanging on the mighty oak " (p. 336). Miss Broughton pictures one of her characters as ' standing by the tea-table, slim and willowy, ladling tea into the deep-bodied pot ' (Nancy, vol. i. p. 64). vice. 97 excelsa because it is not gifted with the obstinate temper of a Norway fir.' l And Mr Kuskin in a very similar passage ob- serves that trees present the varying characteristics of t fragility, or force, softness, and strength, in all degrees and aspects ; unerring uprightness, as of temple pillars, or undivided wandering of feeble tendrils on the ground ; mighty resistances of rigid arm and limb to the storm of ages, or wav- ings to and fro with faintest pulse of summer streamlet.' 2 If then that superior growth of tree be (as we have shown above) notionally and nominally akin to the virtue of moral strength, straightness, and steadfastness, it is nothing strange if we shall find that the inferior growth bears an analogous relation to the ideas of moral weakness and instability, of effeminacy and frailty. Now vitis, the Latin name for ' the gadding vine,' and vitex, the name of a species of willow, contain the same radical as the word vitiutn, faulti- ness, vice, the idea common to all three being that of bendingness, pliability, weakness, deflection, crookedness. 3 In German, whatever be the point 1 Quarterly Review, vol. xc. pp. 41, 42. 2 Modern Painters, vol. v. Pt. VI. i. 3 The difference of quantity in vitis and vitium is no valid objec- tion to this approximation, as is proved by another word on the same page of the dictionary, vltellus, evidently a diminutive of vita, the life, quick, punctum saliens, or yolk of the egg. G 98 VICE AND WICKED. of contact (if any), rank is an evasion, shuffle, or artifice, ranke the shoot of a vine. Vitis, according to Columella, is from vieo (to bind, twist, plait, tie), l either because it needs to be tied to a prop in order that it may stand, or (and this is the correct view) because it is pliant and easily bent.' 1 Compare the Hebrew sorek, a vine, from sdrak, to intertwine or plait. The vine, says Cicero, is naturally apt to fall, and sinks to the earth unless propped up. He notices also its habit of manifold and erratic creeping, which needs to be checked by the knife of the vine- dresser. 2 Vitis, therefore, is literally the binding, twining plant, from the verbal stem vit-, i bend,' seen in vit-ex, the bending, pliant tree, the willow ; vit-ilis, easy to bend, made of osiers, ' wattled ;' Greek (v)it-6a (-FLT-ea) ; Eng. c withe,' ' withy ; ' A.-Sax. widhig, Dan. vidie, Ger. weide, 0. H. Ger. wida, Scand. vidhir, Goth, vithan? Also in Sanskrit viti, a climbing-plant (le betel), vita, a bough (which word < bough ' itself means l the bender '), Lith. 1 ' Vitis est a vieo, alligo, vincio, quia, ut stet, pedamento in- diget cui adalligetur : vel quia lenta est, et facile flectitur.' So the German rebe, a vine, is probably akin to the A.-Saxon roepan, to bind. 2 ' Vitis qua? natura caduca est, et nisi fulta sit, ad terrara fertur, . . . quam serpeutem multiplici lapsu et erratico, ferro amputans ccercet ars agricolarum. ' 3 See Pictet, Orig. Indo-Europ., vol. i. pp. 223, 253; vol. ii. p. 166. Stokes, Irish Glosses, p. 47. VICE AND WICKED. 99 roytis, branch, osier, wyti, to plait ; Sanskrit vetasa, the calamus rotang, and perhaps vata, a rope, Indian fig-tree, vat, to tie. 1 Vit itself seems to be a participial form from a root 0t, to bend, plait, interweave, Sanskrit ve, to weave, seen in the Latin vieo, to bend, plait, weave ; vietus, bent, shrunken, withered ; vi-men, an osier ; A. -Sax. we/an, to weave, weed (woven) clothes, ' weeds ;' Ger. weifen and weben, Goth, weipan, 0. Fr. guiper, i guipure ' lace. Vitium, a fault, containing the same stem, would originally mean something bent, crooked, or de- flected from being straight and upright ; 2 a bending or giving way of what should be firm and strong, as a wall, one's limbs. Cicero tells us that it was the proper term for a crookedness or deformity of the latter. Vitium (appellant) quum partes cor- poris inter se dissident, ex quo pravitas membrorum, distortio, deformitas (Tusc. 4, 13, 29). When we Englishmen would express a high opinion of anything worthy to be relied on, we say i as true as steel :' 1 for we know that the well- 1 From the same stem apparently comes Lat. vitare, to bend aside from, avoid. Compare ' eschew,' Fr. eschever, to turn askew (Dut. scheef), or bend away from. Sofugio, Gk. pheugo, to flee, is identical with Sk. bhug. Goth, biuga, to bend, A.-Sax. bugan, to bow, bend, also to avoid, flee, 0. Eng. bowen, e.g., ' Apology for Lollards,' Camden Soc. p. 62 — ' Forsothe Jhesu boivvde him fro the company,' John v. 13 (Wycliffe); ' Se Hselend sdthlice beah fram dhaere gegaderunge (Ibid. A.-Sax. version). 2 Key, Philological Society Proceedings, vol. v. p. 94. 100 VICE AND WICKED. tempered metal, bend as it may, will never break, and so deceive ns, when put to the trial; and a sword of such metal we call a ' trusty sword.' Our ancestors, however, the early Aryans, framed a finer comparison, as we have seen, when they con- ceived * truth ' as bearing a resemblance in some sort to the uncompromising rigidity of the forest tree, the patient, stout-hearted giant which never sways aside under any adverse influences, never stoops to the storm, but holds itself erect, un- changed, unshaken, in one generation of men as in another. On the other hand, the weakness of a timid, time-serving spirit has found its type in the pliancy of plants of a feebler growth, which bow their heads without resistance to every passing breeze. Instances are * the reed shaken by the wind ' in the Gospel, the yielding bramble in the fable, the vine, whose branches are in some provincial dialects called ' Souple- Jacks.' Compare the fol- io wins: from Howell's i Familiar Letters ' — 1 E.g. In Chaucer's ' Legend of Good Women,' where the poet is charged that he I Maketh men to women lesse trist, That ben as trewe as ever was any stele.' The Prologue. ' This abbes trowed hir ful wele, And wend that scho war treu als stele.' Eng. Metrical Homilies of the \Wi Century (ed. Small), p. 167. I I am trew as steylle alle men waytt.' Towneley Mysteries, Pastores. VICE AND WICKED. 101 1 There being divers Bandy in gs and Factions at Court in his [Marquis Pawlet's] Time, yet he was beloved by all Parties, and being asked how he stood so right in the Opinion of all, he answered, By being a Willow and not an Oak' l — meaniDg that lie complied with all, and bent to circumstances. With this we may contrast the proverbial Latin expression for one made of more stubborn stuff and of more steadfast character, Ortus a quercu, non a salice, ' He is sprung from the oak, and not from the willow ;' and may note the use made of a similar comparison by the poet Burns in the words wherewith he reproaches < Dame Life ' for her want of stability and con- stancy — ' Oh ! flickering, feeble, and unsicker I've found her still, Aye wavWing like the willow wicker, 'Tween good and ill.' Foem on Life. As we have seen that the stern virtue of * truth ' is akin to the sturdy '.tree,' so now we may per- ceive that the yielding pliancy of 'vice,' Fr. vice, Latin vitium, is own brother to vitis, the voluptuous, drooping vine, which, by reason of the frailty of its nature, cannot keep itself upright. 2 That the 1 Howell, Familiar Letters, p. 293, Bk. I. sec. 6, Letter 5i (1644). Of. Bailey, Life of Fuller, p. 318. 2 The vine, regarded as a timber tree, and compared with all other trees of the forest, was used as a byword for worthlessness:— ' The vine fruitless is of all trees most useless. ... If barren, it is good for nothing ; not so much as to make a pin to hang 102 VICE AND WICKED. transition of meaning from being weak, bent, or twisted, to being wicked, vicious, or wrong, is one of very frequent occurrence in all languages the annexed instances will sufficiently prove. The Romans used to speak of ' depraved legs' (depravata crura), i a depravity of the feet or joints ' {pedum, articulorum, depravatio), while we have now limited the word altogether to moral crookedness and deformity. Similarly ' luxury,' which, in Shakspere and his contemporaries, commonly bears the definite meaning of wantonness, lewdness, lechery (the Latin hixuria signifying the luxuriance and rank- ness of vegetation, as well as the uncurbed extra- vagance of riotous living), is the immediate derivative of luxus, excess, originally a ' luxation ' or dislocation of a limb. The radical idea is swerving or turning aslant from the line of recti- tude, luxus being the Greek loxos, slanting. 1 When Hamlet is still labouring under the ex- a hat on. Oaks and cedars are good for building, poplars for pales, very bushes for hedging, doted wood for firing ; but the fruitless vine is good for nothing.' Adams, The Barren Tree. 1 The practice and use of all operative arts is all in all ; in divinity, the chief of all, which else is as the vine, excellent only in the sweet juice of it, otherwise fit not so much as for pin or peg.' Ward, The Happiness of Practice. Cf. Ezek. xv. 1 If Mr/os, a withe, or willow-twig, a tree of the willow species, is akin to loxds, that rapprochement would fall in admirably with the subject of the present paper. Compare luglzd, to bend or twist, Ger. liigen, to lie, and vide ' Lie ' infra, p. 105. VICE AND WICKED. 103 citement of the supernatural disclosure that the royal bed of Denmark had become ' A couch for luxury and damned incest,' he exclaims — ' The time is out of joint ; cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right ! Hamlet, i. v. Bishop Taylor, in his ' Life of Christ/ speaks of a 6 luxation of a point of piety.' ' Wrong ' is primarily applicable to something crooked, twisted, or wrung, when it should be straight or right (rectus). 1 Crokyd or wronge, curvus, tortus, Crokyn', or makyh' wronge, Curbo.' Prompt. Parvulorum. Compare the following from Fuller : — 1 An act which the judicious behold, not as a crooked deed bowing them, from their last, but as an upright one straighten- ing them to their first and best, oath.' Church History, vol. i. p. 304 (ed. 1842). So l worse,' ' worst/ Goth, vairs, seems to answer to the Latin versus (per-versus), turned aside, twisted, or declined, from an original rectitude, from verto, to turn. Tort, a legal and Old English term for a wrong, denotes a tortuous or crooked course of action, being the French tort, Latin tortus, twisted, past participle of torqueo, to twist. Spenser speaks of some who were ' Long opprest with tort, And fast imprisoned in sieged fort.' Faerie Queen, I. xii. 4. 104 VICE AND WICKED. ' Twisted ' and ' twisty ' are provincial words for a perverse, cross, or Wrong-headed person. Dutch twistig, quarrelsome, from twist, a quarrel (the original meaning, however, perhaps, being standing at two or at variance, not at one). 6 Queer,' originally a cant term meaning bad, naught, is the G-er. quer, oblique, athwart, cross, Welsh gwyr, crooked. Compare Dutch dwars, 0. Norse thwerr, A.-Sa.x. tkweor, cross, crooked, bad. So the Dutch verkeerd, wrong, wicked, der praved, is from verkeeren, to turn aside ; Eng. ' froward,' perverse, is ' fromward/ turned away, that will not listen, just as i wayward' is 'away- ward,' opposite to ' toward,' turned to one, tract- able ; 1 Fr. revecke, harsh, intractable, cross, is the Portuguese revesso, It. rivescio, from reversus, turned away; and the Italian ritroso, stubborn, is from the Latin retrorsus, i.e., relroversus, turned away back (Diez). To slant or slent in provincial and Old English is to deviate from truth, to lie, equivocate, jest. Thus Fuller speaks of one c using sometimes slent- ing, seldome downright railing ' (Holy State, p. 60, 1648, 4to). An interesting illustration of this word is afforded by the deaf and dumb sign for truth and falsehood 1 In the provincial dialects, a person of reluctant, stubborn, or contrary disposition is similarly described as awlc, awTcert, * awk- ward,' or as tharf, tharth, ' thwart.' VICE AND WICKED. 105 respectively, the former being denoted by moving the finger straight forward from the lips, while to signify a lie the finger is moved to one side. The word ' lie ' itself, pro v. Eng. lig, A. -Sax. leogan, Dut. liegen, Goth, Hug an, Ger. lilgen, has its fundamental meaning exhibited in the cognate Lettish word leeks, false, wrong, originally crooked, from leekt, to bend, 1 Esthon. liig-paiatus, crooked speech, falsehood, and all may no doubt be traced to the Sanskrit root ling, to bend, seen in Gk. lugizo, Lat. ligare, ob-liqu-us. Compare Loxias, in Greek, the oracular god of indirect and crooked (loxos) utterances. ' Insidious sly Report, Sounding oblique, like Loxian oracles, Tells double-tongued (and -with the self-same voice !) To some new gladness, new despair to some.' Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Clytemnestra. ' Kam,' as in Shakspere's ' This is clean kam ' (Cor. iii. 1), i.e., altogether wrong (< Eebours ob- likely, awry, quite contrary . . . cleane kamme ' — Cotgrave) is the Irish cam, Welsh cam, crooked, wry, wrong. A.-Sax. wok, a bend, twist, or turning, is also used for error, wrong, wickedness, depravity, and 1 Wedgwood, Origin of Language, p. 148. It is instructive to compare with this the parallelism of ' lie,' to be recumbent, 0. Eng. to ligge, A.-Sax. Megan, liggan, Dut. liggen, Ger. liegen, Goth. ligan, Ir. luighim, Gk. legtimar, lechos, a bed, Lat. lectus, Goth. liuga, marriage, all from a root form lanfi, la?). Vide Pictet, Orig. Indo-Europ., vol. ii. p. 270. 106 VICE AND WICKED. comes from the Sanskrit root va?ik, to be crooked, move tortuously. 1 0. Eng. ' wrench/ a trick or deception, A.-Sax. wrence, is a proceeding wrenched or wrung aside from the straightforward course (traceable pro- bably to the Sanskrit root vrij, to bend). 1 It [the world] ledes a man with wrenlces and wyles.' Prick of Conscience, 1. 1360 (about 1340 a.d.) (JTn Hebrew, dvdJi, to bend, twist, distort, also signifies to act perversely, to s'mT)Pdthal, to twist, in one of its moods means to be crafty, deceitful, to act perversely, and its derivative jjethaltol (Deut. xxxii. 5) is perverse, deceitful, ' twisty.' Latin scelns, crime, wickedness, is akin to the Greek shelos or skellos, crooked-legged, s/wlios, crooked, and also unrighteous, wrong, skalcnos, halting, limping. 2 Compare the North of England shelled, warped, twisted, crooked, skelly? to look awry ; A.-Sax. sceol-eged, scul-eaged, squinting or scowling ; 0. Norse skoela, to twist awry ; all cog- 1 ' Wench ' a young woman, a word once free from the con- temptuous implication now attaching to it, is from the same root, being the A.-Sax. wencle, a maid, akin to wencel, a weakling ; Prov. Eug. winkle, feeble ; A.-Sax. wincian, to bend one's self, to ' wince,' from the Sanskrit vank, to go crooked, to bend. The primitive idea seems to have been that of a weak, pliant, and buxom being. 2 Cockayne, Spoon, and Sparrow, p. 316. 3 Compare Cleveland shell, skeel, to tilt or turn obliquely (Atkin- son) ; Cumberland shelled, distorted, awry, and shawl, to walk crookedly, 0. Eng. shayle; all akin to Ger. schel, Dut. scheel, VICE AND WICKED. 107 nate with the Sanskrit skhal, to stumble, fall, err, go wrong, skhalana, a transgression. ' Slim,' with the provincial meaning of distorted, worthless, sly, crafty, is the Dutch slim, slem, transverse, oblique, distorted, bad, cunning ; Ba- varian schlimm, wry, Old Norse sloemr, weak, worth- less. Wedgwood thinks that the original meaning of the word may be flagging, flaccid, then hanging down, sloping, leading to the idea of obliquity and depravity. We have seen that vitis, the vine, as its name imports, is the twisting or bending plant, being cognate with the Anglo-Saxon wi%ie, our ' withy,' which latter seems sometimes to have denoted any tree of a crooked or twisted growth, for Stow in his i Survey ' speaks of i the fetching in of a twisted tree, or with, as they termed it . . . into the king's house,' in the week before Easter. The same root has been traced in the word vitium in the sense of a crookedness or twist. It exists also, it is more than probable, in the Persian bid and bit (? the vine), Hindostani bed, the willow, Persian bide. A curious parallel to the relation between vitis and vitium is afforded by the kindred crooked, 0. N. slccela, to turn awry. So Cumberland scafe, a wild youth, a scamp, is connected with 0. Norse skeifr, Dan. skieve, (1) to be askew or crooked, (2) to go wrong (Ferguson). Stem, in Cleve- land, Dan., Swed., and Norse, Ger. schlimm, Dut. slim, bad, worth- less, are akin to Swed. slimm, slemmer, crooked. Ir. fiar, (1) crooked, (2) wicked. 108 VICE AND WICKED. words in Persian. Bed not only means the willow or aspen, but also worthless, useless ; bada is the willow, and also wickedness; while bad is naughty, wicked, < bad.' 1 Another plant deriving its name from its twin- ing and winding habit is the ' vetch,' It. veccia, Ger. ?vicke, Dan. vihhe, Lat. vicia, i.e., 6 the binder' (compare ' wood-bine,' i.e., 6 wood-bind,' and ' bind- weed), from the stem vie, to bind, seen in the Ger. Tvickeln, to bind around, or wrap; Dan. vikle ; Lat. vinca, pervinca, ' periwinkle ' (' the binder ') ; 0. Eng. pervinkle ; Dan. vceger, a willow; vegre, a pliant rod, a withy ; veg, pliant ; our ' wicker ; ' Swed. wika, to plait, fold, yield, give place to, turn aside ; and probably the provincial English word 6 winkle,' meaning feeble. This stem vie, occurring in Indo-European words, has been traced up to the Sanskrit root vinch, and may be discerned in the Greek (v)eikein (retfceiv), to yield ; Lat. vincere, to cause to yield, to conquer ; vincire, to bind ; vic-is, 1 Some instances of the employment of bad in Persian are bad- nam, a bad name, infamous; bad-dil (weak heart), cowardly, timid ; bad-pidar (bad father), a step-father ; jdmasi bad, a torn or worn-out garment. The resemblance of the two words in Persian and English (far removed as are those languages) is cer- tainly not a coincidence, but a real family likeness. Compare as other instances Pers. band = Eng. 'band,' Pers. bud = Eng. 1 booth.' At all events, if we repudiate the Persian bad, our English word will stand perfectly isolated. As an instance of the unhappy shifts that etymologists have been driven to, Matzner deduces ' bad' from the A. -Sax. bedling, an effeminate person, one who keeps his bed. (Ed. Miiller, s.v.) VICE AND WICKED. 109 a turn ; * 0. H. Ger. wichan ; 0. Norse vikja, to turn, give place; Swed. vika ; Dan. vige; Ger. weichen ; A. -Sax. wican, to give way, yield, to be- come soft or weak. With these latter words are immediately connected Dan. veg, pliant ; Swed. wek, yielding, soft, tender; Ger. welch; A. -Sax. wac, yielding to pressure, ' weak y also c wicked,' which is a collateral form of l weak/ 0. Eng. wik, wicke, and only in comparatively modern times distinguished from it as an independent word. 2 ' Wick,' originally signifying weak, yielding, pliant, opposed to that which is strong, steadfast, and durable, came afterwards to be used of any thing worthless, evil, or bad of its kind. 1 It [hell] sal be fulle of brunstane and pyk, And of other thyng J>at es wyk' Prick of Conscience (ab. 1340) 11. 6693-4. ' Grete stormes wex with weders wik.' MS. Earl. 4196. 1 Cleasby is of opinion that the word ' week/ A. -Sax. wica, weoce, Icel. vika, was adopted from the Latin vice. Compare the Gothic in wikon kunyis seinis (Luke i. 8), said of Zacharias officiating in his turn or course. It might be conjectured that the root vinch, mentioned above, is a collateral form of the Sanskrit vank, to go tortuously, be crooked, bend, seen in the Latin vacillare, vacuus, vacare ; A. -Sax. wincian, wincel, wince, waeg, woy,&c. 2 Of kindred origin, and strikingly similar in their mutual rela- tions, are the words following : — (1) Scot, sioack, limber, pliant, weak ; Ger. schwa-/' ; Dut. sioack, easily bent, weak ; Dan. Swed. svag, weak ; pro v. Eng. to sweg, sway ; 0. Norse sveigja, to incline, bend, give way : cognate with (2), 0. Norse svigi, a twig : and with (3), Dan. svig, 0. Norse svik, Scot, swick, A.-Sax. swic, mean- ing fraud, deceit, treachery ; A.-Sax. swican, to weaken, deceive ; Cumberland swyke, a thin, weak animal, a worthless, deceitful person. 110 VICE AND WICKED. ' For tliilke grund that berith the wedis wyk Berith eke thes holsom herbis.' Chaucer, Troilus and Creseide, Bk. I., 1. 947. * Til god men sal he [Christ] be quern, And to the wik ful grisli sem.' Eng. Metrical Homilies of the \4th Cent. (ed. Small), p. 20. 1 Thou werm with thi wylys wyk.'' Coventry Mysteries, p. 29. 1 Hire hadde lever a knif Thurghout hire brest, then ben a woman wikke.'' Canterbury Tales, 1. 5448. 1 Sire, I did it in no wikke entente.' Id. 1. 15429. 4 Hit semeth that no wyght Wot ho is worthi for wele other for wicke, "Whether he is worthi to wele other to wickede pyne.' Vision of P. Plowman (1393), Pass. XII. 1. 272 (Text C), E.E.T.S. ' Noght swa wikked man, noght swa, Bot als dust that wind the erthe tas fra. And therefor, wick in dome noght rise, Ne sinfulle in rede of right wise. For Louerd of right wise wot the way And gate of wick forworth sal ay.' Ancient Version of Ps. i. 4-6, quoted in Weever's Funeral Monuments (1631), p. 154. In c Havelok the Dane ' we meet the phrases < wikke clothes ' and ' wicke wede ' (11. 2458 and 2825) for what in another place is called * feble wede ' (1. 323), i.e., bad, poor, or mean clothing. VICE AND WICKED. Ill Compare the Icelandic sunde klasde, torn clothes, from sund, synd'e, injured, broken, ' sundered/ near akin to synd, a breach of law, guilt ; Ger. sunde, our ' sin ' (Wedgwood, s.v.) 1 ' Wick ' or ' wik,' as used in all these passages, corresponds to the provincial German week (soft, mean), wiken ; Ger. weichen (e.g., Luther's version of 1 Sam. xii. 20; Prov. v. 7); A. -Sax. wican, to be soft, yielding, or 'weak 7 (A. -Sax. wcec, wac, Ger. weick). 2 In 6 wicked,' therefore, we have an instance of a great moral truth being implicit and wrapped up in a word, and not so much, perhaps, as suspected till that word be unfolded and laid bare to its very central meaning. The ' wick ' or f wicked ' man is in name as well as in nature, etymologically as well as essentially, the l weak J man, the man who, instead of resisting temptations, has yielded to them, who has been vanquished (vic-tus) in the spiritual combat, and instead of bridling his evil passions, follows and is led by them, confessing that they are too strong for him. Overcoming and conquering, it will be remembered, is in Scrip- ture the usual figure for exercising continence and 1 In Cleasby's Icelandic Dictionary, however, synd 'sin,' is connected with syyi, A.-Sax. syn, a negation or denial, as if an apostasy. 2 Dr Morris compares ' nasty, ' 0. Eug. nasky, which comes from hnesc, soft. 112 VICE AND WICKED. self-restraint, and withstanding the natural im- pulses to evil. 1 For in the words of one of the sacred books of Buddha, ' he who lives looking for pleasures only, his senses uncontrolled, idle, and weak, — Mara (the tempter) will certainly overcome him, as the wind throws down a weak tree.'' 2 He will have no more pith 3 or strength of character to stand against the storm of temptation when it comes, than has the 1 Cf. ' Vinciam dicebant continentem ' (Festus). Ger. weiclding, a voluptuary or effeminate person, one who cannot govern his passions. A ' passionate ' man, it has been truly observed, ' is suf- fering not doing, suffering his anger, or what other evil temper it may be, to lord over him without control. Let no one then think of "passion" as a sign of strength. As reasonably might one assume that it was a proof of a man being a strong man that he was often well beaten ; such a fact would be evidence that a strong man was putting forth his strength on him, but of anything rather than that he himself was strong. The same sense of passion and feebleness going together, of the first being born of the second, lies, as I may remark by the way, in the twofold use of the Latin word " impotens," which, meaning first weak, means then violent, and then often weak and violent together ' (Trench, Study of Words, Lect. III.) ' Strong passions mean weak will.' Coventry Patmore. ' The union of the highest conscience and the highest sympathy,' says Mrs Jamieson, ' fulfils my notion of virtue. Strength is essen- tial to it ; weakness incompatible with it. ' We too often make the vulgar mistake that undisciplined or overgrown passions are a sigu of strength ; they are the signs of immaturity, of " enormous childhood." ' In this respect it seemed to her that the Indians of a tribe of Chippawas were ' less niched ' than the depraved ' barbarians of civilisation ' to be met with in great towns. Commonplace- Book, pp. 8 and 242. ' Virtue,' Lat. virtus, properly denoting manlin-.-s or strength of character, is near akin to vir, a hero ; vireo, to be strong. 2 Vide Clodd, Childhood of Religions. 3 Compare Burns — ' Come, firm Resolve, take thou the van, Thou stalk o' carl-hemp in man I ' To Dr Blacklod:, Globe ed. p. 103. VICE AND WICKED. 113 woodbine or acacia that is driven to and fro in the autumnal blast. Thus as vitis, the winding plant, the vine, and Dan. vidie, the willow, Eng. ' withy,' are related to vitium, meaning first a bend, weakness, or faulti- ness in the limbs, a deformity, and then a moral fault, a ' vice ;' so are the c vetch/ Ger. wicke, the twining plant, and our c wicker,' akin to the Danish veg, pliant ; Swed. wek, yielding, soft ; Fin. wika, a bodily defect, also a moral fault, ' weakness,' ' wickedness.' As a result of this relationship between vitis and vitium, it might be demonstrated that ' vice ' the mechanical instrument, and ' vice ' the ethical term expressive of moral turpitude, are words not merely superficially alike, but radically and funda- mentally connected. The latter is obviously the French vice, Lat. vitium ; the former, which was originally and properly applicable only to the screw of the implement, is the French vis, a screw, so called from its resemblance to the tendril of a vine, vitis. Compare the Italian vite, a vine, also any kind of winding screw or vice ; Fr. vrille (for verille), a gimlet, also the screwlike tendril of a vine (It. verrina, a gimlet, both, perhaps, from the Latin veru) ; Gk. lugos, a willow- twig, also a screw-press, a screw. It follows that when Hood approximated the H 114 VICE AND WICKED. two terms in one of his comic poems for the sake of a pun — * As harden'd in vice as the vice of a smith/ — he was really bringing together words which, how- ever long separated and widely divergent in point of meaning, still contained the same stem vit, and the same latent signification of being bent, curved, or deflected. ( 115 ) CHAPTER V. THE WORDS ' DUPE ' — c DOTTEREL ' — ' DUNCE ' — 1 COWARD ' — * POLTROON,' ETC, In most languages the type of a fool or simpleton has been sought amongst the race of what So- phocles calls ' light-minded birds.' l Everybody has observed the solemn stupidity of the owl, the air of profoundest wisdom and imperturbable gra- vity with which it blinks its unspeculative eyes — the absurd pomposity of the strutting turkey-cock as he ruffles to the full extent of his feathers, and inflates his gorge with that lofty air of self- importance which first suggested the word i gor- geous/ Who has not felt irritated at the utter insensibility to danger that the hen exhibits till it is just upon her, and the altogether dispropor- tionate amount of panic and commotion with which she then shrieks away from before it — at the aggressive hiss with which the braggadocio 1 Kovcpovowv (pv\ov opvidwv (Antig. 342, Wunder). ' He was far from one of the volatile or bird-witted,' says Dr Jebb in his ' Life of Nich. Ferrar,'p. 272. 116 FOOLISH BIRDS. goose strains out her neck after a retreating foe, and proclaims her imbecility ? Who has not smiled at the swelling vanity and ostentation wherewith the peacock mantles and distends his splendid train, 1 i With all his feathers puft for pride ; ' and who, as he observed them, has not been re- minded of their counterparts for silliness and stupidity that he has sometimes met amongst the unfeathered bipeds ? 2 If a person does anything particulary foolish, we 1 Compare the Portuguese pavonear-se, ' to play the fop or beau, to strut and show one's self about as the peacock does his feathers ' (Vieyra). 2 ' That unfeathered two-legged thing, a son.' Dryden, Absalom and AchitopheL In the following curious passage from Thomas Adams' sermon entitled ' Lycanthropy ' we have different sorts of men likened to fowls : — ' There is the peacock, the proud man ; stretching out his painted and gaudy wings. The desperate cock, the contentious ; that fights without any quarrel. The house-bird, the sparrow ; the emblem of an incontinent and hot adulterer. The lapwing, the hypocrite ; that cries, " Here it is, here it is ;" here is holiness when he builds his nest on the ground, is earthly-minded, and runs away with the shell on his head ; as if he were perfect when he is his once pipient. There is the owl, the night-bird, the Jesuited seminary ; that skulks all day in a hollow tree, in some Popish vault, and at even hoots and flutters abroad, and shrieks downfall and ruin to king, church, and commonwealth. There is the bat, the neuter ; that hath both wings and teeth, and is both a bird and a beast ; of any religion, of no religion. There is the cormorant, the corn-vorant, the mire-drumble, the covetous ; that are ever rooting and rotting their hearts in the mire of this world. There is also the vulture, that follows armies to prey upon dead corpses ; the usurer, that waits on prodigals to devour their decaying fortunes. Some men have in them the pernicious nature of all these foul fowls. ' 117 say he is a c goose ; ' if lie is awkward, stupid, inexperienced, and generally 6 callow,' we say that he is a gawk, an owl, an oaf, a booby, a pigeon, a daw, a gull, a dotterel. Now i gawk ' is the A. -Sax. geac, (1) a cuckoo, (2) a beardless boy, a simpleton. Skeg, a name which the Northampton folk have for a fool or stupid fellow, has the same meaning. It is only a mutilated form of suck-egg, which is also applied to the cuckoo. {Vide Sternberg, s.v.) ' Oaf,' 1 formerly spelt auf, ouphe (Shakspere), aupk (Dryden), 2 aulf (Drayton), is probably iden- tical with auf (an owl), 0. H. Ger. ufo, (Lett.) ukpis, (A.-Sax.) uf huf, (Pers.) kuf. z Compare the Italian gofo, gufo, guffo, c an owle ; also a simple foole or grosse-pated gull, a ninnie patch ' (Florio). Fr. goffe, dull, sottish ; Cumber- land goff, guff, a simpleton ; 0. Eng. ' gofish,' t Beware of gofisslie peoples speck' Chaucer, Troilus and Creseide, III. 1. 585. i Booby ' was once the name of some species of bird noted for its stupidity. Thus we read in the ' Travels of Sir Tho. Herbert' (1665)— 1 The word is complicated by its resemblance to the prov. Encr. olf, olph, or alp (a bull-finch). — Systema Agricultures, 1687. ' Alpe, a bryde ' (i.e., a bird). — Prompt. Parv. It also occurs iu Chaucer. Wedgwood connects 'oaf ' with ' elf.' 2 ' You Auph you, do you not perceive it is the Italian seignior ? ' Limberham, i. 1, Plays, vol. iv. p. 302 (1763). 3 Pictet, Orig. Indo-Europ., voL i. p. 471. 118 DOTTEREL. ' At which time some Bodbycs pearcht upon the Yard Arm of our Ship, and suffered our men to take them, an Animal so very simple as becomes a Proverb ' (p. II). 1 The dodo also, it would seem, was given its name, probably by the Dutch, on account of its well-known obtusity. Cf. Frisian dod (a simple- ton), (Dut.) duty (Scot.) dutty to doze, (Fr.) doduy i doddypoll,' a blockhead. ' The Dodo, a Bird the Dutch call Walgh-vcgel or Dod-eersen ' (Herbert, p. 402). Of similar origin is c dotterel/ a bird proverbial for its doting stupidity. It was supposed to be so intent in imitating the motions of the fowler that it allowed itself to be taken without an effort to escape. ' Dotterels, so named (says Camden) because of their dotish foolishnesse, which being a kinde of birds as it were of an apish kinde, ready to imitate what they see done, are caught by candle-light according to fowlers gesture : if he put forth an arme, they also stretch out a wing : sets he forward his legge, or holdeth up his head, they likewise doe theirs : in brief e, what ever the fowler doth, the same also doth this foolish bird untill it bee hidden within the net.' Britain (Trans. Holland, 1637), p. 543. 1 From a like insensibility to danger, another bird is commonly known as the ' foolish guillemot,' or the him ; Scot, lungie. Loon (dolt or booby, ' He called the tailor lown,' Othell©,. ii. 3) was an old Eng. name for the great crested grebe (Podiceps cristatus), and is probably a corruption of the name lumme, which, also found in the form loom, loon, is in some places given to the diver (colymbus), Dan. lorn, Fin. leomme, Urn. Cf. Dut. loen, Ger. liimmel, a booby or clown. The name is said to have been applied to the Colymbidse on account of their lame and awkward gait in walking. GULL. 119 * This is a mirthmaking bird, so ridiculously mimical that he is easily caught (or rather catcheth himself) by his over active imitation.' Fuller, Worthies (1662), p. 149. ' For as you creep, or cowr, or lie or stoop, or go, So marking you with care the apish bird doth do, And acting everything, doth never mark the net, Till he be in the snare, which men for him have set/ Drayton, Polyolbion, Song 25. 1 In Latin it is called morinellus, from morio, morus (a fool). i To dor the dotterel ' is an old phrase meaning to hoax, cheat, or make a fool of. And so ' dotterel ' came to be used for a greenhorn, a simpleton, a dupe, as, for instance, in the old play quoted by ISTares — E. Our dotterel then is caught. B. He is, and just As dotterels used to be : the lady first Advanc'd toward him, stretch'd forth her wing, and he Met her with all expressions. Old Couple, x. 483. 1 Gull,' 2 denotes any young unfledged bird while covered with yellow down (' golden guls,' Sylvester ; Shakspere's 'golden couplets ' of the dove), being near akin to the Swedish gul (yellow), (It.) giallo, (Ft.) jaune, i.e., jalne, (0. H. Ger.) gelo, 'yellow,' and Eng. 'gold.' So the French bejaune, i.e., bec- 1 Quoted in Tooke's 'Diversions of Purley,' p. 464, ed. 1840. 2 As an inexperienced person that cannot shift for himself is called a gull, i.e., callow, so a knowing, wide-awake person in slang terminology is said to be 'fly,' ' pretty fly.' This is the Old English 4 flygge,' fledged, mature, able to fly; pro v. Eng. Jligged, from A.-Sax. fliogan (to fly). ' Flygge, as bryddys, Maturus, volatilis" (Prompt. Parv., c. 1440). 120 PIGEON. jaune (} r ellow-beak), 1, a young bird ; 2, c a novice, ninny, doult, noddy ' (Cotgrave). Cf. our ' green- horn.' Fr. niais (a nestling, from nidus), i a noddy, cockney, dotterell, peagoose ; a simple, witless, and inexperienced gull ' (Cotgrave). Cf. ' pigeon ' (a soft, gullible fellow, a dupe), the Italian pigione, pippione (from pipire, to chirp), (1) a pigeon, (2) a credulous gull; pippionare, to gull or dupe a person ; dindon, in the Parisian argot, a fool ; dindonner, to dupe. ' Daw,' ' wood- cock/ and i widgeon ' were also proverbial expres- sions for simplicity and foolishness, e.g. — ' In these nice sharp quillets of the law 7 , Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw.' Shakspere, 1st Ft. Henri/ VI. iL 4. ' this woodcock ! what an ass it is ! ' Taming of Shrew, i. 2. ' The witless woodcock.' Drayton. ' Woodcocke beware thine eye.' Percy Folio, i. 44. (Fr.) beccasse, a woodcock, i beccassd, gulled, abused (i.e., deceived), woodcockised' (Cotgrave). 'Oh Clnysostome thon deservest to be stak'd ... for being such a goose, widgeon, and niddecock to dye for love.' Gayton's Festivous Notes} 1 Cf. (Scot.) 'sookin* turkey,' a simpleton (Jamieson). (Fr.) dindon and linotte, a blockhead, (Fr.) butor, butorde, (1) a bittern, (2) a stupid lout. (Sp.) loco, stupid, (It.) locco, a fool; alocco, (1) an owl, (2) a simple gull (Florio), from Latin ulucus, an owl ; Sp.) paparo, a simpleton, (It.) papcro, a gosling ; (Gk.) niircpos, DUPE. 121 The foregoing remarks have been made in order to show that the comparison of a simple person easily deceived to some one or other of the orni- thological species was customary and general. We now come, at length, to the word ' dupe.' The French verb duper (to deceive) does not occur in Cotgrave's 6 French Dictionary ' (1660), but we find in it ' dupe, duppe, l a whoop, or hooper , a bird that hath on her head a great crest or tuft of feathers, and loves ordure so well, that she ever nestles in it.' It is another form of c hupe, fiuppe, the whoope or dunghill cock/ which was supposed to derive its name from the crest or tuft of feathers, (hupe), which is its most conspicuous feature. It really corresponds to the Latin upupa (the hoopoe), (Gk.) epops (eTTo-v/r), (Copt.) kukupka, (Pers.) bubu, (Syr.) kikup/ia, (Heb.) dukipkatk. 2 (1) a seabird, (2) a featherbrained simpleton, a booby, noddy (L. and Scott) ; (Gael.) dreollan, (1) a wren, (2) a silly person, a ninny. The Arabs have a proverb ' Stupid as an ostrich.' When we use 1 buzzard,' however, as an emblem of obtuseness, the reference is not to the hawk so called, but to a buzzing beetle of the same name. Cf. the French proverb, ' Estourdi comme un haneton ' (Cotgrave), (As dull or heedless as a cockchafer). So prov. Eng. dumbledore, a cockchafer, also a stupid fellow. 1 It. upupa, Prov. upa, Berry patois dube. For the prefixed d com- pare 'daffodil,' 0. Eng. affodilly, affodyle (Prompt. Parv.) (Lat. Gk.) asphodelus ; 'dappled' = (Fr.) pommele, as it were streaked like an apple, cf. the Icelandic apalgrdr, apple-grey (and yet in that lan- guage depill is a spot). 2 All these words, as well as our ' hoopoe ' are evidently intended to imitate the cry of the bird, which 'utters at times (Mr Yarrell tells us) a sound closely resembling the word hoop, hoop, hoop ' (Penny Cycl. vol. xxvi. p. 34). In Ozell's translation of Rabelais it is 122 DUPE. (Heb.) duktpkath (the hoopoe) according to some is compounded of duk and pkatk, literally i the dung-cock.' At all events the bird was considered notoriously unclean in its feeding and way of liv- ing generally. Thus Pliny says — 1 The Houpe or Vpupa ... is a nasty and filthy bird other- wise, both in the manner of feeding and also in nestling : but a goodly faire crest or comb it hath, that will easily fold and be plaited : for one while she will draw it in, another while set it stiffe upright along the head.' Holland's Trans., vol. i. p. 287 (1634). Compare these old French verses — 1 Dedans un creux avec fange et ordure La Huppe fait ses oeufs et sa niaison.' l 1 La Hupe. Manger ne veux sinon ordure, Car en punaisie ie me tiens, Si ie suis de belle figure, Beaute sans bonte ne vaut rien.' 2 That a bird of so fine an appearance should live in so squalid an abode, and on such foul fare, was the reason, no doubt, why it passed into a byword for simplicity and gullibility. For called whoop. The Arabic name for it hud-hud, the French put-put and prov. German wut-wut have a like onomatopoetic origin. The Greeks thought they recognised in its cry the transformed Tereus exclaiming irov, trod (where, where). Cf. Farrar, Chapters on Lan- guage, p. 29. 1 Portraits d'Oyseaux, quoted in ' Penny Cycl.' vol. xxvi. p. 35. 2 From ' Le Grand Calendrier et Compost des Bergers ' (1633), a very curious old French almanack, of which Nisard gives an account in his ' Histoire des Livres Populaires,' vol. i. p. 84 seq. DUPE. 123 while the French have a proverb, l Sale comme une huppe, there lies in the background a remem- brance that it is un oiseau Impp6, i.e., crested, high-crowned, and along with this perhaps an ironical innuendo that it is noble, distinguished, intelligent. 1 For kuppe also has this meaning, ' proud, lofty, stately, that bears himself high, that thinks well of himselfe ' (Cotgrave). Now it was most probably this pretentious air of the hoo- poe 2 with its lofty crest, which certainly does give it an air of grotesque importance, contrasted with its reputedly low and filthy habits, that caused it to be selected as the type of a humbug, a stupid pretender, who claims to be considered fine and clever when he is really quite the contrary, a simple person easily deceived, or in one word — a dupe. This metaphorical use of the word is not, as Wedg- wood remarks, without its parallels in other lan- guages, for in Polish dudek, a hoopoe, is also a simpleton, a fool ; in Italian bubbola is a hoopoe, bubbolare, to cheat, or (to use the old cant term) ' to bubble ' one. Thus it appears that to gull, to 1 E.g. e Les plus huppes y sont pris,' a French proverb quoted by M. Littre in his great dictionary, s.v. (The most skilful are deceived). 1 Bien huppe qui pourra m'attraper sur ce point.' Moliere, £cole des Femmes, i. 1. 8 ' In spite of the martial appearance of its crest, it is said to be excessively timid, and to fly from an encounter with the smallest bird that opposes it.' Johns, British Birds in their Haunts, p. 31 1. 12-4 DUPE. pigeon, to bubble, or to dupe a person means lite- rally to delude and ensnare him like a simple bird. ' To cajole ' is of a like signification. It is the French cajoler (also enjoler), to encage, or entice into a cage, being from the Old French jaiole, (Sp.) gay old, (It.) gabbhiola, (Lat.) caveola, cavea, (a cage). I may add as a supplement to the previous remarks the following curious legend about the hoopoes, which traces back their traditional folly to an ancient date. Mr Curzon, from whose very interesting c Visits to Monasteries in the Levant ' I quote it, heard it from the lips of a Mussulman cob- bler. One day, when the great King Solomon was on a journey, he was sorely distressed by the heat of the sun. Observing a flock of hoopoes flying past, he begged them to form a shelter between him and the fiery orb. The king of the hoopoes immediately gathered his whole nation together, and caused them to fly in a cloud above his head. King Solomon, grateful for this service, offered to bestow on his feathered friends whatever reward they might ask. After a day's consultation, the king of the hoopoes came with his request. 1 Then Solomon said, " Hast thou considered well what it is that thou desirest ? " And the hoopoe said, " I have considered well, and we desire to have golden crowns upon our heads." So Solomon replied, " Crowns of gold shall ye have : but, behold, thou art a foolish bird ; and when the evil days shall come upon thee, and thou seest the folly of thy heart, return DUPE. 125 here to me, and I will give thee help." So the king of the hoopoes left the presence of King Solomon, with a golden crown upon his head. And all the hoopoes had golden crowns ; and they were exceeding proud and haughty. Moreover, they went down by the lakes and the pools, and walked by the margin of the water, that they might admire themselves as it were in a glass. And the queen of the hoopoes gave herself airs, and sat upon a twig ; and she refused to speak to the merops her cousin, and the other birds who had been her friends, because they were but vulgar birds, and she wore a crown of gold upon her head. 1 Now there was a certain fowler who set traps for birds ; and he put a piece of a broken mirror into his trap, and a hoopoe that went in to admire itself was caught. And the fowler looked at it, and saw the shining crown upon its head ; so he wrung off its head, and took the crown to Issachar, the son of Jacob, the worker in metal, and he asked him what it was. So Issachar, the son of Jacob, said, " It is a crown of brass." And he gave the fowler a quarter of a shekel for it, and desired him, if he found any more, to bring them to him, and to tell no man thereof. So the fowler caught some more hoopoes, and sold their crowns to Issachar, the son of Jacob ; until one day he met another man who was a jeweller, and he showed him several of the hoopoes' crowns. Whereupon the jeweller told him that they were of pure gold ; and he gave the fowler a talent of gold for four of them. ' Now when the value of these crowns was known, the fame of them got abroad, and in all the land of Israel was heard the twang of bows and the whirling of slings ; bird-lime was made in every town ; and the price of traps rose in the market, so that the fortunes of the trap-makers increased. Not a hoopoe could show its head but it was slain or taken captive, and the days of the hoopoes were numbered. Then their minds were filled with sorrow and dismay, and before long few were left to bewail their cruel destiny. At last, flying by stealth through the most unfrequented places, the unhappy king of the hoopoes went to the court of King Solomon, and stood again before the steps of the golden throne, and -with tears and groans related the misfortunes which had happened to his race. 126 DOTTEREL. ' So King Solomon looked kindly upon the king of the hoopoes, and said unto him, " Behold, did I not warn thee of thy folly in desiring to have crowns of gold? Vanity and pride have been thy ruin. But now, that a memorial may remain of the service which thou didst render unto me, your crowns of gold shall be changed into crowns of feathers, that ye may walk unharmed upon the earth." Now when the fowlers saw that the hoopoes no longer wore crowns of gold upon their heads, they ceased from the persecution of their race ; and from that time forth the family of the hoopoes have flourished and increased, and have continued in peace even to the present day ' (p. 152). 1 Their namesakes, the ( dupes,' likewise continue a numerous family unto this day. That they flourish and walk unharmed upon the earth because they are merely feather-headed, unfortunately can- not be asserted with equal truth. So long as they can afford a golden spoil they are sure to be marked down, entrapped, and plucked by Mr Affable Hawk, his relation Sir Mulberry, and other professional fowlers. Dupes with crowns of gold have indeed much to contend with. They, too, however, lose their attractiveness, and cease to be persecuted when relieved of their perilous pos- sessions. When the ' dotterel ' was adduced above as an instance of a bird proverbial for its foolishness, it was implied that it derived its name from its doting obtuseness. This was Camden's opinion, 1 One name for the bird in Persian is murghi Sulaymdn, * Solo- mon's bird.' DUNCE. 127 and has been adopted by Mr Wedgwood. There is some reason to believe, however, that the term 6 dotterel ' was originally applicable to a person conspicuously foolish and silly, and only in a secon- dary sense to the bird of a similar character. 1 It was borrowed apparently from the Italian, where dottorello is ' a silly clarke, a sir John lacke Latine ' (Florio), and this is a contemptuous diminutive of dottore, a doctor, a learned man. Compare dottoruzzo, c a sillie or dunzicall Doctor ' (Florio). That there is no greater fool than the learned fool, and that the bookish pedant in the affairs of practical life is no better than a solemn idiot, has often been remarked ; and that opinion has found utterance in the word < dotterel,' a doctorling. 6 A fool unless he knows Latin is never a great fool,' is the witness of a Spanish proverb. 2 We are reminded here how the name of ' the Subtle Doctor,' which was once suggestive of nothing but intellectual acuteness and philosophic discrimination, has in later times become a by- word for crass ignorance and stupidity ; how Duns 1 So early as 1440 the * Promptorium Parvulorum' has the word with both meanings, a ' byrde,' and also the same as • dotarde. ' 2 Cf. Trench, Proverbs and their Lessons, Lect. IV.; "Warter, Parochial Fragments, p. 69 ; Overbury, Characteristics (Lib. Old Authors), p. 269 ; H. Tooke, Diversions of Purley, p. li. (ed. Taylor). 128 DUNCE. Scotus, the glory of the Fransciscan order, the oracle of the Realists, now lives only in the mouths of men as the opprobrious epithet t dunce.' The reaction that took place at the time of the Reformation against the elaborate quibbling and hair-splitting of mediaeval theology aroused a feeling of scornful impatience against the Schoolmen, and chiefly against him who was their most conspicuous representative. Accordingly, when Dr Layton, with others, was sent down to the University of Oxford in the reign of Henry VIII. to introduce sundry improve- ments into that seat of learning, we find him reporting to Cromwell us one result of his visita- tion — ' We have sett Dunce in Bocardo, and have utterly banisshede hym Oxforde for ever, with all his blinde glosses, and is nowe made a comon servant to evere man, faste nailede up upon postes in all comon bowses of easment : id quod oculis meis vidi. And the seconde tyme we came to New Colege, affter we hade declarede your injunctions, we fownde all the gret quadrant court full of the leiffes of Dunce, the wynde blowyng them into evere corner.' 1 Dr Colet, the famous Dean of St Paul's, held him and his followers in no higher estimation. ' The Scotists, to whom of all men the vulgar attribute peculiar acumen, he used to say appeared to him slow and 1 Letter3 relating to the Suppression of Monasteries (Camcleu Society), p. 71. DUNCE. 129 dull, and anything but clever ; for to argue about the ex- pressions and words of others, to object first to this and then to that, and to divide everything into a thousand niceties, was the part only of barren and poor talents/ l Richard Stanihurst remarks that in his time Duns had become so trivial and common a term in schools, that s whoso surpasseth others either in cavilling, sophistry, or subtle philosophy, is forth- with nicknamed a Duns.' 2 1 JScotista, a follower of Scotus, as we say a Dunce/ Florio (1611). The allusion, doubtless, is the same in a phrase given by Cotgrave (s.v. Joannes) — 1 C'est un Joannes, He is a Pedant, or poor Schoolmaster/ A phrase of similar import in the English of a former day was 6 a sir John.' Thus Latimer, in the dedication of one of his sermons, speaks of ' a Sir John who had better skill in playing at tables, or in keeping a garden, than in God's word.' 6 Come nere thou preest/ said the host, in the Prologue to * Nonnes Preestes Tale ' — ; Come hither, thou Sire John, Telle us swiche thing as may our hertes glade/ 6 1 praye thee,' demands Palinode of his fellow in the ( Shepheards Calender ' — 1 Erasmus, Pilgrimage to St Mary of Walsingham, &c. (ed. J. G. Nichols), p. 143. s Description of Ireland, p. 2. I 130 DUNCE. c Lette me thy tale borrowe For our Sir John to say to-morrowe At the Kerke, when it is holliday ; For well he meanes, but little can say.' E. K. remarks in his note that this is spoken 6 to taunte unlearned Priestes.' * Blind and ignorant consciences . . . love to live under blind Sir Johns, seek dark corners, say they are not book- learned.' Sam. Ward, Balm from Oilead. This term ' Sir ' was once applied generally to every parish priest, especially to one who had graduated at one of the universities, and translates the Latin title of dominus given to those who had obtained the degree of Bachelor of Arts — e.g.. Sir Hugh Evans, the curate in Shakspere. Sir Brown or Sir Smith may still be heard used in this sense in the University of Dublin, and Sira Fritzner in Iceland. Compare the Scotch dominie, a contemptu- ous name for a minister or pedagogue. Italian don, ' a word abridged of JDonno, it was a title wont to be given to country priests or Munkes ' (Florio). In early English this latter word took the form of dan, and thus it comes to pass that we read in Chaucer of dan Piers, dan Arcite, dan John, and even of dan Salomon, dan Caton. It is curious to find the same term turning up in the far North with something of the sense of 6 dunce ' attached to it. For in Icelandic doni is the name by which the students of the old colleges COWARD. 131 call outsiders, as opposed to collegians, like the Philister of German universities. 1 This use of the word ' don,' dominus, is evidentally ironical, some- what like that of the name ' literates ' among our- selves. Thus, by a whimsical fate, the same identical word which denotes for us the incarna- tion of collegiate discipline and the pedantry of the l gown,' denotes to the Icelander the despised ignoramus of the 'town.' < Coward.'— With but slight difference of form this word is to be found in more than one lan- guage of modern Europe, and in each the dif- ference of forms seem to have arisen from an attempt to trace a connection and educe a meaning which did not really belong to it. For instance, the French couard, 0. French coard, was regarded as cognate with the 0. Spanish and Prove DQal coa (Fr. queue) a tail, as if the original signification was a tailer, one who flies to the rear or tail of the army. Thus Cotgrave translates the phrase, 1 In the very valuable ' Icelandic Dictionary ' by Cleasby and Vigfusson, doni is identified with a (supposed) early Eng. word done, and there is adduced in confirmation these lines from the ' Boke of Curtesy ' (c. 1500)— ' In thi dysch sette not thi spone, Nother on the brynke, as unlernyd done.' These latter words are interpreted as an illiterate clown / The true meaning of course is * do not as the unlearned do,' done or doen being the old plural of do. There is no evidence of such a word as done for a clown having ever existed in English, and the sentence corresponds to this of Wiclif's — ' Thei snokiden not fro hous to hous, and beggiden mete, as freris doon.' 132 COWARD. '/aire la queue] ( to play the coward, come or drag behind, march in the rere.' The Italian codardo in like manner was brought into connection with the verbs ' codare, to tail, codiare, to follow one at the taile ' (coda) (Florio). The Portuguese form is cobarde, also covarde (= couard), which seems to have resulted from an imagined relationship with cova, It. covo, sil-cova, Sp. alcoba, Arab, al-qobbah (the recess of a room, ' alcove '). A coward was so called, says Yieyra, * from cova, a cave, because he hides himself.' Identically the same account is given of the Spanish cobarde in Stevens' Diet. (1706), s.v. According to this explanation, when Benhadad, after being defeated at Aphek, ' fled, and came into the city into an inner chamber' (Heb. a chamber within a chamber, 1 Kings xx. 30), he might with strict etymological accuracy be described as cobarde, a coward ; Zedekiah likewise, if ever he fulfilled Micaiah's prediction in the day of invasion by betaking himself i into an inner chamber to hide himself (1 Kings xxii. 25). 1 As to our 1 Compare Macbeth's address to the ghost of Banquo — ' Be alive again, And dare me to the desert with thy sword ; If trembling I inhabit then, protest me The baby of a girl. ' Act iii. sc. 4. I.e., if I skulk within the house when challenged to the combat, call me a coward. COWARD. 133 English word, some persons, I would venture to assert, have looked upon the coward as one who has ignominiously cowered beneath the onslaught of an enemy, comparing the Italian covone, c a squatting or cowring fellow/ c from covare, to squat or coure ' (Florio) ; just as the i craven ' was supposed to be one who acknowledged himself beaten, and craved for mercy. Both deriva- tions, however, are equally incorrect. Another origin, more improbable still, was once pretty generally accepted, and the form of the word was twisted so as to correspond. The coward, it was thought, must surely be a cow-heart, one who has no more spirit or courage than the meek and mild-eyed favourite of the dairy-maid. c Cowheart,' indeed, is still the word used in Dorsetshire, and ( cow-hearted ' occurs in Lu- dolph's Ethiopia, p. 83 (1682). Compare also ' corto de cor aeon, cow-hearted,' (Stevens' Sp. Diet., 1706). l Couard, a coward, a dastard, a cow ' (Cotgrave). ' The veriest cow in a com- pany brags most' (Ibid., s.v. Crier), 6 Craven, a cow ' (Bailey). ' It is the cowish terror of his spirit That dares not undertake.' King Lear, iv. 2. The French and Italians, though they erred in their explanations, were certainly right in recog- nising queue and coda respectively (Lat. cauda) as 134 COWARD. the source of couard and coclardo. 1 It is not, however, because he tails off to the rear that the dastard was so called, nor yet — for this reason also has been assigned — because he resembles a terror-stricken cur who runs away with his tail between his legs. It is true that c in heraldry a lion borne in an escutcheon, with his tail doubled or turned in between his legs, is called a lion coward,' 2 still it was not the heraldic lion, nor the fugacious dog, nor even the peaceful cow, but a much more timid and un warlike animal, which was selected as the emblem of a person deficient in courage. It was the hare — ' the trembler,' as the Greeks used to call her ; 3 ' timorous of heart/ as Thomson characterises her in the \ Seasons ' (Winter); ' the heartless hare,' as she is styled in the ' Mirror for Magistrates,' ii. p. 74 (ed. Hasle- wood). 1 As with us ' skinned/ ' boned/ mean bereft of skin and bone, bo caudatus, * tailed/ in medieval Latin meant deprived of a tail. 1 Caudatos autem dicebant quibus ablata erat cauda/ says Du Cange. He quotes from Matthew of Paris the expression, ' timidorum caudatorum formidilositas ! ' 8 Bailey, s.v. Cf. ' Couard — se dit d'un lion qui porte sa queue retrousse'e en dessona entre les jambes' (Armorial Universal, Paris, 1844. N. & Q., 2d S. V. 126, p. 442). Cf. Icelandic draga halann (to drag the tail), to sneak away, play the coward. ' Oft have I seen a hot o'erweening cur Run back and bite because he was withheld ; Who, being suffer'd with the bear's full paw, Hath clapp'd his tail between his legs and cried.' x 2d Pt. Henry VI^ t. 1. 3 PtCx, from ptossd, to crouch or cower from fear. COWARD. 135 As the rabbit got its name of i bunny ' from its short tail being its conspicuous feature (' bun/ Gael, bun), and the word ( rabbit' itself seems akin to the Spanish rabo (a tail), rabadilla (the scut), rabon (a curtal), so the hare appears to have been familiarly known in days of yore by the nickname of ' coward,' i.e., scutty or short-tail, and this is her distinctive appellation in the popular ( Roman de Renart.' 1 Compare i Kuwaerd, lepus, vulgo cuardus . . . timidus ' (Kilian). 2 That the hare, being proverbially timid and easily scared, 3 became an apt byword for a spirit- less faint-hearted man, the following quotations will suffice to show: — 1 Similarly the ' coot ' or water-rail, Welsh cwt-iar, owes her name to the shortness of her tail ; cf. Welsh cwtyn, anything short or bob-tailed, a plover ; cwta, bob-tailed ; cwt, a short tail or ' s-cut.' 1 Cutty ' is a provincial name for the wren. Other animals, again, derived their names from their appendages being conspicu- ously long and bushy, e.g., Hungarian farkas, a wolf, from farJc, a tail ; Cymric llostawg, a fox, from Host, a tail.' ' Fox ' itself, O. H. Ger. foha fuhs, Pictet connects with Sanskrit pu6c7ia, tail, comparing its Scandinavian name dratthali, i.e., 'draw-tail.' So ' squirrel,' from the Lat. sciurulus, dim. of sciurus, Greek sciouros, i.e., 'shadow-tail,' from its large bushy tail serving it as a parasol ! 2 In Wedgwood, s.v. Other forms of the name are coars, coart, cuwaert. See Grimm, Reinhart Fuchs, pp. ccxxiii-ccxxvii. 3 Compare ' If fearefull immagination oppresse them, as they oftentimes are very sad and melancholy, supposing to heare the noise of dogges when there are none such sturring, then doe they runne too and fro, fearing and trembling, as if they were fallen mad.' Topsell, Of the Rare, Four-footed Beasts, fol. p. 269. 136 COWARD. * Thone ungemetlice cargan thu miht hatan hara.' 1 The immoderately timid thou mayest call hare. 1 The black and white monks are really brutes ; that is, lions in pride, foxes in cunning, hogs in gluttony, goats in luxury, asses in sloth, and hares in cowardice.* Fables by Odo de Ceriton (12th cent.) 2 * Lievres morionnez [hares in armour], silly artificers or cowardly tradesmen turned watchmen.' Cotgrave, French Diet., s.v. Morionne. 1 This too, a covert shall insure To shield thee from the storm; And coward maukin sleep secure (hare) Low in her grassy form.' Burns, Humble Petition of Bruar Water. 1 If some such desp'rate hackster shall devise To rouse thine hare's-heart from her cowardice, As idle children striving to excell In blowing bubbles from an empty shell .' Hall's Satires, iv. 4 (1597). ' His base son, . . . called from his swiftness Harold Harefoot — belike another Asahel in nimbleness, 2 Sam. ii. 18, but hare's-heart had better befitted his nature, so cowardly his disposition.' 3 Fuller, Church Hist., i. p. 216 (ed. Nichols). 1 The Saxons were no hare-hearted folk, their arms were as stalwart and their thews as strong as those of the men whom they met at Hastings.' Dasent, Intro, to Burnt JVjal, i. p. clxxx. 1 Quoted in Rask's Anglo-Saxon Grammar. 2 Vide Douce, Illustrations of Shakspere, p. 526. The Latin original of Odo's fable, 'De Ysingryno,' is given in Jacob Grimm's 'Reinkart Fuchs,' p. 447 (Berlin, 1834), as follows : — In magno conventu sunt bestie multe, videlicet, leones per superbiam, vulpes per fraudulenciam, ursi per voracitatem, hirci fetentes per luxuriam, asini per segniciem, hericii per asperitatem, lejoores per metum, quia trepidaverunt timore, ubi non erat timer. a Uase and Hasenherz in German are used in a similar sense. COWARD. 137 * How do Ahitophel and Judas die the death, of cowardly harts and hares, pursued with the full cry of their sins, that makes them dead in their nest before they die. 5 Sam. Ward, Balm of Gilead. i Plus coiiard qu'un lievre, More heartlesse than a hare! Cotgrave. ( Manhood and honour Should have but hare-hearts would they but fat their thoughts With this cramm'd reason/ Shakspere, Tro. and Ores., ii. 2. ' He that trusts to you, When he should find you lions, finds you hares ; When foxes, geese.' Coriol, i. 1. 1 You are the hare of whom the proverb goes, Whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard.' King John, ii. 1. * Edward and Richard, like a brace of greyhounds Having the fearful flying hare in sight.' 2d Ft. Henry VI., ii. 5. 1 When a distinguished Polish patriot, who re- cognised the uselessness and mischief of a projected revolution in the year 1863, ventured to raise his voice against it in warning, his indignant fellow- countrywomen, who have always been the soul of the national movement in Poland, sent him a pre- sent of hare-skins as an emblem of cowardice. Professor Pictet, comparing the Greek logos, a hare, with the synonymous Persian word lagkun, 1 ' The Mourning of the Hare,' a poem describing the manifold dangers that threaten this pretty animal, and her constitutional timidity in consequence, is printed in Hartshorne's Ancient Metrical Romances, p. 165. 138 POLTROON. observes that the latter is i allie sans doute a Idgh, poltronnerie, legerete a fuir.' 1 The word l hare ' itself, A.-Sax. Kara, Ger. hase, Fr. hase, 0. H. Ger. haso, means literally ' the to-tener,' ' the jumper,' being the Sanskrit sasa, from sas, to leap, a root which is also found in our ' haste,' Fr. haster, Ger. hasten. So in the medieval beast epics the hare was surnamed Galopins, the swift leaper, and Sauterez, the jumper. 2 Its Latin name, lepus, seems to correspond to the German laufer, Eng. 'leaper,' and to be connected with the Greek elaphros, Sans, lahgh, to jump. 3 i Poltroon,' which is generally given as a synonym of * coward,' when submitted to the philological crucible, is found to yield a residuum essentially different. If ' coward ' is significant of a person who is prone to take to flight at the first sus- picion of danger, like the timorous hare, i poltroon,' on the other hand, describes originally and properly a lazy heavy-heeled rascal that can with difficulty be aroused to any exertion, like the lethargic sloth. For the French poltron, It. poltrone, is defined to mean, not only ' a dastard or base coward ' in the older dictionaries, but also 6 a sluggard, a 1 Orig. Indo-Europ., vol. i. p. 446. 2 Grimm, Reinhart Fuchs, pp. ccxsxv. ccxxxvi. 3 Benfey. Cf. Philological Soc. Trans., 1862, p. 30. POLTROON. 139 lazie-back, an idle fellow ; ' and that this is the radical meaning we may see when we compare these words with the Italian verbs poltrare, pol- trire, poltroneggiare, ' to loll and wallow in sloth and idleness, to lye lazilie in bed as a sluggard ' (Florio). All are derivatives of the Italian poltra, a couch or bed, a word which is akin to the Ger- man polster, A. -Sax. bolster, 0. H. Ger. polstar, bolstar, Milanese poller} The correlative word spoltrare, to spring from the bed, meant also ' to shake off sloth or cowardize, and become valiant ' (Florio). 6 Poltroon,' therefore, according to its funda- mental notion, denotes one who is too fond of his pillow or bolster, a lazy day-dreamer, zfaindant, a useless lounger ; a lown or lungis, as such a person was called in early English ; a 'bed-presser,' 2 or l a slug-a-bed,' 3 as he is still called in the provincial dialects. 1 'Bolster,' &c, are connected by Herbert Coleridge with Dut. hoi, 0. Eng. poll and hall, the head, as if, like the Gk. proskepka- laidn, it denoted the place of the head. Wedgwood sees its origin in the Dut. hult, Sp. bulto. It can scarcely be doubted, however, since poltro, poltra, signify a colt or filly, as well as a bed, that the real etymon is pullus, Gk. polos, the common idea being 'that which bears one.' See other instances under the word 'Hearse,' infra. Compare ' Omai convien che tu cosi ti spoltre, Disse '1 maestro ; che seggendo in piuma In fama non si vien, ne sotto coltre. ' Dante, Inferno, xxiv. 2 "Wright, Provincial and Obsolete Dictionary. 3 Sternberg, Northampton Glossary. 140 POLTROON. Compare the A. -Saxon bedling, an effeminate person, from which Maetzner very improbably de- duces the word 'bad.' Portuguese madraco, a sluggard, an idle rascal, cognate with Fr. materas, It. materasso, Port, and Sp. almadraque, a bed or mattress, Arab, al-mdtrdk (Diez). French loudier, c a leacherous knave ' (Cot- grave), meant originally one who lies abed, be- ing only another use of loudier, lodier, 6 a quilt or counterpoint for a bed ' (Lat. lodix, A. -Sax. lo%a, a blanket). Loudiere, sl woman of the same class as Shakspere's Doll Tearskeet. So in Italian pagliardo, 6 a filthie letchard ' (Florio), is from paglia, straw, pagliato, a straw bed, a c pallet.' The corresponding word in French, paillard, 1 a knave, rascall, varlet, scoundrell, filthy fel- low ' (Cotgrave), is from paille, straw, paillasse, a straw bed ; and paillarde, a drab, is own cousin to Mistress Margery Daw of sluttish memory. The older theory, which is now generally given up, was that as i cagot, 1 the pariah of Southern France, was compounded of the two words cards Gothicus, a dog of a Goth, similarly i pol-tron ' was made up of the two first halves of pol-lice trun-catus, maimed in the thumb, a term applied to a con- script who wilfully lopped off that essential part of POLTROON. 141 the hand * in order that he might be exempted as unfit for service, and so has shirked the war and proclaimed himself a coward. 2 The French expression faucon poltron, denoting a bird which has had its talons clipped, might seem to lend some probability to this opinion. The likelihood is, however, as M. Littre remarks, that this name was given to it on account of the cowardice which it was observed subsequently to manifest as the result of that mutilation. 1 On the all importance of the thumb to man, see Kidd, Bridge- water Treatise, Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Con- dition of Man, p. 17 (ed. Bohn). 2 Farrar, Chapters on Language, 1865, p. 238. Sullivan, Dic- tionary of Derivations, s.v. ( 142 ) CHAPTER VI. THE PHRASE ' HE HAS A BEE IN HIS BONNET? THE WORDS * FRET* — 'CHAGRIN ' — ' TO NAG ' — ' NIGGARD ' — ' TEASE ' — 'BRUSQUE ' — 'CAPRICE ' — ' TO LARK' — 'MERRY AS A GRIG' — ' ETRE GRIS,' ETC. A common symptom of insanity well known to medical men is the flitting of phantasms or spectres before the eyes of the unhappy patient. Dr Winslow, amongst other cases of persons afflicted by these spectral illusions that came under his notice, mentions that of a lady who was constantly tormented by a number of singular grotesque figures dressed in most fantastic cos- tumes, which danced around her during the day, and at night appeared about and in her bed. So plain and distinct, indeed, were these ghostly visitors, that sometimes she was able to make sketches of them and show them to the doctor. 1 So intense was the illusion of vision, in another instance referred to by the same authority, that 1 Obscure Diseases of the Mind and Brain, p. 238. A BEE IN HIS BONNET. 143 although the patient closed his eyelids, he could not even then dispel the lively images of demons that haunted his bed. 1 Now, the Latin word for a ghost is larva, and the victim of such a dis- eased imagination was termed larvatus, i ghost- haunted/ and sometimes lymphatics, i.e., nym- phatus, ' nymph-seized,' Gk. nympkoleptos. 2 Just as * bug/ the name of the noxious insect the cimex, meant originally and properly a bogie, hobgoblin, or phantom to scare children ; 3 as coco in Spanish, a ' bugbeare,' meant also a c wevill ' (Minsheu) ; as baco in Italian, a i boe-peepe or vainefeare,' is also a i silkworme ' (Florio) ; so larva, originally expressive of the fantastic crea- tion of the imagination, became subsequently applicable to certain material objects of a hideous and repulsive aspect, such as the ugly masks of pantomime, and the grubs of insects. The A. -Sax. grima (from grim, horrible) corresponds to larva in all these significations, denoting a ghost, a mask, and also a chrysalis or caterpillar. 4 Some- i Id., p. 578, cf. pp. 309, 589, 607. Phantasmata, Dr R. R. Madden, vol. ii. pp. 282, 357. 2 0. Eng. ' taken.' Compare Fr. fee, taken, bewitched (Cot- grave). 0. Fr. faee, * taken as chyldernes lymmes be by the fayriea ' (Palsgrave). 3 ' All that here on earth we dreadfull hold, Ee but as bugs to fearen babes withall.' Spenser, F. Q., II. sii. 25. 4 Fear boys with bugs.' Shakspere. 4 With ' bug ' compare Russ. buTcashha, a bugbear, a bug, maggot, 144 A BEE IN HIS BONNET. what similarly a certain insect, from having some- thing gruesome and reverend in its appearance, has been named ' the praying mantis ' — mantis meaning a prophet — and Santa Caterina in Italian. 1 Larvatus, i ghostified/ and larvarum plenus, c full of ghosts/ being terms applied to the insane from their being commonly haunted by phan- toms ; 2 and these expressions, in consequence of the ambiguity of the word larva just noted, being capable of a twofold construction — as either ' in- fested by grubs/ or 6 infested by imps ' — it is possible that we may find here the explanation of sundry curious phrases in which a crazy person is popularly said to have his head full of maggots, of flies, bees, crickets, or grasshoppers. Phrases of this kind are observable in many modern lan- guages, and it is suggested that they may be the result of a mistaken or too literal rendering of the words larvarum plenus, as if they meant c full of grubs.' For instance, 'maggot* was the term very frequently employed by a bygone generation for or beetle, from buka, a bugbear ; Welsh bwcai, something dreadful, also a maggot ; Limousin bobaou, bobal, a bugbear and an insect, and the Albanian boube having like meanings ; Hung, bubus, a bug- bear ; Serv. buba, vermin ; Lap. rabme, a ghost, bugbear, also an insect, a worm (Wedgwood). 1 Vide History of Christian Names, by Miss Yonge, vol. i. p. 270. 2 Compare Maury, La Magie et l'Astrologie, pp. 263, 288. He holds mania to be properly the condition of being haunted by the ghosts of the dead, manes. Mana, mania, was the ruler of the under-world (Taylor, Etruscan ^Researches, pp. 116-124). A BEE IN HIS BONNET. 145 a whim, or some crotchety notion that has got into a person's head ; and a whimsical person that be- trayed such a weakness was said to be ' maggoty,' or ' maggot-headed.' A fantastic man is described in an old volume as c wholly bent to fool his estate and time away ... in maggot-pated whimsies.' 1 A musical composition, such as we might nowa- days call a fantasia, or capriccio, was then known as a ' maggot/ 2 Similarly in French, according to Cotgrave, verreux, wormy, worm-eaten, is also 6 hot, cholerick, hasty, light-headed, odd-humoured, haire-brain'd/ and verue is an c odd humour in a man, a worm in the head.' ' II lug a pris une verue, he is grown very fantasticall, humorous, giddy-brain'd, the worm pricks him, the toy hath taken him in the head/ Avoir des moucherons en teste, to have flies in the head, we are informed on the same authority, means ' to be humorous, moody, giddie-headed ; or to have many proclamations or crotchets in the head.' 3 < Giddy' itself is provincially applied to 1 Bishop's Marrow of Astrology, p. 60, in Nares, s.v. "Maggot- pated. Cf. l There 's a strange Maggot hath got into their Brains, which possesseth them with a kind of Vertigo. . . . Our Preach- men are grown Dog-mad, there 's a worm got into their Tongues, as well as their Heads ' (Howell, Fam. Letters, 1645, Bk. II. 33). In the Cleveland dialect, mav:h=(l) a maggot, larva of a flesh-fly ; (2) a whim or foolish fancy : mauiky, (1) maggoty j (2) given to fancies or absurd whims. 2 Brewer, Diet, of Phrase and Fable, s.v. 3 Conrad, one of the medieval princes of Ravenna, was nicknamed Musca in Cerebro, ' Fly-brained,' because he was generally con- sidered mad. Vide Wedgwood, s.v. Muse. K 146 A BEE IN HIS BONNET. a dizziness in the head to which sheep are liable, the result, it is said, of having hydatides on the brain. Perhaps it is these latter that are alluded to in Heywood's ' Spider and Flie,' where he says — ■ As gidds cum and go, so flies cum and are gone.' ! When we say that a person out of spirits has the blues or the dumps, the French say that he has the black butterflies, les papillons noirs. In Italian, grillo, a cricket, is also ' a fond hum- our or fantasticall conceit. ' ' Grilli, crickets, also toyes, crikets or bees-neasts in one's head ' (Florio). Gabbia da grilli, sorgii, 6 a cage for crickets or for mice, a self-conceited gull/ 2 An equally curious expression is found in Dutch. A musard, or moody person, is said in that lan- guage to be like ' a pot full of mice,' een pott vull milse, or to have c mouse-nests in his head,' milse- nester in koppe kebben. Mr Wedgwood points out that the verb muizen, to muse, was erroneously supposed to be derived from muize, muse, a mouse, and then muizenis, musing, was converted into muizenest, mouse-nest. Compare the French ' avoir des rats, to be maggoty, to be a humorist ' (Boyer). In the argot of Paris, avoir une dcrevisse dans le 1 Wright, Provincial Diet., s.v. Gid. 3 Another leaping insect is substituted for the cricket in the Scotch phrase ' He has a flea in his lug,' meaning he is a restless, giddy fellow (Jamieson). A BEE IN HIS BONNET. 147 vol-au-vent (i.e., dans latete) means to be deranged or crazy. A Scotch expression for one who is confused, stupefied, or light-headed, is ' His head is in the beis,' or bees ; and i bee-headit ' means hair- brained, unsettled. c Wyll, my maister, hath bees in his head,' occurs in the old play of 6 Damon and Pithias ;' and i He has a head full of bees,' in Ben Jonson's ' Bartholomew Fair,' i. 4. Compare the Polish roj, a swarm, and rojanie, musing, reverie, dreaming. With a slight variation of the phrase, the cover- ing of the head was substituted for the head itself ; and a person that was considered crotchety, crazy, or obfuscated by drink, was said to ' have a bee in his bonnet ' or cap. 1 Spenser, in his allegorical description of the body as the Castle of Alma (i.e., the soul), speaking of the head, says — ( All the chamber filled was with flyes Which buzzed all about, and made such sound, That they encombred all men's eares and eyes ; 1 The word martel in the French phrase, avoir martcl en tete, to have a bee in one's bonnet, to be crotchety, is asserted by Dr Brewer (Diet, of Phrase and Fable) to be a corruption of martin, an ass ! It can hardly be doubted, however, that it is identical with martel, a hammering, and then a throbbing or beating of the pulse under excitation of feeling. Cf. ' Martel, Jealousie, suspition, throbbing or panting upon passion ; a buzze in the head, a flie in the ear ' (Cotgrave). It. martello, ' a hammer, also jealousie in loue, panting or throbbing of the heart ' (Florio). 148 A BEE IN HIS BONNET. Like many swarmes of Bees assembled round, After their hives with honny do abound. All those were idle thoughtes and fantasies, Devices, dreames, opinions unsound, Shewes, visions, sooth-sayes, and prophesies, And all that famed is, as leasings, tales, and lies/ Faerie Queene, Bk. II. canto ix. 51. The rise and diffusion of the curious notion that the disordered brain is so strangely haunted may have been favoured, perhaps, by that vague sensa- tion, which is sometimes experienced, of there being something whirring or moving inside the head, and which, in an old French phrase, was likened to the shifting and running of sand in an hour-glass — 1 II a la teste pleine de sablon mouvant. His head is full of crotchets, his braine fraught with odde conceits ; he hath a running, or a giddy pate of his own.' Cot grave. The original idea, however, may have been that the brain was infested and preyed upon by some hidden insect, and that the sudden accesses of eccentricity or insanity were due to causes not greatly different from the gnawing of a worm 1 or the stinging of a gadfly. 2 Such beliefs were once widely prevalent at a time when little or nothing was known of diseases and their exciting causes, 1 Some have supposed that by the scriptural expression of the undying worm (Isa. lxvi. 24; Mark ix. 44) are to be understood the pangs of remorse and a guilty conscience. 2 The Greek word oUtros denotes the gadfly, and also madness, frenzy. A BEE IN HIS BONNET. 149 and similar superstitions linger even still among the ignorant. Thus, in Manx, beiskteig being a worm or maggot, beisktyn, the plural of beiskt (literally i a little beast,' Lat. bestia) is a word for the toothache, from an opinion that the pain is produced by a worm in the tooth. According to a Rabbinical tradition, Titus, after the siege of Jerusalem, was punished by an insect named yattush, a fly or gnat, which entered through his nostrils, and preyed upon his brain. 1 Somewhat similar is the meaning underlying the French verb four miller, to tingle with pain, to have a pricking or creeping sensation, its original import being to swarm with ants, Lat. formiculare, formicare, from formica, an ant. ' Formication ' still means a tingling sensation, and ' formica ' is an old medical term for a species of wart and a certain disease in a hawk's bill. 2 Compare the Greek murmekia, warts, murmekizo, to itch, from miirmex, an ant; the Esthonian kiddisema, to swarm, to creep, tickle, or itch. Indeed it may be noted that not unfrequently the inroads of certain diseases which seem to gnaw and fret the flesh are likened to the ravening of beasts of prey, and the very names of these latter are given to those diseases. For example, ' the wolf (it occurs in the sermons of Jeremy Taylor, 1 Vide Cornhill Magazine, * The Talmud,' Aug. 1875, p. 209. s Bailey, Diet., s.v. 150 FRET. and in other old writers) is a common word for a sort of eating ulcer, which in Italian is also named lupo. 'They [the sacrilegious] lie in the bosom of the church, as that disease in the breast called the cancer, vulgarly the wolf; devouring our very flesh, if we will not pacify and satisfy them with our substance.' Adams, Sermons, Lycanthropy. 1 Hunger is like the sickness called a wolf, which, if thou dost not feed, will devour thee and eat thee up.' Lewis Bailey, Practice of Piety (1743), p. 201. In German, wolf is a wen, and wolf am finger, a whitlow. In French, loup is ' a malignant and remedilesse ulcer, a canker in the legs which in the end it wholly consumes ' (Cotgrave). ' Canker ' itself, as well as ' cancer,' Fr. chancre, is the Latin cancer, a crab, and similar is the twofold meaning of the German krebs. ' Scrofula ' being a Latin word derived from scrofa, a sow, and akin to scrobs, a trench, and scribo (originally to scratch), seems to denote the disease which grubs up, tears, and devours the flesh of its victim, 1 even as * The sow freting the child right in the cradel.' 2 1 So the Spanish comer, to itch, is from the Latin comedere, to de- vour, the French rogne, the mange, is from rogner, to gnaw or fret, and our ' mange,' from the French manger, to eat. Demangeaison, the itch, a derivative of the latter, is used figura- tively of mental irritation, as in Boursault's little play of ' Le Pluriel des Mots en Al,' ' Tax des dimangeaisons de te cesser la gueule,' — I am itching (i.e., have a stroDg desire) to break your neck. 2 Chaucer, The Knight's Tale, 1. 2021. FRET. 151 The occurrence of the word i fret ' in this line from Chaucer, and in another passage shortly afterwards which tells of Acteeon — ' How that his houndes have him caught And freten him, for that they knew him naught ' — reminds us that mental disease, as well as bodily, is frequently compared, in respect of its wasting and ravaging power, to the action of gnawing and devouring. When a person under the influence of grief is said to be c fretted,' 1 the expression pro- perly implies that his substance is being eaten away by corroding care 2 just as a garment (in the language of our Authorised Version) is fretted by a moth. i Tristitia enim/ says Yan Helmont, ( non secus atque tinea vestem vitam roditS Compare the following passages : — 1 And ever against eating cares Lap me in soft Lydian airs.' Milton, L 1 Allegro. 1 ' Fret,' notwithstanding its simple appearance, is really a com- pound word, to for-eat, (Goth. )fra-itan, (Ger.) ver-essen, to eat up (Garnett, Philological Essays, p. 108). In connection with fretting, and its ordinary accompaniment, tears, it may be observed that the latter word (A.-Sax.) taer, (0. H. Ger.) zahar, (Goth.) tagr, is near akin to the Swedish tdra, to consume, corrode, eat, wear away, tara sig sjelf, to fret one's self, (0. H. Ger.) zeran, (Ger.) zehren, (Eng.) ' to tear.' Precisely similar is the relation of its congeners the Greek ddkru, to the verbal root dak- (ddknd), to bite, (Sans. ) damg, and of the Latin lacryma, to the verb lacero, to tear. 2 The Greek meled&ne, care, sorrow (cf. melein, to be anxious), ac- cording to Max Muller, means a consuming, a melting away, or grinding to dust, being from the root mar, to grind or pound, and so cognate with the Latin mordeo, to bite. 152 FRET. ' Gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite The man that mocks at it and sets it light.' Shakspere, Richard II., i. 3. ' I can feel my forehead crost By the wrinkle's fretful tooth. Lord Lytton, Spring and Winter, And so the afflicted Lear found — ' How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child.' Lear, i. 4. When, on the other hand, we say of a person that he ' frets himself ' about anything, we use a phrase almost equivalent to the Homeric one, i He devoureth his own heart ' (6v/jl6v 16V), and similar to that employed by the Royal Preacher, ' The fool foldeth his hands together, and eatethhis own flesh'' (Eccles. iv. 5), i.e., wasting his energies, vexes and disquiets himself in vain. Compare the Danish gnave, to gnaw, also to fret, to be peevish. So in old English writers, < corsive ' and ' corsey,' a con- tracted form of a ' corrosive,' is found repeatedly with the meaning of a gnawing care, anxiety, or, as Burns calls it, ' heart-corroding care and grief. ' 1 The Russians have a like saying — ' Rust eats away iron, and care the heart.' 1 And that same bitter corsive which did eat Her tender heart and made refraine from meat.' Spenser, Fairie Queene, IV. ix. 14. Epistle to Davie, Globe ed., p. 58. CHAGRIN. 153 ' For eVry cordiall that my thoughts apply Turns to a corsive, and doth eat it farder/ B. Jonson, Every Man out of Rumour. 'He feels a corzie cold his heart to knaw.' Harrington, Ariosto, xx. 97. 1 ' Chagrin/ French chagrin, cark, care, vexation, is that which gnaws and frets the mind, just as e shagreen ' (Fr. chagrin), the shark-skin, wears away the wood or other material which it is used as a rasp to polish, It. zigrino. i Shagreen, out of humour, vexed ' (Bailey). The Genoese sagrind is to gnaw, and sagrindse, to fret, consume with anger. 2 Very similar is the use of the Italian verb limare, to fret, to gnaw, originally to file, from the Latin lima, a file, while the same word lima is the Italian name for the plaice or bret, French limande, on account of its rough skin when dried being em- ployed for wood polishing. So ' attrition ' and c contrition/ theological terms for sorrow for sin, 1 Vide Nares, who gives the above quotations s.v. 2 Diez. The spelling ' chagrin ' would seem to countenance the derivation of the word from carcharus, a shark, Gk. Jcdrcharos, sharp, jagged, through a form carcharinus ; and so Haldeman, Affixes, p. 114. Compare the Greek rhlne, which denotes both a file or rasp, and a shark whose rough skin is used for the same purpose. It is really, however, the Persian saghri, a kind of leather made from the ass's skin. Tavernier, in his Travels in Persia, says — 'Cespeaux de chagrin se font du cuir de cheval, d'asne, ou de mule, et seule- ment du derriere de la beste, et celuy qui se fait de la peau de l'asne a le plus beau grain. ' Cf. ' Cufsh sagri I have translated sha- green slippers. Sagri is the skin of a wild ass's back ' (Hajji Baba in England, vol. ii. p. 125 ; Southey, C.-P. Book, vol. ii. p. 464). 154 BACKBITE. the one denoting a lower, the other a higher and more perfect, degree of repentance, meant origin- ally a rubbing or wearing away, and then figu- ratively a fretting of the heart and mind, being derivatives of the Latin verb tero, to rub or bray to pieces. ' Remorse,' from the Latin remordeo, to bite again, 0. Eng. ' again-bite/ reminds us that conscience, when awakened, has sharp teeth that do not remain idle. 1 By an analogous figure of speech the idea of vexing and harassing another with reproaches, taunts, or accusations is often conveyed by words expressive of tearing, gnawing, and biting. Thus ' back-biting,' the graphic term by which we characterise slanderous charges brought against a person in his absence, 2 has its exact parallel in the Latin phrases, ?nordere, rodere, dente carpere, to bite, gnaw, or tear one with the teeth. The ex- cellent maxim in which St Augustine employs one of these latter words in this sense might appropri- ately be written over the portals of every dining- room — * Quisquis amat dictis absentem rodere amicnm, Hanc mensam vetitam. noverit esse sibi.' Who loves to bite with words an absent friend No welcome findeth here. 1 Samuel Ward, in his sermon ' Balm from Gilead,' speaks of the reproofs of conscience ' gnawing more than any chestworm ' {i.e., coffin- worm). 2 ' And oft in vain his name they eloselv bite.' P. Fletcher, Purple Island, c. 10. SARCASM. 155 In Hebrew a synonymous expression is c to eat one piece-meal' (akal kartze), that is, to calumniate him, and fritter away his character by groundless accusations, and that is the phrase used in Daniel (iii. 8), where it is recorded that the Chaldeans ' came near and accused the Jews.' So in the 35th Psalm David complains that his enemies ' did tear him, and ceased not' (v. 15), i.e., they ' spoke daggers,' even cutting words, or as Gesenius in- terprets it, they rebuked and cursed him, the word here employed being kdratz, to rend or tear asunder. Nakabh, to pierce or cut through, is similarly used for to curse in Job iii. 8 ; Prov. xi. 26, &c. Compare the following usages, i To pique a person,' Fr. piquer, to vex, urge, exasperate with sharp or biting words, meant originally to prick or pierce (Cotgrave) ; Eng. i to give one a cutting up.' 6 To exasperate ' is to make one rough, as by the application of a rasp or grater. ' To harass,' Fr. karasser, is apparently 6 to harrow ' and hurt his feelings, as the harrow with its jagged projections hurts the earth, being akin to harcer, fiercer, to harrow. ' A sarcasm,' in contrast with what Dr South has termed i the toothless generalities of a common- place,' is i a biting taunt, a cutting quip, a nip- ping scoff' of a bitter and personal nature, which, as it were, draws blood, and leaves a scar behind. It is the Greek sarkasmos, from sarkdzd, to tear 156 NAG. the Jtesk (sdrx). i Cynics ' (from the Greek kudn, kunos, a dog), as might be expected from persons with sharp teeth and a currish, snarling disposition, are much given to this cruel amusement. 6 Nag/ to keep up a continual course of railing and irritating remarks, ' nagging,' worry, is the same word as * gnaw,' Norse nagga, to gnaw, irri- tate, or plague, Ger. nagen, prov. Eng. nag, to eat, naggle, to gnaw, Dut. knagen. So Dan. gnaven, a gnawing, is likewise a scolding or chiding. Of similar origin is the word ' niggard,' for a parsi- monious, cheese-paring fellow — a skinflint, as he is sometimes termed — who gnaws and scrapes his bones till the dogs despise the reversion of them, being a derivative from the Icelandic ngggja, to rub, scrape, or gnaw. 1 The Old English word was nygun; and Pers the usurer is described in Mannyng's ' Handlyng Synne ' as ' a nygun and auarous ' (1. 5578). The following passage, which also illustrates what has been said above about ' fret,' is put in the mouth of Anamnestes in the old comedy of Lingua (1632) — 'A company of studious paper-worms, & leane schollers, and niggardly scraping Vsurers, and a troupe of heart-eating 1 With this we may compare the provincial English 'near' (Sternberg, Northampton Glossary, s.v.), exactly equivalent to the Danish gnicr, 'a griping, stingy, penurious fellow' (Wolff), gnidsk, niggardly, which is a derivative of gnider, to scrape ; (Cumberland) $croby, niggardly, akin to Dut. schrobben, Gael, sgriob, to scrape. TEASE. 157 enuious persons, and those canker-stomackt spiteful creatures, that furnish vp, common place-books with other men's faults " (Act iii. sc. 2). Another instance of the same figure is afforded by the verb ' to tease/ which in everyday language is used more commonly in its metaphorical sense of annoying or vexing a person, ruffling his temper by a series of petty and repeated provocations, than in its original one of pulling out matted wool or hair, and loosening it by plucking and tearing, A. -Sax. tcesan, Dut. teesen, Ger. zausen. The plant which was frequently used for the purpose of raising the nap of cloth, and teasing it to a proper degree of roughness, was called the c teasel ' (A.- Sax. tcesal). This was a species of thistle, in Latin carduus, as we are reminded by our word i card ' for dressing wool. Hence, too, comes the Portuguese cardo, the fuller's thistle, which c is also a symboli- cal word for torment, pain, affliction, &c.' (Vieyra). Compare the Spanish escolimoso, hard, obstinate, 1 from the Latin scoli/mus, a thistle, Greek skol- umos, the original conception being that of a person whose manner, rough as a burr, and bristling, is suggestive of the motto Nemo me impune lacessit. Similarly, when a rude and abrupt manner is de- scribed as being brusque, it is implied that, so far from being soft and polished, it is sharp-pointed andrepellent,like the prickly shrub called butcher's- 1 Pineda, Span. Diet., s.v. 158 BRUSQUE. broom. For the French brusque (formerly brusc), Spanish and Italian brusco, uncivil and sharp, also denote that plant, and are derived from its Latin name ruscum. The first ' brushes ' were besoms made of this material (Ger. brusc/i). Compare the two meanings of c broom.' We have seen above that the name of the cricket or grasshopper has sometimes been used as synony- mous with a whim, caprice, or eccentric humour, and obviously it was the fitful movements of those insects by sudden and unexpected bounds which afforded the point of comparison. Grillo is thus employed in Spanish and Italian, and grillon in French. ' II a beaucoup de grillons en la teste, he is in his dumps ; his head is much troubled, full of crotchets, or of Proclamations ' (Cotgrave). In German die grille is a whim or vagary, grillen fangen, to catch crickets, is to indulge in useless thoughts, and grillenf anger, a capricious person. All these are from the Latin grgllus, a cricket. Now this word was also used as an art term to signify a caricature or grotesque composite figure. 1 Grilli, or crickets, are frequently found depicted on ancient gems engaged in various human occupations, 1 Antiphilus jocosis (tabulis) nomine Gryllum deridiculi habitus pinxit, unde id genus picturse grylli vocantur' (Pliny xxv. 37). See ' Handbook of Engraved Gems,' C. W. King, p. 96. It is curious to find the Icelandic gryla meaning an ogre or bugbear, but gryl, grille is an 0. Eng. word for grim, terrible. CAPRICE. 159 as porters, gladiators, and so forth ; and it was probably this fantastic use of the insect, as well as its irregular movement, which helped to make it a synonym for a capriccio, or curious fancy. Similarly ' caprice/ Fr. caprice, It. capriccio, signified originally the sudden spring of the goat, so that Chapman uses the word, in his time not yet fully naturalised, with perfect propriety when in his translation of the c Hymn to Pan ' he depicts the motions of the goat-footed god as follows : — * Sometimes (In quite opposed capriccios) he climbs The hardest rocks and highest, every way Running their ridges.' x LI. 15-18. The word is a derivative of the Latin caper, 2 a goat, as is also our verb 6 to caper,' to skip about like that playful animal. Compare Horace's simi- lem ludere caprece ; W. gafrio, to caper, from gafr, a goat. That Shakspere was familiar with this derivation is evident from the words which he makes Touch- stone address to Audrey — 1 Homeric Hymns, &c, translated by Geo. Chapman, Library of Old Authors, p. 107. Cf. Genin, Recreations Philologiques, vol. i. p. 272. * Caper, Etruscan capra, corresponds to A.-Sax. hcefer, 'heifer,' Scand. hafr, Irish qabhar, Welsh gafr, Corn, gavar, Alban. skap, and is akin to the Persian dapish, 6apush, Sans, kampra, agile. It comes from the root cap, camp, to move (? bound), and probably originally meant ' the skipper.' In Lapp, habra is a goat, kapa, Finn, kipa, to skip, Turkish 6apuk, swiftly, Pers. cabHk (Pictet, Orig. Indo-Europ., vol. i. p. 368 ; I. Taylor, Etruscan Kesearches, p. 317). Cf. Egypt, abr. 160 CAPRICE. 1 1 am here with thee and thy goats, as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths.' As You Like It, iii. 3. Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton) describes the fit- ful disposition of the animal just as it must have struck our ancestral word-makers — 1 Every goat objects to sameness, And peaceful plenty cloys at last ; Without adventure ease is tameness : Away the wild thing scampers fast. He scrambles up the pebbly passes : He leaps the wild ravines : in vain To woo him wave the choicest grasses — He nibbles, and is off again. The good St Peter, to whose keeping it has been committed, puffs after it till he is fairly exhausted, and resigns his capricious charge with the words — ' Take back, Lord, this wilful creature, And from its whimsies set me free.' Cynips Terminalis. ' Goats,' observes Fuller, < are when young most nimble and frisking, whence our English word to caper. .' When Boyle therefore speaks of one ' dancing and capering like a kid,' the expression, though accurate, is almost pleonastic. The French forms of the word are cabrer, c to reare, or stand upright on the hinder feet, as a goat or kid thatbrouzes on a tree ' (Cotgrave) ; cabrioter, to caper. From the same source, through the diminutival form capreolus, a kid, comes the verb CAPRICE. 161 ' to capriole.' It. capriola, ' a kid, a caper in dancing, also a sault, a goates leape that cunning riders teach their horses ' (Florio). The French word was cabriole, and hence a light, two- wheeled vehicle, which, as it were, bounds along, was called a cabriolet, which we now have shortened into ' cab/ 1 The same conveyance in slang phrase- ology is styled a ' bounder,' 2 which is suggestive of a kindred expression in the authorised version of Nahum iii. 2, ' the jumping chariots.' With 6 caprice ' we may compare the provincial English word gaiting, signifying frolicsome, from gait, a goat. So in the Comasque dialect of the Italian mice is a caprice, and nucia a kid ; ticc/do, the Italian word for a freak or whim, is from the 0. H. Ger. ziki, a kid (Diez) ; and the French verve, spirit, fancy, comes probably from a Latin word verva, a ram's head, vervex, a wether. 3 1 Cabriolets were introduced into England in 1755. Horace "Walpole speaks of ' la f ureur des cabriolets, Anglice one horse chairs, a mode introduced by Mr Child ' (Wright, Caricature History of the Georges, p. 253). 2 Hotten, Slang Dictionary, s.v. 3 Another word expressive of a mental conception derived from the goat is 'chimera,' a monstrous fancy or groundless imagination, that word being the Greek chimaira, (1) a goat ; (2) a composite goat- shaped monster; (3) something unreal or non-existent. Chimaira, chimaros, is properly a winterling goat, and connected with ckeimdn, winter, just as the provincial Eng. term, a ' quinter,' is a sheep of two winters, corresponding to the Erisian twinter, a two- year-old horse, enter, a one-year-old, cf, Latin bimus, two years old, trimus, three years old, i.e., li-himus, tri-himus, akin to litems, winter. 162 LARK. Similar is the Italian vitellare, l to skip and leape for joy as a yonge calfe ' (Florio), the Latin vitulari, to make merry, originally to skip like a calf (vitulus). An interesting parallel is afforded by the ancient Egyptian, for in that language a bounding calf .is said to be the ideograph, or little picture, determinative of the verb ab, which signifies to rejoice as well as to thirst ; and in the list of hieroglyphical signs given by Baron Bunsen in his great work, 1 the head of a calf is the determinative of the word for joy (rck). Compare also the Ger- man kdlbern, to be wanton, to romp, to frisk about in a calf-like manner, from kalb, a calf; the Greek arneuo, to frisk, from arnos, a lamb; ortalizo, to frolic like a young animal, ortalis ; and paizo, to dance or play, originally to sport like a child, pais, (compare the French gar Conner, to be wanton); the provincial and Old English verb, to colt, meaning to frisk about and kick up one's heels, to wanton, a word employed by Spenser in his ' View of the State of Ireland,' which in Devonshire takes the shape coltee, to be skittish. It might perhaps be supposed, at the first view, that the vulvar English word i to lark ' was another instance in point, and that in its primary significance it meant to disport one's self with the abandon of that bird which has often been regarded 1 Egypt's Place in Universal History, vol. i. p. 543. LARK. 163 as the very type of light-heartedness and joyous freedom. 1 If the frisking columbine, with her pirouettes and glissades, bears an appellation shared in common with the tumbling pigeon columbus, columbinus (Greek kolumbdn, to tumble) and if the public figurant or pantomimic dancer arneuter, introduced by Homer (II. xvi. 742) owns a kinship with the skipping lamb, arnos then why should not a frolic, accompanied as it often is by dance and jest and song, and enacted though it be for the most part during the hours when gambling is rife but gambolling is still, by revellers — 1 Awake when the lark is sleeping, Ere Flora fills her dewy cup ; When the festive beetle's homeward creeping, Before the early worm is up,' — why should it not, by an analogous process, derive its name from the merry bird of morning ? This, however, would be quite a groundless assump- tion, as the word is only a modern corruption of the verb to laik, which is common in Old English, and still current in the provincial dialects. < Thai mett With men that sone thaire laykes lett ' — Minot, Political Songs, 1352. One of the aspirations of the cheerful man in ' L'Allegro,' as he invokes Sport and Laughter and Mirth to be his companions, is — 1 To hear the lark begin his flight, And singing startle the dull night, From his watchtower in the skies Till the dappled dawn doth rise.' LI. 41-44. 164 MERRY AS A GRIG. i.e., hindered their larks. Of the giants be- fore the flood we are told ' That for her lodlych layke^ alosed tliay were ' — Alliterative Poems (ed. Morris) they were destroyed for their loathsome larks. So Hampole says that proud man takes no heed to himself '"When he es yhung and luffes layking.' Priche of Conscience, 1. 593. < Lark,' therefore, is the Old English laih, A. -Sax. Mc, play, sport, lacan, to play, Goth, laiks, sport, dancing, laikan, to skip or leap for joy, Swed. leka, Dan. lege, 0. Norse leika, from the Sanskrit root lahgh, to jump, which is also seen in A. -Sax. leax, the sal- mon, i.e., c the leaper,' locusta, and lepus, the hare. It is with these creatures, if any, that the frolic- some ' lark' is allied, and not with the bird which is its homophone — the ' laverock,' ' la'rick,' or lark. Amongst the animals which by reason of their liveliness of disposition and quickness of motion have been made types of hilarity and cheerfulness, and become proverbial in popular phraseology, is the c grig.' Cotgrave, for example, explains gouinfre, ' a madcap, merry grig, pleasant knave,' gringalet, ' a merry grig, pleasant rogue, sportfull knave.' We still say ' as merry as a grig,' and the word has been generally understood to mean a small, wriggling eel, so called perhaps from its colour, A. -Sax. MERRY AS A GRIG. 165 grceg, gray, just as another fish has been named a i grayling/ As c grig,' however, is a provincial term also for the cricket, 1 as it were the gray insect , in Ice- landic grd-magi, ' gray-maw ' (compare the c gray- fly ' of Milton's < Lycidas '), it is more natural to suppose that the phrase is synonymous with another equally common, c as merry as a cricket ; ' the cheerful note of the cricket, even more than its lively movements, causing it to be adopted as an ex- emplification of merriment. But c grig ' may have had still another meaning. Grec, gregeois, griescke, gregue, are various French spellings of the word Greek (compare 'gregues, foreign hose [i.e., Greek], wide slops, gregs,' Cotgrave), and the word grin- galet, a merry grig, may be only another form of grigalet or gregalet, a diminutive of grec, i.e., a greek- ling, grcsculus, n being inserted as in the old French term for holy water, gringoriane, a corrupted form of gregoriane, c so termed,' says Cotgrave, ' because first invented by a Pope Gregory.' From the effeminacy and luxurious living into which the later Greeks degenerated after their conquest by the Romans, their name became a by- l ' The high-shoulder'd grig, Whose great heart is too big For his body this blue May morn.' Lord Lytton. So ' the grygynge of the daye ' is an Old English expression for the dawn, i.e. , the graying or gray of the morning. Frisian gr&vding, the twilight. Scot, gryking, greking, the peep of day. 166 MERRY AS A GRIG. word for bon-vivants, good fellows, or convivial companions ; just as the Teuton or German has supplied a sobriquet for a toper, It. tedesco, Neap. todisco, among the people of Southern Europe. ' The boonest companions for drinking are the Greeks and Germans; but the Greek is the merrier of the two, for he will $dng, and dance, and kiss his next companion ; but the other will drink as deep as he." Howell, Fam. Letters (1634), Bk. II. 54. 6 No people in the world,' it has been said, ' are so jovial and merry, so given to singing and dancing, as the Greeks/ 1 So Bishop Hall, in his 1 Triumphs of Koine,' having spoken of the wakes, May games, Christmas triumphs, and other con- vivial festivities kept up by those under the Roman dition, adds these words — ' In all which put together, you may well say no Greek can be merrier than they.' In Latin, grcecari, to play the Greek, meant to wanton, to eat, drink, and be merry. Shakspere says of Helen, i Then she's a merry Greek indeed ' (Troilus and Cressida, i. 2), and the phrase occurs repeatedly in other writers of the same period. Cotgrave defines averlan to be ( a good fellow, a mad companion, merry Greek, sound drunkard ; ' while Miege gives ' a merry grig, un plaisant com- pagnonf 2 and i They drank till they all were as 1 Patrick'Gordon, quoted in Brewer's ' Dictionary of Phrase and Fable,' s.v. Grig, where it is also stated that 'grig ' is a slang term for a class of vagabond dancers and tumblers. a Cited in Wright's ' Provincial Dictionary,' s.v. Grig. £tre gris. 16? merry as grigs ' occurs in ' Poor Robin's Almanac/ 1764. We can easily perceive that the latter phrase, both in sound and signification, arose out of, or was at least fused with, the older one 6 as merry as a Greek.' That the connection be- tween the two was remembered and recognised so late as 1820 is proved by the following quotation, which I take from Nares — ' A true Trojan and a mad merry grig, though no Greek'' Barn. Journ. vol. i. p. 54. The French have a phrase etre gris, to be drunk, which is of the same origin, if Genin be correct in his assertion that gris is an old French form of grcecus, 1 and that the verb se griser exactly repro- duces Horace's grcecari, meaning properly ' to be Greekish,' just as they say ivre, or boire, comme un Polonais, or as we might say, ' to be drunk as a Dutchman.' Synonymous with this, and likewise derived from the language of the learned, is the jocular expression II savait f Hebrew. This is a mere calembour on the resemblance between the two Latin words ebrius, drunken, and Ebrceus, Hebrew. ' II entend VHebrieu, he is drunk, or (as we say) learned : (from the Analogy of the Latine word Ebrius).'' — Cotgrave. In an old French song occur the words — 1 Recreations Philologiques, vol. i. p. 137. Gris, it seems, was also written griu, and thence came grive, the thrush, because it is wont se griser among the vines. Cf. ' saoul comme une grive,' and grivois, a term for a tipsy soldier. 168 BELLARMINE. 1 Je suis le docteur toujours Ivre, Notus inter Sorboxiicos ; Je n'ai jamais lu d'autre livre Qu'Epistolam ad Ebrios.' 1 Phrases like these evidently owe their origin to the scholastic slang of the university or monastic common-roorn,and to the same source may be attri- buted the facetious name that used formerly to be given to an earthen jug or tankard, a ' Bellarmine,' — the works of that great doctor being the handbook, or vade-mecum, into which the student should con- tinually be dipping, whose contents he should be constantly imbibing. Rabelais tells us that the monks had flagons actually made in the shapes of books; these they called their breviaries, and in these, we need not doubt, they were deeply versed. Many can remember a kind of jug that was for- merly in use constructed in the shape of a squat- ting or dwarf-like figure graced with a long beard — Toby Philpots, I think they were called — speci- mens of which may still be seen in out-of-the-way nooks and corners. The ancient ' Bellarmine/ we may suppose, resembled these bearded jugs, which the Scotch called ' greybeards. ' 2 'Ye may 1 Notes and Queries, 4th S. vol. ii. No. 28, p. 42 ; No. 29, p. 71. 2 Vide Halliwell, Popular Rhymes, p. 143 ; Chambers, Book of Days, i. 371. For some whimsical reason vessels of large capacity have received names from two kings of Israel, and are termed in some parts of England Jorams and Jeroboams. 169 keep [for the pilgrims] the grands of the last greybeard, says Peter Bridge- Ward to his wife in 6 The Monastery,' ch. ix. Similarly, in Icelandic skcgg-karl is a i bearded carl,' and skegg-brusi is an earthen jug, while brusi, an earthen jar, meant originally a bearded he-goat. But the merriness of the Greek was not his only proverbial characteristic. He was also regarded as a personification of artfulness and cunning, qualities faithfully delineated in the typical character of Virgil's Sinon ; and still, in modern times, he is said to be ' most of all remarkable for his shrewd- ness and sharpness in business. 1 In French il est Grec is, according to Cotgrave, another way of saying, i He is a most crafty or subtill Courtier. ' There are many other instances of this use of words by which the name of various nationalities are used as common nouns descriptive of persons of a certain disposition, or of certain occupations which were considered specially characteristic of those nationalities. For example, a Sybarite, or native of Sybaris, has become another name for an effeminate voluptuary. A Cyprian is a votary of Venus — Cyprus being one stronghold of her wor- ship — a woman of light character : and Corinthian is almost the same, a person in old time being 1 C. L. Brace, Races of the Old World, p. 272. 170 EPHESIAN, ETC. said to Corinthianise when he led a life of loose debauchery ; while Bougre, a Bulgarian, has fallen to a still more degraded meaning. A Gypsy, i.e., a Gyptian 1 or Egyptian, is now the vernacular name for the nomad Zingaro ; but Bohemian, the term once applied to the same race, now denotes a social nonconformist, one that claims the right to order his mode of living at his own pleasure, and refuses to submit to the trammels of an established code of etiquette; and a homeless wanderer of the city we call a street Arab. The word Ephesians, as used in' Shakspere, is a cant term for topers or boon companions, men that were certainly no devout worshippers of that chaste goddess whom their city delighted to honour. ' It is thine host, thine Ephesian, calls,' says the host to FalstafF (Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 5). Welcher, a swindler who absconds from the ring when he has lost his bet, seems to be an invidious allusion to the land of Taffies, who in nursery tradition have long lain under the im- putation of being thievish. Similarly, a Switzer was, till comparatively lately, a common name for any mercenary soldier (vide Pope, The Dunciad, Bk. II. 1. 358), while Srcisse in French is now only a house-porter or a beadle. Coolie, the Anglo-Indian name for a porter or water-carrier, * ' Like a Gipsen or a Juggeler.' Spenser, Mother Hubberds Tale. LOMBARD. 171 was originally one of the Koles or Kola, 1 a tribe of the Vindhya race of India employed in that capacity. Conversely, in Fiji all black men are called kuke, cooks, from the profession which they commonly follow on board ship. In Greek, Indos, an Indian, was given as an appellation to every elephant-driver, and Carian was synonymous in the same language with a mercenary, a venal slave. So Geta and Davus, the ordinary names for slaves in the Roman comedy, are said to have denoted respectively a Goth and a Dacian, and the word ' slave ' itself meant originally a member of the great Slavonic people, or race of Slaves, whose very name was significant of glory (slava). 2 A Lombard, owing to the financial skill and re- putation of that people, was once another term for a banker, and their name still clings to the great banking street in London which they once fre- quented, as well as to every lumber-room where a pawnbroker stores his pledges, in German called ein lombard. 1 By their Profession they [the Jews] are for the most part Brokers and Lombardeers? Howell, Fam. Letters (1633), Bk. I., vi. 14. Among the Romans, a person engaged in banking 1 C. L. Brace, Paces of the Old World, p. 103. 2 Pictet, Orig. Iudo-Europ., vol. ii. p. 204. 172 CANAANITE. was styled a Babylonian (' BabyloJ Terence, Adelphi, v. 7), just as among ourselves a Jew is another name for a money-lender or usurer, and as in the French argot, anglois is synonymous with creancier. In Cotgrave's time anglois was used for ' a creditor that pretends he hath much money owing, which is never like to be paid him.' The name of the Canaanite is repeatedly used for a trader in the Hebrew Scriptures, and it is this word which is translated l merchant ' in Job xli. 6; Prov. xxxi. 24; Hosea xii. 7; and ' trafficker ' in Isa. xxiii. 8. In the passage of Zechariah (xiv. 21), where he predicts that in the day of the Lord ' there shall be no more the Canaanite in the. house of the Lord,' this in the Targum of Jonathan is interpreted ' trader,' 1 the allusion apparently having reference to the sym- bolical action performed by the Saviour when He came to the Temple, and drove out the money- changers, and them that sold and bought therein (John ii. 15). It is noteworthy, indeed, that Canaanites were a party to the earliest transaction on record in the way of buying and selling, that, namely, which took place between Abraham and ' the people of the land, even the children of Heth,' about the purchase of the field of Machpelah 1 Farrar, Life of Christ, vol. i. p. 189. 173 (Gen. xxiii. 16). The commercial activity of this people was proverbial in antiquity, whether they were known as Canaanites or Phoenicians; and there is evidence that the latter name, Phoinix, had acquired in Greek the meaning of one who barters or exchanges, 6 giving with one hand and taking with the other.' 1 c Assassin/ as is well known, was originally the name given to a fana- tical sect of Ismaslians, a people of Persia, whose daggers were ever at the service of their leader, and who were so called probably from their intoxicating themselves with the drug hashish? Similarly, in Horace's time Chaldean was al- most another name for a magician, and the words Boeotian, Abderite, Goth, Yandal, are synonymous with stupidity and barbarism. 1 Kenrick, Phoenicia, p. 191. 2 See Spelman, Glossary, s.v.; Walker's Selections from the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. ii. p. 145. (174) CHAPTER VII. WORDS FOR THE ' PUPIL* OF THE EYE, — THE HUMAN TREE, — THE WORDS ' TOE,' — l DOTE,' ETC, Any one who bestows a thought at all on the value and meaning of the words he uses must some time or other, I should think, have paused to wonder how it comes to pass that one and the same word, ' pupil/ is applied indifferently to objects so unlike as the aperture of the eye * and a person under instruction ; for saving that analogy ingeniously suggested by some humorist, that they are both perpetually under the lash, there seems little in common between them. The point of connection certainly is curious, and not immediately obvious. < Pupil ' (one under tutors or guardians, a ward) is the Latin pupillus, pupulus (a little hoy),pupilla, papula (a little girl), diminutives of pupus 2 (boy), pupa (girl). These words were also commonly 1 Cf. Heb. ' gate of the eye ' = pupil, Zech. ii. 8 (Gesenius). 2 Pupus connected with puer, pusus, pullus, ttujXos, (Goth.) fula(n), 'foal,' (Pers.) ptisr (boy), (Sans.) putra (a child). — Monier Williams, Sanskrit Diet. s.v. pupil. 175 used for any small figure, such as a 6 puppet,' doll, or baby — * doll ' itself, it may be remarked in passing, being only a modern substitute for < baby,' which had once the same meaning. Shakspere tells us that * The beauty that is borne here in the face The bearer knows not, but commends itself To others' eyes ; nor doth the eye itself, That most pure spirit of sense, behold itself, Not going from itself ; but eye to eye opposed Salutes each other with each other's form/ l Now, when two parties are thus tete-a-tete — or, as the Italians express it, more appropriately for our purpose, c at four eyes ' together, a quattro occhi — the diminutive reflection which each observer beholds in the convex mirror of the other's eye as he gazes into it was called pupilla or papula (a little puppet), and eventually the dark centre of the iris which forms that miniature image was designated the 'pupil.' The Persian dubu, the pupil of the eye, may perbaps be compared. The common meaning, therefore, to which both uses of the word converge is that of a person of dimi- nutive size — in the one case, a person young and immature, and so requiring instruction and guar- dianship — in the other, a person dwarfed in appear- ance by the medium through which he is viewed. We would scarcely have expected beforehand 1 Troilus and Cressida, iii. 3. 176 pupil. that this characteristic of the eye being a little natural mirror would have so powerfully arrested the attention of mankind as to give a name to the organ, or a part of it, amongst races and peoples the most different. And yet so it undoubtedly did. For instance, in Hebrew the words which we translate ' the apple of the eye ' 1 (Deut. xxxii. 10 ; Prov. vii. 2) in the original are ishon ayin, 6 the little man of the eye,' i.e. pupil (diminutive of ish, a man). 2 In the ancient Egyptian iri denotes a child as well as the pupil of the eye. Compare ' iris ' (Greek Ipt?). 3 The Coptic lilou, a child, and allou, pupil of the eye, are akin to each other and to the Egyptian rr, a child. 4 The Arabic kak is a man or boy, also the pupil of the eye. So in Greek, kore (fcopr)) — (1) a girl, (2) a 1 What we call the ' apple ' the French call the ' plum ' of the eye {prunclle). 2 Gesenius tells us that a similar expression is found in the Arabic, Persian, Syriac, Coptic, and Ethiopic. He also gives as an alternative explanation of bdbliah (pupil), Zech. ii. 8, ' little boy ' of the eye. I have an impression on my mind that the A. -Sax. man- lica (man's image) is applied to the pupil, but I cannot find that signification in Bosworth. The Macusi Indians of Guiana have a strange idea that although the body will decay, ' the man in our eyes ' will not die, but wander about. The disappearance of this image from the dim eyeballs 'f a sick man was considered a sign of approaching death, Grimm observes, even in European folk-lore (Tylor, Prim. Culture, vol. i. p. 389). 3 Vide Bunsen, Egypt's Place in History, vol. i. p. 561. Alu is a boy, allu the eye (Ibid., vol. v. p. 748). 4 Ibid., vol. i. p. 475. pupil. 177 doll, (3) the pupil of the eye. Glene (yXrjvrj) , l (1) a little girl, (2) the pupil of the eye. In Spanish, nina, (1) a child or infant, (2) the pupil, ' the sight of the eye, so called because it represents the person looking on it in so little a figure' (Stevens, Diet., 1706). I believe that the Portuguese mejtina, 1 Venetian putina, Bomagnol bamben, Sicilian vavareda, Picar- dian papare, all mean, (1) a baby, (2) the pupil or apple of the eye (Diez). Compare Prov. anha, (1) a little lamb, (2) the pupil. Our word i baby ' was formerly applied in a similar manner to the image in the eye, as will appear from the annexed passages — ' But wee cannot so passe the centre of the Eye, which wee call Pupilla, quasi Puppa, the babie in the eye, the Sight.'' Purchas, Microcosmus, p. 90 (1619). ' She clung about his neck, gave him ten kisses, Toy'd with his locks, look'd babies in his eyes.' Heywood, Love's Mistress, p. 8 (1636). ' Can ye look babies, sister, In the young gallant's eyes ? ' Beaumont and Fletcher, Loyal Subject, ui. 2. ' When I look babies in thine eyes, Here Venus, there Adonis lies.' Cleveland, On, a Hermaphrodite, p. 19. 1 Liddell and Scott (Lexicon) are certainly wrong in giving a re- versed order of meaning. Pictet suggests a connection between yXrjvri and 7aXcbs, glos, &c. (Orig. Indo-Europ., vol. ii. p. 375). 2 A little girl, also the sight of the eye (Vieyra, s.v.) M 1 78 pupil. As might be expected, the expression occurs fre- quently in Herrick's Anacreontic lyrics, e.g. — ' You blame me too, because I cann't devise Some sport, to please those babies in your eyes.' Hesperides (ed. Hazlitt), vol. i. p. 12. 1 It is an active flame, that flies First to the babies of the eyes.' Ibid.,]). 138. v . ' Cleere are her eyes, Like purest skies. Discovering from thence A babie there That turns each sphere Like an intelligence.' Ibid., p. 207. Pope has it also in his imitation of Cowley — 1 The Baby in that sunny Sphere So like a Phaethon appears, That Heav'n, the threaten'd World to spare, Thought fit to drown him in her tears,' — the sphere, it must be understood, being Celia's eye. In order to ' see babies ' thus in each other's eyes, the two faces must be in such close proximity that the phrase virtually came to mean kissing and embracing. ' No more fool, To look gay babies in your eyes, young Koland, And hang about your pretty neck.' Beaumont and Fletcher, The Woman's Prize, v. 1. 'They may then kiss and coll, lye and look babies in one another's eys.' Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part III., sec. 2, mem. 6, subs. v. pupil. 179 1 We will ga to the Dawnes and slubber up a sillibub, and I will looke babies in your eyes.' 1 Braithwaite, Two Lancashire Lovers (1640), p. 19. ' He that daily spies Twin babies in his Mistress' Gemini's.' Quarles, Emblems, Bk. II. 4. Drayton further improves the idea and makes the ' babies ' Cupids — 1 While in their chrystal eyes he doth for Cupids look.' Polyolbion, song xi. In an ancient Irish Glossary edited by Whitley Stokes for the Irish Archaeological Society (p. 45), we meet the curious term, mac imresan (apparently 6 son of exceeding brightness,' ' son of the eye ' ?) to denote the ' pupil.' A form of expression strikingly similar occurs in the Hebrew of Psalm xvii. 8, where the t apple of the eye ' is styled in the original < the pupil, daughter of the eye ' {Bath ay in)? A very bold figure of speech, though it does not appear in our 1 Quoted in Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. iii. p. 47. 2 Generally, in the languages of the East, as is well known, what- ever springs from, or is intimately connected with, anything else is called its son or daughter, e.g., ' the daughters of a tree ' (Gen. xlix. 22) are its branches; ' sons of the quiver' (Lam. iii. 13), i.e., arrows, cf. ' sons of the bow ' (Job xli. 28) ; ' sons of lightning ' (Job v. 7), sparks, or more probably ' swift birds ; ' ' the firstborn of death ' (Job xviii. 13), i.e., a most deadly malady ; (Arab.) 'daughter of death,' i.e., a fatal fever; (Arab.) 'daughters of howling,' i.e., jackals; so 'Boanerges,'' 'sons of thunder,' i.e., men of fiery zeal; 'sons of Belial' or 'of worthlessness ' (1 Sam. ii. 12), i.e., worthless fellows; 'son of perdition' (John xvii. 12), i.e., one utterly lost ; cf. ' mother of the way ' (Ezek. xxi. 21), i.e., a road whence others spring, the parting of the . way ; niatres lectionis (mothers of the ISO PUPIL. English version, results from trie use of this Hebrew term for pupil (iskon) in Proverbs vii. 9, where a young man is represented as passing through the street ' in the pupil of the night,' i.e., in the central darkness of it, in the midnight hour, when the gloom is deepest — ' the dead waste and middle of the night.' In like manner we speak of the ' eye of the wind,' the 6 eye of the furnace,' meaning the most central and intensest part of it. This expression in Proverbs may remind us of the very poetical phrase for daybreak employed by Job (iii. 9, and xli. 18), 6 the eyelids of the morning, 1 the Dawn being conceived to raise her eyelids after reading), i.e., the vowel letters, which serve as guides in reading. Exactly similar is the Irish idiom, e.g., mac alia (the son of the rock), is the highly poetical term for an echo, as it were the sound springing from the rock ; cf. the Jewish Bath-kol, 'daughter of a voice,' i.e., an echo, ' the original sound being viewed as the mother, and the reverberation, or secondary sound, as the daughter ' (De Quincey). So Milton calls Echo the 'daughter of the sphere' (Comus, 241). 'Born of a great cry' (Tennyson, Holy Grail, p. 157, ed. 1870). Mac-leabhair, 'son of a book,' i.e., a copy of it; macratha, 'son of prosperity,' i.e., a prosperous man; macstroigh, 'son of prodigality,' i.e., a spendthrift. Hence it would appear that the slang phrases ' the father of a beating,' ' the mother of a shower,' ' son of a gun,' in form at least, are Hebraisms. Vide Harmer, Observations, iv. 207. 1 This figure was adopted by the old dramatist Middleton in his * Game of Chess,' and by Milton iu his ' Lycidas ' — ' Together both, ere the high lawns appear'd Under the opening eyelids of the morn, We drove afield.' 25-27. With c pupil of the night ' we may compare the similar Shaks- perian phrases ' dark-eyed night ' (Lear, ii. 1), ' black-browed night ' (Midsummer-Night's Dream, iii. 2). ' Why here walk I in the Hack brow of night To find you out.' King John, v. 6. TOE. 181 the slumber of the night, and to dart forth her beaming glances in the first rays of the rising sun. * Pupil ' was still imperfectly naturalised in 1658, when Sir Thomas Browne writes the word ' pu- pilla ' (Garden of Cyrus). The older words were ' eye-ring ' (A.-Sax. edg-ring), and ' eye-apple ' (A.-Sax. edg-aeppel) ; ' pupilla, happulle ' (Gloss. 14th cent.) 6 Toe.' — If we set down side by side the words for c toe ' and for ' twig ' respectively in the Teu- tonic languages, we are at once struck by the family likeness they bear to each other — Toe. Twig or Branch. A.-Sax. ta (pi. tan). tdn. Dut. teen. teen. L. Dut. taan (Goth.) tains, (0. Eng.) tein. 0. Norse ta. teinn. Now there is no doubt whatever that the -toe in mistle-toe means twig, (A.-Sax.) mistel-tan, (0. Norse) mistil-teinn {i.e., mistle-twig) ; and it would appear that our Teutonic ancestors, being endowed with a lively imagination, saw some re- semblance to twigs or offshoots in the branching termination of the hand and foot, and called both by the same name, tan or toes. In Icelandic, il is the sole of the foot, and il-kvister, c sole-twigs/ il- thorn, l sole-thorns,' are poetical terms for the toes. We may compare the Sanskrit word pani-pallava, < a finger,' literally < a hand-twig.' Similarly, the 182 TOE. Greek poet Hesiod calls the hand c a five-brancher,' or ' five-twigged ' (7reWo£b9), and so our own Shakspere, reversing the figure, speaks of ' the Larky fingers of the elm ' ( Midsummer-Night's Dream, iv. I). 1 The Romans had the one word, planta, for a shoot or twig and the foot, in later times especially the sole of it. Palets, the word for finger in Russian, has been regarded, and no doubt correctly, as another form of palka, a stick, palitsa, a club, and so descrip- tive of a finger or toe, ' as one of the twigs into which the hand or foot branches.' 2 We may per- haps compare the Latin palus, a stake or pale, and pollex, the thumb, toe, or finger, a word which was also used for a twig. Malchik-s-palchik, l the finger-long mannikin,' or Tom Thumb of Slavonic folk-lore, received his name from having sprung from his mother's little finger (palckik, a diminu- tive of palets), which she chopped off in slicing cabbages. When Herrick sustained the loss of a finger, he moralised over his misfortune in language as 1 Sans, -pancha^dhha, * the five-branched,' is a name for the hand. So the Persian penjth (the hand), connected with the Sans, pancha (five), is equivalent to the slang English expression, a man's ' fives,' or ' bunch of fives.' The game of ' fives ' is so called because the ball is struck with the open hand (Tylor, Prim. Culture, vol. i. p. 235). 2 Saturday Review, vol. xxxix. p. 632. Pictet observes that palka, palitsa, Welsh palis, Lat. palus, all had the primitive meaning of ' branch.' He suggests a Sanskrit form pallaTca, synonymous with paliava, a branch (Orig. Indo-Europ., vol. i. p. li>9). THE HUMAN TREE. 183 quaintly characteristic as usual, adopting the same mode of expression — 1 One of the five straight branches of my hand Is lopt already ; and the rest but stand Expecting when to fall : which soon will be ; First dyes the leafe, the bough next, next the tree.' Hesperides (ed. Hazlitt), vol. i. p. 218. To us unimaginative moderns, the comparison of the body with its members to a tree and its branches may seem a fanciful and farfetched conceit. 1 We may feel inclined to smile with won- der at the ocular hallucination of those word- makers who, like the newly-healed of Bethsaida, could see 6 men as trees, walking ; ' or at most, it is only in ( the idle moods ' of conscious poetry that 1 We seem to see A human touch about a tree, 7 yet it is certain that bygone generations were strongly impressed by that resemblance. f In the construction of each/ says Jones of Nayland, ' there are some general principles which very obviously connect them. It is literally, as well as metaphorically, true that trees have limbs, and an animal body branches. A vascular system is also common to both, in the channels of which life is maintained and circulated. When the trachea, with its branches in the lungs, or the veins and arteries, or the nerves, are separately represented, we have the figure of a tree. The leaves of trees have a fibrous and fleshy part ; their bark is a covering which answers to the skin in animals.' 2 1 ' For who ever saw A man of leaves, a reasonable tree ?' Giles Fletcher. 2 Quoted in Southey's 'Doctor,' p. 581. Cf. Milton's 'corporal rind' (= skin). Comus. 184 THE HUMAN TREE. And so says that quaint divine who has been styled the Shakspere of the Puritans, in his ser- mon entitled ' Mystical Bedlam ' — * The heart in man is like the root in a tree ; the organ or lung-pipe that comes of the left cell of the heart is like the stock of the tree, which divides itself into two parts, and thence spreads abroad as it were sprays and boughs into all the body, even to the arteries of the head.' Thos. Adams, Works, vol. i. p. 258. If all that the old traveller Evlia asserts be true, it is nothing surprising that the arboreal frame should, in certain respects, resemble ours, inasmuch as we spring from a common origin, and must own their kinship. The palm-tree, it appears, was created from the remainder of the clay out of which Adam was made. { This is said to be the cause why the palm-trees are straight and upright like the stature of man. If you cut its branches, it not only does no harm to it, but grows even more, like the hair and beard of men : but if you cut off the head of the palm-tree, it gives a red- dish juice like blood, and the tree perishes like a man whose head is cut off. The palm-trees are also male and female,' and have certain peculiarities of constitution, which he mentions, quite human in their character — * From the same clay God created also the tree Wakwak, found in India, the fruit of which resembles the head of man, which, shaken by the wind, admits the sound of Wak- wak' (vol. iv.) Quoted in Southey, G.-P. Book, vol. ii.p. 434. THE HUMAN TREE. 185 Accordingly, Alfieri styles man c lapianta umana.' There is a very curious and interesting passage in the religious poem called ' The Pricke of Con- science/ written by Eichard Kolle, a monk of Hampole, near Doncaster, about 1340, in which he works out in detail the various points of likeness between man and a tree. Quoting from 'the grete clerk Innocent,' he says — 1 What es man in shap bot a tre Turned up that es doun, als men may se, Of whilk (which) the rotes (roots) that of it springes, Er (are) the hares (hairs) that on the heved (head) hynges (hangs) ; The stok nest (next) the rot (root) growand (growing) Es (is) the heved (head) with neck followand (following) ; The body of that tre thar-by Es the brest with the bely ; The bughes (boughs) er the armes with the handes And the legges with the fete (feet) that standes : The braunches men may by skille call The tas (toes) and the fyngers alle.' LI. 672-683. with a good deal more to the same purpose. In the last lines, it will be observed, we have ex- actly what we want — the toes identified with the branches. Andrew Marvell must have had the same idea in his mind when he wrote, in his poem ' On Appleton House ' — 1 Turn me but, and yon shall see I was but an inverted tree! x 1 Compare chesne fourchu (Rabelais), the attitude of standing on the head, and Varbre fourchu, infra, p. 189. The Persian punishment of burying criminals alive up to the 186 THE HUMAN TREE. But indeed this grotesque notion of man being only a tree turned upside down, with the fibres of the roots on his head for hair, his body being the trunk, his arms and legs the branches, and his fingers and toes the twigs, is one of the highest antiquity. It appears first in the Vedas, which date back at least 1000 years B.C. ' Man is indeed like a lofty tree : his hairs are the leaves, and his skin the cuticle. From his skin flows blood, like juice from bark ; it issues from his wounded person, as juice from a stricken tree. His flesh is the inner bark ; and the membrane near the bones is the white substance of the wood. 1 The bones within are the wood itself, and marrow and pith are alike. If, then, a felled tree spring anew from the root, from what root does mortal man grow again when hewn down by death ? Do not say from prolific seed ; for that is produced from the living person. Thus a tree, indeed, also springs from seed ; and likewise sprouts afresh [from the root] after [seemingly] dying ; but if the tree be torn up by the root, it does not grow again. From what root then does mortal man rise afresh when hewn down by death?' 2 The Vedas, or the Sacred Writing of the Hindus. Colebrooke, Essays, vol. i. p. 63. The comparison is to be found also in Plato, in Eabelais, in Novalis, Antonio Perez, Letrado neck goes by the name of 'tree-planting.' Herodotus mentions that Cambyses inflicted it upon twelve of the noblest Persians (Bk. III. ch. xxxv.) ' I must decidedly plant a tree in my garden,' was the significant hint given by another monarch to a courtier who had offended him (Rawlinson, in loc.) 1 Snava and hindta, answering to the 'periosteum and alburnum. 2 Cf. Jobxiv. 7-i0. THE HUMAN TREE. 187 del Cielo, and Olivia Sabuco (vide Southey's < Doctor,' pp. 581-583). ' L'homme est un arbre renverse'/ says an old French adage, quoted by Genin (Recreations Philologiques, vol. ii. p. 243). And so Taylor, the Water Poet — ' I a wise man's sayings must approve Man is a tree, whose root doth grow above.' The last quotation I will make is this from Pur- chas's ' Microcosmus, or 'Historie of Man' (1619) — 'Thus wee are Trees (not onelyin that naturall unlike like- nesse, whereby Man is said to be Arbor inversa, a Tree with Root upwards, because Sense and Motion are from the head), nor Trees good for meat, but Trees which bring not forth good fruit, like the fruitlesse accursed Figge-tree ; yea, evill Trees, which bring forth evill Fruit ' (p. 340). Other instances of the body and its members being called by names derived from the corres- ponding parts of a plant or tree are the following : — ' Corpse,' formerly used of a living body quite as much as of a dead, Lat. corpus, is ultimately traceable to korpos, the iEolic form of kormos, the Greek word for the trunk of a tree. The Coptic kaf, 6 body ' (Egyptian hieroglyphics kef), likewise denotes the ' trunk of a tree.' 1 6 Belly ' is the Welsh bol, holy, Icel. bolr, ori- ginally the bole or round part of a tree. 6 Buck,' a provincial English word for the breast 1 Osburn, Monumental History of Egypt, vol. i. p. 288. 188 THE HUMAN TREE. or belly, 0. Eng. bouhe, Ger. bauch, is the A.-Sax. buce, Icel. biikr, the trunk or body of an animal, said to be another form of butr, a log or trunk of a tree. ' Bulk,' which seems formerly to have denoted the chest, may be the same word. Florio, in his 'New World of Words' (1611), defines Epigastric* to be i all the outward part of the belly from the bulke ' downwards. ' Leg ' is the Old Norse leggr, a stalk or stem. So in Irish lorga denotes the stalk of a plant as well as the leg ; in Manx lurgey is the shin or shank, and lorg a stick or staff. Ger. bein, Dut. been j Icel. bein, the leg, our ' bone,' A.-Sax. ban, is connected with the Welsh bon, a stem, stock, or trunk, A.-Sax. bune, a reed or pipe. Similarly, the Sanskrit nala is a reed, nalaka a bone ; Hebrew kane/i, a reed or stalk, also the arm-bone. The Italian cannella has an exactly similar bifurcation of meaning. Compare the German roJirbein, The Arabic sdk signifies the leg as well as the stem, stalk, or stock of a tree. The Persian term is shack, a branch, Sanskrit cdkhd, a branch, an arm. The Polish reka, the hand, Slav, rdka, Lith. ranka, the arm and hand, is connected by Pictet with the German ranke, a twig or vine-branch, Sans, lanka, a branch, and more remotely with the Latin lancea, Irish lang} 1 Orig. Indo-Europ., vol. i. p. 198. THE HUMAN TREE. 189 The ' groin/ or, as it was sometimes spelt for- merly, the \ grine,' denotes that part of the body where it bifurcates or branches off into the legs, Fr. fourchure, and is identical with the north- country word grain, the branch of a tree, 0. Norse grein, Swed. gren, Dan. green, a bough, literally ' that which separates from the tree ' (0. Norse greina, to separate). In the Cleveland dialect, graining is the fork or division of a tree into branches ; in the Swedish dialects, gren, grajn, is the fork made by two shoots of a tree, or by the thighs, greinar, the two thighs with the angle between them (Atkinson). What ' a poor, bare, forked animal,' exclaimed Lear, is < unaccommo- dated man,' i.e., man without his clothes (act iii. sc. 4). Compare ' Varbre fourchu, a standing on the hands with out-stretcht legs ' (Cotgrave), and chesne fourchu in Kabelais, the attitude of stand- ing on the head. M. Michel informs us that it was once customary in the slang phraseology of the Continent to call a man's body a tree — 6 Dans l'ancienne Germania arbol, qui signifie arbre en castillan, avait le sens de cuerpo (corps).' — i£tude sur 1' Argot, s.v. Chene. Synonymous with < groin ' is the old term ' twist,' and this also denoted a bough, originally the fork in a branch. Cf — 1 He slepit as foul on twist.' Barbour's Bruce, Bk. VII. 1. 188. 190 THE HUMAN TREE. By the converse process the different parts of a tree were often compared to human limbs. We have seen already how Shakspere calls the twigs of the elm its * barky fingers.' 1 * Branch,' origin- ally ' an arm,' is connected with ' brace,'' Lat. brachium, an arm (Wedgwood). Thus the French name Male-branche is explained to be of like signi- fication with Malemeyn, ' Badhand ' or ■ Mainied- hand.' 2 Cf. ' limb,' A.-S. lim, 0. N. Urn, a branch. < Bough/ (A.-Sax.) bog, boh, meant originally 1 an arm ;' cf. elbow, (A.-Sax.) elboga. In Sanskrit tola not only denotes the palm- tree, but the open hand with fingers extended, the palm, while talangule is the toe. (Heb.) kapk, a palm-branch, was originally the palm or hollow of the hand. Similarly, the ' Palm'- (tree) was so called * because the leaves are like a hand opened wide,' (Lat). jpalma, (Gk.) TraXdjirj, and its fruit in like manner was called < Date/ (Fr.) clatte, (0. Fr.) dacte, (Sp.) datil, from its resemblance to a finger, (Lat.) dactylus, 3 (Gk.) SdfcrvXos. Cotgrave gives also ' Bactyle, the 1 Sir John Sinclair mentions a disease that carrots are subject to, called ' Fingers and Toes.' I do not know the nature of it, but suppose it is a tendency to degenerate into dactyloid excrescences (Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 301 j. ' Deadman's fingers ' is the popular name of the orchis mascula, from the handlike shape of its pale- coloured tubers. s Bardsley, English Surnames, p. 386. 3 The Dutch tak, a twig, perhaps represents the dak of the Greek ddk-tulos, (Lat.) dig-itus, a finger or toe. THE HUMAN TREE.. 191 Date-grape or Finger- grape.'' And to conclude with an instance from the Latin, coma (the hair) is often used poetically for the leaves or foliage of trees. So Spenser, in the i Shepheards Calender ' (Februarie), speaks of a goodly oak * With amies full strong and largely display d,' ' The bodie bigge, and mightely pight ; ' and describes it in its age as one that ' Oft his hoarie lochs down doth cast.' I may remark that in the ancient proverbial saying which I have given above, ' L'homme est un arbre renverse,' the meaning seems to have been c the mouth, which in man is in the head, in the tree is in the foot,' i.e., its roots (' Porque las raices en el arbol son la boca en el hombre,' Hernan Nunez, 1555, from whom Genin quotes it). Aristotle has the same idea (al Se pit,ai t&> (tto/jlcltl avaXoyov k. t. X.) And in Sanskrit we meet the word anghri-pa for a tree, literally l drink- ing with the foot.' The poet Carew, on the other hand, speaking metaphorically of his mistress, calls her foot 1 The precious root On which the goodly cedar grows.' I might add that in Isaiah lxvi. 14, 6 Your bones shall nourish (sprout, or branch forth) like an herb,' if we accept Hitzig's interpretation of 192 THE HUMAN TREE. the passage, the human frame is likened to a tree, of which the bones are the branches, and the muscles, flesh, and skin, the leaves. 1 The above use of words whereby the frame of man is structurally assimilated to that of a tree must not be confounded with another use, which i3 equally common, whereby he is merely figuratively compared in respect of his growth and natural descent to a shoot or branch springing from the main trunk. In the Scriptures offspring is frequently styled a rod, a stem, a branch ; and we still use such phrases as a ' sprig of fashion,' * the scion of a noble house.' 1 Thy father, had he lived this day, To see the brauncke of his bodie displaie, How would he have joyed at this sweete sight ! " — says the Goat to her Son in the ' Shepheards Calen- der ' (Maye). 1 From the resemblance of the double root of the mandrake, or mandragora, to the shape of the ' poor, bare, forked animal ' man, it was called anthropomorphon by Pythagoras, and semikomo by Columella. The Chinese name for it is jin-seng, * resemblance of man,' and the Iroquois dbesoutchenza, 'a child.' Hence, according to the doctrine of signatures, arose the widely-spread superstitious notion that the mandrake was efficacious in promoting the procrea- tion of children, which prevails among the Oriental nations, the Chinese, and the North American Indians, and led Rachel of old to long for this plant when as yet she had no child (Gen. xxx. 14). So striking is the form, that ' fraudulent dealers usually replaced its roots with those of the white bryony cut to the shape of men and women, and dried in a hot sand-bath ' (Prior, Popular Names of Plants, p. 143). Vide also Browne's ■ Popular Errors, 'Bk. II. ch. 6; Smith, B. Diet. s.v. ; Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 123 ; Gerard's Herbal, p. 281 (1597). 193 Other instances of this use of words are the following : — 6 Imp,' formerly applied to a child or offspring generally, is the Welsh imp, impyn, a scion, shoot, Ger. impfen, A. -Sax. impan, to graft. Com- pare Fr. c peton, the slender stalk of a leaf or fruit ; mon peton, my pretty springall, my gentle imp ' (Cotgrave). ' An angel's trumpe from heauen proclaimed his name Iesus, who came lost Adam's impes to saue.' England's Welcome to James (1603). Spanish chaborra, a young maiden, chahasca, a twig or rod, both from Lat. clava, a graft (Diez). A ' gallant/ Scot, callan, callant, a youth, Irish gallan, a youth, meant originally a branch, Port. galho, a shoot or sprig. Irish ogdn, a branch or twig, is also a young man. Pictet identifies this word with the Sanskrit uhani, a broom. 1 Irish geug, a branch, also a girl. Irish gas, gasan, a stalk or bough, is commonly used for a boy, the Anglo-Irish c gossoon.' In Welsh grcas, gwassan is a youth, a servant, and thence comes the Middle Lat. vassus, a retainer, our ' vassal,' 0. Fr. vaslet and varlet, a boy, our ; varlet ' and ' valet.' Fr. gargon, 0. Fr. gars, a boy, garce, a girl, Sp. garzon, It. garzone, Diez has shown to be from 1 Langues Celtiques, p. 66. N 194 CHIT, LACKEY, LAD. the Lat. cardials (a thistle), used in the general sense of a bud or stalk. Compare the Milanese garzon, a thistle, also a boy, garzoeu, the bud of a vine [It. garzatore = cardatore, a wool-carder]. The Greek moschos and koros denote both a branch and a boy, and the Italian toso, a boy, 0. Fr. tosel, is a corrupted form of torso, a bud or stem. Compare Fr. petit trognon, a term of en- dearment for a child. ' Chit,' a contemptuous term for the same, originally signified a shoot or sprig. Compare chit, a provincial term for a sprout, chat} a twig, A. -Sax. ci%, a shoot or sprig. It. cita is a girl, cito a little boy. These words may perhaps be connected with It. cica, Sp. chico, anything small, Fr. ckicot, a sprig or stump. 6 Lackey/ Fr. laqicais, Sp. and Port, lacayo, Prov. laccai, which also means a branch (Diez). Gaelic clann, children, our 'clan,' corresponds to the Welsh plant, offspring, children. Compare planu, to shoot, to plant, Lat. planta, a plant. 6 Lad,' Welsh llarcd, what shoots out, a lad, Goth. -lauths is from liudan, to grow (deduced by Benfey from the Sanskrit ruh, to grow), and so probably is akin to Ger. lode, a sprig or shoot, lath, a rod or young tree, Welsh Hath, a rod or yard, our i lath,' Sans, lata, a branch. Compare the Old English 1 Cumberland chats, small branches, metaphorically applied to Btripling youtbs (Ferguson). 195 word springald for a youth, the original meaning of which was probably a shoot or branch (Wedgwood). The Latin pellex, Gk. pdllax, a youth, pallake, a girl, according to Pictet, meant originally a branch or shoot, from a Sanskrit form, pallaka, the same as pallava, a branch. 1 The Welsh llanc, a youth, llances, a girl, are akin to the Sanskrit lanka, a branch, Lat. lancea. The Icelandic grdr, a poetical word for a man, seems to have signified primarily a twig, from groa, to grow (Cleasby, Icelandic Dictionary, s.v.) Yet one other point remains to be noticed in which man has sometimes been regarded as the fantastic counterpart of a tree. When he is dry and shrivelled with age, and stiffened in his joints, he becomes suggestive of the gnarled and sapless trunk of i the gouty oak,' ' with scir- rhous root and tendons.' And so a person well stricken in years is called by Greek and Roman authors ' an oak' (' drusj i arida quercus'), 'an aged oak ' (gerdndryori) ; by the French, tayon, which denotes, as Cotgrave informs us, ' a grand- father, also an oak of 60 years' growth.' A female of advanced age is disrespectfully styled by the Scotch ' an auld runt,' this being also the term for the trunk of a tree, or any hardened stalk or stem. 2 In vulgar parlance, 6 an old rampike ' is 1 Orig. Indo-Europ., vol. i. p. 199. 2 ' Hunt,' being also applied to an old cow (cf. Ger. rinde), it must be admitted that the above identification is open to some doubt. 190 DOTARD. an expression that may frequently be heard with a similarly opprobrious significance. It seems to have been originally and properly applied to a tree which has begun to decay at the top from age, being so used frequently by Drayton in the form 6 ranpike ' and ' ranpick tree/ and then in a secondary sense to a crazy hag. Similarly, c dotard,' which in standard Eng- lish means only a stupid or imbecile old man, in provincial English is used of an aged tree that has begun to show symptoms of decadence, and a tree of this sort is said to be ' doatecV This word is either from the Scotch dottar, to become stupid, doited, stupid, dutt, to doze, be sleepy (just as I have heard the word ' sleepy ' itself applied to an over-ripe pear verging towards decay), and so a doddered oak is a lifeless oak, while doddi- poll is a blockhead, and the Frisian dodd is a simpleton; or else, as Mr Wedgwood is inclined to think, it is akin to the Icelandic daud/ir, Dan. dod } dead, dull, Goth, daut/is, ' dead.' i In vain doth any man in forrests poak, that takes a dotard for a timber oake,' says Cotgrave under the word marrein. The following quota- tions are from that excellent old divine Thomas Adams — ' Oaks and cedars are good for building, poplars for pales, very bushes for hedging, doted wood for firing ; but the fruit- less vine is good for nothing.' Vol. ii. p. 184 (NiclioPs ed.) DOTARD. 197 1 Go into your grounds in the dead of winter, and of two naked and destitute trees you know not which is the sound, which the doted.' Ibid., p. 239. And this from Howell — 'With the Bark they make Tents, and the dotard Trees serve for firing.' Fam. Letters, Bk. II. p. 54 (1634). When a man or a tree begins to dote, in both alike the first symptoms of failing of the vital powers will frequently be observed to manifest themselves in the head. Everybody will remember, as an interesting parallel, the pathetic observation of Dean Swift, when under a presentiment of his own melancholy fate he pointed out a blasted elm to a friend — c I shall be like that tree, and die first at the top.' The tree was a c dotard,' and the great wit's foreboding fears were but too truly fulfilled ; he was such himself before he died. A similar comparison is suggested in the second eclogue of the ' Shepheards Calender,' already re- ferred to. Cuddie, the herdsman's boy, pours contempt on the aged Shepherd Thenot for his feebleness and unlustiness — ' I deeme thy braine emperished bee Through rusty elde, that hath rotted thee.' Thereupon the wise old shepherd reproves the forward youngster by the apologue of the Oak and the Briar, in the course of which, however, he tacitly admits that the proper resemblance to him- self is to be found in the aged tree, whose ' Toppe was bald, and wasted with wormes, His honor decayed, his braunches sere.' ( 198 ) CHAPTER VIII. THE WORDS ' CHIGNON ' — ' NODDLE ' — 'PATE' — 1 SKULL ' — ' COCO-NUT ' — ' FOOL ' — ' BOAST ' — 1 BUFFOON ' — ' FA TUOUS,' ETC, 6 Chignon.' — This, like most other of our c out- landish' fashions (I use the term in its good old English sense of foreign, without, at the same time, discarding its modern innuendo), came to us from the land of milliners, and brought its native name along with it. Everybody knows what a chignon is, at least outwardly, an abnormal pro- tuberance, sometimes of monstrous proportions, composed of hair and other materials unknown, and erected by ladies for the adornment of their polls, — but everybody perhaps does not know why it is called so. Chignon in French is defined to be c les cheveux que les femmes frisent sur la derriere de la tete,' but originally it was ' la derriere de la tete ' itself. Just as the word ' head/ in the Georgian era, meant the elaborate and cumbrous structure of the coiffeur? which was, in his estimation, the head 1 Some idea of the heavy burdens which the tyranny of the hair- CHIGNON. 199 par excellence^ the raison d'etre, and final cause that skulls were made at all; so the French chignon, the poll, came to mean the hair that grew thereon, especially when dressed d la mode. Now chignon, in Old French ckaignon, chaignon, means the nape of the neck, but it also meant the link or ring of a chain, and comes from chaine, which again comes from the Latin catena, a chain. So chainon du col, (Languedoc) cadena daou col, is the vertebra, or, to use a pure English word, the 6 whirl-bone ' 2 of the neck, the pivot on which the head turns, being the last link, as it were, of the knotted chain of bones which forms the spine. We find in Cotgrave (1660), ' Chainon, a linke of a chaine ; chainon du col, the naupe, or (more properly) the chine bone, of the neck ; chignon, the chine, or chinepiece of the neck.' Curiously similar is the derivation of the word ' noddle,' Old English < nodyle.' It is now used ludicrously for the entire head, but pro- perly and originally it meant the projecting part at the back of the head (occiput), the nape of the neck, and corresponds to the Italian nodello, dresser imposed on our great grandmothers may be obtained from the illustrations in Wright's Caricature History of the Georges, p. 255 seq. 1 Similarly, the toupee of 1775, a high detached tuft of hair, like a cockatoo's crest, Horace Walpole mentions in his Letters, was called la physiognomic 2 ' Whyrlebone, or hole of a joynt, vertebra' (Prompt. Parvulorum). ' fatelle, the whirle-bone of the knee ' (Cotgrave). 200 NODDLE. from nodo, a knot, also l the turning joynt in the chine or backe-bone ' (Florio) ; nodo del collo, the nape of the neck, (Dut.) knod, (0. Norse) /mod, (Lat.) nodus, a knot, also a vertebra or back-bone, 1 {e.g., in Pliny, i cervix articulorum nodis jungitur). The word cer-vix, the neck, which we have here lighted on incidentally, is itself illustrative, meaning, as it does, c the head-binder,' what ties on the head; cer- corresponding to cava, (Gk.) Kcipa, (Zend.) cava, (Sans.) ciras, the head, and -vix (vies), being the root of vincire, to bind. Another Sanskrit word for neck is cirodhard, literally < the head-bearer,' from ciras, the head, and dkri, to bear, which reminds us of the poeti- cal term which the Latin anatomists devised for the first and topmost vertebra of the neck, ' atten- tion,' the Atlas bone, because like that Titan of old it supported the globe. ' This joint (of the ridge-bone) or knot abouesaid they call Atlantion, and it is the very first spondyle of them all ' (Pliny xxviii. 8, Holland Trans, ii. 310, 1634). Hamlet, it may be remembered, calls the head the globe — ' Kemember thee ! Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Act i. sc. 5. If we examine some of the different names 1 Perhaps ' nott-pated,' (Shakspere) * nott-headed,' A.-Sax. Jinot, are connected. PATE, MAZZARD. 201 which have been given to the head, it will be found that most of them, e.g., ' pate/ 'mazzard/ 6 skull,' ' sconce/ i nut/ * fc?te/ &c, have been de- rived from various common articles which are round and hollow, such as a cup, a bowl, a shell, a gourd, or a coco-nut, which the skull was thought to resemble. ' Pate/ for instance, means the hmm-pan, and is akin to the French pate (a plate), (Lat.) patina (a plate or pan), cf. (Ger.) platte (a plate, and pate), (Irish) plaitin (a little plate, a skull). 1 This word, like noddle, and most of the others I have men- tioned, has now acquired a ludicrous or burlesque signification which it had not formerly, witness the use of it in the Prayer-Book version of the Psalms (vii. 17). In Old English, i pan/ i panne/ means the skull, and is equivalent to the word ' brain-pan/ which occurs in Shakspere — ' Many a time, but for a sallet, my brain-pan had been cleft with a brown bill.' 2d Pt. Henry VI., iv. 10. (Friesic) breinpanne, (prov. Eng.) ham-pan (from A. -Sax. hcernes — brain). Compare the Italian bacinetto, 'a little bason, also a skull' (Florio), and 'poll/ (Old Eng.) 'boll' and 'ball/ (Dut.) pol and bol, the head, which is another form of (Icel.) bolli, (Fr.) boule, a c bowl.' 6 Mazzard/ another Shaksperian word — 1 Wedgwood, s.v. 202 NAPE, TESTY. ' Let me go, sir, Or I'll knock you o'er the mazzard,' Othello ii. 3. anciently ' mazer,' has been identified 1 with the Old English word * mazer,' which means a cup, bowl, or goblet. So the German kopf (the head) in Old German means a cup ; 2 ' nape ' (originally the back of the head), (A. -Sax.) cncep, answers to the Welsh cnap, a knob, boss, (Ger.) knop/ and nap/, (Lang.) nap, a bowl or porringer. Compare also the Greek skuphion (aKvcjylov), a cup, also a skull. Lith. kiausza, the skull, from kauszas, cup, goblet, Sans, koska, cup, vessel. Sp. colodrillo, c the noddle or hinder part of the head ' (Minsheu), from colodra, a pail, vessel. It. coppa, ' any cup, bowle, mazer or goblet — also the nape of the head ' (Florio). The French tete, anciently teste, testa in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Provencal, is the Latin testa, an earthen pot, also the skull. Compare the French tet, a potsherd, It., Sp., Port, testo, from Lat. testum. Hence our words c testy,' Fr. testu, heady, head- strong, irascible; ' a tester,' i.e., a sixpenny-piece, anciently testerne, teston, so called from the mon- 1 Fares, Glossary, s.v. 1 Cf. Gk. kube {kv{3t)), the head, kum.be, a cup, (Ger. humpe), kum- bachos (KVfi^axos), headforemost. Heb. gulgoleth, a skull (compare Golgotha), gvJMh, a bowl (compare Eccles. xii. 6, where this word seems to be used figuratively for the skull), Gk. gaMos, from the root gulal, to roll. Gk. kotta, head (It. cottula), Tcotulc, a cup, Lat. Cvlula. SKULL. 203 arch's head stamped upon it, just as < penny,' according to some, is from the Celtic pen, a head ; 6 tester,' Fr. tetiere, the head of a bed, a word which Sylvester absurdly enough applies to the canopy of heaven — ' He th' Azure Tester trinim'd with golden marks And richly spangled with bright glistering sparks.' Du Bartas, Div. Weekes, p. 74. The French and Italians, on the other hand, call the canopy or tester of a bedstead its sh/, del, cielo. ( Himmel ' in German has both meanings. < Skull' is Scotch 'skull' (a bowl ordrinking-cup), 1 0. Eng. sc/ialj 0. Norse skal, Swed. skull, skoll (a bowl), skalle (a skull), and skal (a shell), Dan. skal (a shell), Irish sgala, a bowl or goblet, Sans. caluka, a vessel. 2 So the Sanskrit gankka, a shell or conch, means also the temporal bone, Lat. concha, Gk. kongche (kojxv) &n& kongckos (/coy^o?), a shell, also the upper part of the skull, the i sconce. '(?). 1 The once generally received notion that our northern ancestors used to drink at their banquets out of the skulls of their enemies, appears to have arisen from not understanding that sJcidl was a genuine old Teutonic word for a cup. The belief that the heroes of Valhalla drank their ale out of literal skulls, or as Southey puts it — ■ Thought One day from Ella's skull to quaff the mead Their labour's guerdon ' — is equally erroneous. In the death-song of King Ragnar Lodbrok, he consoles himself with the prospect of drinking beer in Odin's palace ' out of curved horns.' This Professor Rask has shown to be the true rendering, and not c out of the skulls of our enemies,' as it used formerly to be translated. Mallet, N". Antiq., p. 105; D'Israeli, Amenities of Literature, i. 36. 2 Pictet, Langues Celtiques, p. 43. 204 coco. From the Lat. concha (a shell) just mentioned comes the Sardinian conca, the head, 0. Sp. coca, Sp. cogotc, Prov. cogot (back of the head); 1 and through the adjectival form concheus, the It. coccio (potsherd) ,coccia (the head), Sp. cuezo, whence with j)0st prefixed comes Sp. pescuezo, Port, pescoco, the nape of the neck, literally ' hind-cask.' 2 At a first glance it might be supposed that the Old Spanish word coca, for the head, was derived from the coco-nut, just as the French nnque, in the other Romance languages nuca, the nape of the neck, is probably identical with the Latin nux (nuc-s) a nut, just as in English slang ' nut ' is used for the head. 3 But the reverse is really the case. It is the coco- nut that derives its name from coca ; c Children call the head by this name — so in Old Spanish,' says Stevens in his Dictionary (1706), and cocar, he tells us, is ' to make mouths or gestures like a monkey.' When the Portuguese made settlements in the Indies, they were struck by the resemblance which the brown nuts of the palm-tree, with their hairy covering and three black marks not unlike to features, bore to the head and wizzened face of the monkeys which they saw gambolling around 1 Also Fr. coque (egg-shell), cocon, e cocoon,' It. cocca, Sp. coca, 0. Fr. coque, Eng. ' cock '-(boat). 2 So Sp. casco, (1) an earthen pot, cup, or cask; (2) a head, a pate, a sconce (Minsheu). 3 The Greek Mruon (icdipvov), a nut, seems to contain the root of kiira (icdpa), the head, Sans, ciras. COCO-NUT. 205 them, and so they styled them * monkey-heads/ coca or coco, the original meaning of that word being an ugly face or mash, a bugbear. 1 This comparison seems to have been made in the very earliest times, for in Sanskrit munda-pkala, ' skull- producer ' (from tminda, a bald pate), is a name for the coco-nut tree, the fruit being regarded as one step towards the human head made by Visva- mitra when he proposed attempting a creation in opposition to that of Brahma (M. Williams). According to a Polynesian legend, the coco-nut was created from a man's head, 2 the chestnuts from his kidneys, and the yams from his legs (Tylor, Prim. Culture, i. 367). The old traveller Evlia affirms that the cocoa- tree, or kullserr, as he calls it, was formed by the Creator, according to the opinion of the old historians and the commentators of the Koran, from the remainder of the clay of which Adam was made. It produces, he says, a round black nut, on which [for this reason, apparently] c all the parts of a man's head may be seen, mouth, nose, eyebrows, eyes, hair, and whiskers. A wonderful sight ! ' (Sou they, C.-P. Book, vol. ii. p. 434). 1 Philolog. Soc. Trans., 1862-63, p. 162. Marsh, Lectures on English (ed. Smith), p. 100. 2 In Parisian slang coco is still a popular term for the head, and a contemptuous one for an inconsiderable and mean person, while its diminutive, coccdes, denotes a ridiculous young dandy. 200 PUMPKIN HEADS, SUMPH. c Honour your paternal aunt, the date-palm,' says Mohammed, ' for she was created in Paradise of the same earth from which Adam was made.' Other vegetable products, generally those of a round form, and filled with soft pulp of a watery and insipid nature, have furnished ludicrous and uncomplimentary names for the human skull, es- pecially those skulls of overgrown dimensions which are considered to contain brains more re- markable for their quantity than quality. For instance, in Italian, ' zucca, any kind of Gourd or Pumpion, used also metaphorically for a mans head, sconce, nob, pate, or scull ' (Florio) ; * cocuzza, a gourd, cocuzzolo, the crown of the head. 2 Cucozzone (gourd-head) was the nickname by which Cardinal Patrizi was popularly known in Rome some years ago ; cf. Latin, ( cucurbitce caput.'' Sumpk, a Scotch term for a dull and stupid fellow (it may be met in Black's ' Daughter of Heth,' vol. i.), denotes originally a blockhead, whose brain is as soft and spongy as a toacl- 1 The French gourd (numb, senseless, dull, heavy) has no con- nection, however, with gourde (a gourd). It is from the Latin gurdus, stupid, (Sp.) gordo, while gourde, gouhourde, gougourde is from cucurbita, (It.) cucuzza. 2 Genin (Re'creations Philolos:. vol. i. p. 295) remarks that the words melon, concombre, cornichon, citronille, coloquinte, are similarly used in French. He also quotes the popular saying Bete comme un chou. Cf. Latin bliteus, insipid, foolish, from blitum (p\irov), a pot-herb, orache, and the Italian too, bizzocco, bizzoccone, a blockhead, which appears to be the modern representative of bliteus. TARTUFE, COSTARD. 207 stool. Cf. Cumberland sap-head, a simpleton. It is the same word as the Danish and Swedish svamp, (Goth.) swamms, (Ger.) schwamm, (Dut.) zwam, (A. -Sax.) swamm, (Icel.) svampr, all of which mean a sponge or fungus, and so is near akin to the German sump/, soft plashy ground, a bog, our 6 swamp,' Greek somphos, spongy, loose, porous. In a similar manner the Italian tartufo, a fungus or truffle, is used to designate a base and worthless fellow. Genin remarks that it was from that language that Moliere adopted the name of Tartufe for the hypocrite in his celebrated comedy, citing in confirmation Plautus' use of fungus for a dolt or idiot — ' Adeem' me fuisse fungum ut qui illi crederem.' Bacchid. II. 3, 49. Those fungi, which, like puff-balls, are round in shape, and filled with dust or corruption, would afford an apt comparison for the empty-headed, addle-pated fool — ' The mouldy chambers of the dull idiot's brain.' Cf Milan., tartuffol, (1) a truffle, (2) a dotard; Neapol. taratufolo, a simple- ton. See also Spelman, Glossary, s.v. Arga, where he attempts to identify ' cuckold ' with Fr. coucourd. 6 Costard,' a species of large apple, 1 is frequently employed by the Elizabethan dramatists for a 1 Hence : costermonger, ' originally an apple-seller. 208 man's head, and it is one of Shakspere's jests that the character who bears that name in ' Love's Labour's Lost' (v. 2), when enacting the part of Pompey in the interlude of the Nine Worthies, imagines that he is standing for ' Pompion the Great,' i.e., the Great Pumpkin. Our word ' bumpkin,' for a stupid country lout, seems to be only another form of this pompion, pumpion, or pumpkin. 1 In the ' Merry Wives of Windsor,' Mistress Ford styles FalstafT, ' This gross watery pumpion,' though the special reference there is to the phlegmatic corpulence of the unwieldy knight. It is the French pompon, (It.) popo?ie, pepone, (Lat.) pepo(n), (Gk.) pepon (Tre-ircov), a gourd. In later Latin pepo(?i) came to denote a foolish or stupid person, 2 and in Greek, likewise, it was a term of reproach and contempt. The sounding hollowness of the gourd when dry was also a point of comparison in this con- nection. i Cascos de Calabaga (calabash- skull), that is, rattle-headed or empty skull ' (Stevens, Sp. Diet., 1706), It. zucca at vento (gourd full of 1 Cf. The form 'tainkin,' from 'tampion.' 2 E.g., ' Cur non magis et pepo tarn insulsus, et chamaeleon tam inflatus?'(Tertullian, De Anima, xxxii., ed.Semler, vo . iv. p. 240). Etrc un melon, is to be as soft-headed as a squash, to be 'green ' or stupid. Dr Brewer remarks that melon in the school-slaug of St Cyr denotes a new-comer fresh from home, a ' molly-coddle ' (Diet. Phrase and Fable, s.v.), while cocons is the corresponding term for the first-year students at L'ficole Polytechnique. The Persian hdlak denotes a fool as well as an unripe melon. FOOL. 209 air), c a witlesse-scull, an addle-head, or shallow- braine ' (Florio). It was an appropriate title, therefore, that was conferred on the foolish braggart Oliver Proudfute in the ' Fair Maid of Perth,' when he fell in with the band of mummers on Fastern's E'en, and was dubbed a Knight of the Calabash, with the salu- tation, ' Eise up, sweet Sir Oliver Thatchpate, Knight of the Honourable Order of the Pumpkin — rise up, in the name of Nonsense ' (ch. xvi.) Almost identical is the conception which lies at the bottom of the word ' fool.' Let us examine it at length, and we shall find that Jacques was not so far wrong in affirming that such < strange beasts' as Touchstone and Audrey — the professional jester and the mere simplician — c in all tongues are called fools ' (As You Like It, v. 4) ; and that the learned Southey was clearly mistaken when he said that 6 the name for fool seems to be original in every language' (Common- Place Book, vol. iv. p. 577). 'Fool' is the French fou, folle; Corn. fol 9 Welsh ffol, Armor, foil, It. folle, Prov. and 0. Sp. fol, Mid. Lat. follus. 1 All these words are cognate with the Latin follis (= Gk. 6v\- \t?), ' an inflated bladder, a bellows' — which, in later times, from the notion of tumid 1 Hence, also, (Fr.) affoler, to make a fool of, (Eng. ) ' to foil. 210 FOOL. inflation inseparable from the term, came to be applied in a reproachful sense to persons 6 purled up, light and empty-headed, foolish.' 1 Thus the primary meaning of i fool ' would be ' blown up with self-conceit, vacant, witless ; ' or to define it exactly by a provincial word, still used, I believe, in some parts of England, ' blad- der-headed.' We find similar forms of expression in other languages ; in Italian, sacco di vento, l a bag of winde, also an idle boaster, a vaunting gull ' (Florio) ; in German, windbeutel (a braggart or idle talker), which Carlyle imitates in his ' pru- rient windbag ' (Heroes, Lect. VI); in Hebrew, Rabat, meaning a fool (' Nabal is his name, and folly is with him,' 1 Sam. xxv. 25), near akin to the word nebel, a bottle of skin (LXX. aa/cos). Compare the Manx bleb, a fool, an idiot, origi- nally a pustule, a blister; (Scot.) bleib, blob, any- thing tumid and circular, like a bubble; (Eng.) < bubble, a bladder in water, also a silly fellow, a cully ' (Bailey) ; the Italian ' nocchio, any bosse, bladder, puffe — also a gull, a ninnie, a foole ' (Florio), and the following quotations: — 1 'Folic decet pueros ludere ' (Martial, 14, 74) — Boys may play at foot-ball. The post-classical use of the word is illustrated by Du Cange— ' Infollare proprie est buccam inflare; et quia folles inflan- tur quasi quadum re inani, inde est quod Follis dicitur stultus, superbus, vanus, inflatus.' He quotes from a MS. of the ninth century, ' Hie more gallico sanctum senem increpitans follem,' and from the interpreter of Joannes de Garlandia, ' Non opus est Folio suspendere tympana collo.' So in the ' Promptorium Parvu- loruin,' ¥ollet,follus. FOOL. 211 1 If there be here any of these empty bladders, that are puft up with the wind of conceit, give me leave to pricke them a little.' The Righteous Mammon, Bp. Hall, Works (fol. 1634), p. 670. ' I would embowell a number of those wind-puft bladders [i.e., authors' patrons], and disfurnish their bald pates of the perriwigs poets haue lent them.' Nash, Pierce Penniless 1 s Supplication to the Devil (1592, Shaks. Soc), p. 91. Similarly in Phineas Fletcher's poem of i The Purple Island,' Chaunus, the arrogant fool, is described as being ' With his own praise like windy bladder blown.' C. viii., st. xxxvi. And so in French, a foolish story, nonsense, used to be called billevesdes — i.e., belle and vessie, a bladder full of wind, 1 ' a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying — nothing.' 1 C'est lui qui dans des vers vous a tympanisees'; Tous les propos qu'il tient sont des billevesees. > Moliere, Les Femmes Savants, ii. 7. Intimately related to i fool ' is the Old Spanish follon, a braggart, from the Latin follis, and follere, to swell like a bellows. Just as Spenser, develop- ing the same idea, describes a ' losell ' i puffed up with smoke of vanity ' — 1 Trompart, fitt man for Braggadochio,' who did 1 Cf.'A widemouthed poet that speakea nothing but bladders an d burabast.' Sir Thos. Overbury, Characters (Library of Old Authoi-s, p. 98). 212 BOAST. < With fine flattery, Blow the bellows to his swelling vanity.' Faerie Queen, Bk. II. iii. 4 and 9. We would be tempted, in like manner, to bring the Bohemian blazen, a fool, (Dut.) blasoen, a braggart, into connection with the Anglo-Saxon and German blcesan, and Dutch blcesen, to blow, our < blast ; ' 0. Ger. bids, blowing, blatara, a bladder, bloz, proud ; Ger. blase, a bladder, and bla- sen, to blow. Similarly, the Old Norse gdli, a fool, Dan. gal, mad, Norse galen, angry, mad, according to Wedgwood, may be traced in the provincial Danish galm, our 6 gale,' a raging wind. Compare ' vain,' Lat. vanus, from the root va, to blow, its congeners being the Gaelic faoin, 0. Eng. fon, c fond ' originally meaning foolish, Gaelic faoincheann, empty-head. Bishop Hall, in his ' Characterismes of Vices,' speaking of the vain-glorious, portrays him as 1 A bladder full of wind, a skin full of words, a fooles won- der, and a wisemans foole.' Works, p. 176 (ed. 1634.) For this, indeed, is one sure trait of the bladder- headed fool — he is puffed up and boastful. And so the word ' boast ' itself, it is instructive to find, is near akin to the Old German bdsi, foolish, originally empty, inflated, and bosan, a bag or pouch; Irish and Cym., bosd, boasting; 0. Eng., boistoas, bostwys, now ' boisterous,' an BUFFOON. 213 epithet of the wind — all connected with the Ger- man bausen, to puff, inflate the cheeks ; Gk. pkusdo (at it "be cast for]}, and soilid of suynne.' 'Fond salt,' i.e., foolish, here tasteless, is the Old English fort, Gael, faoin, Lat. vanus. Dr Todd, in his edi- tion of this work for the Camden Society, printed the word sonnid, which of course is nonsense. The Latin of St Jerome, which WiclifTe is here trans- lating — Infatuatum sal ad nikilum prodest — renders the mistake the more inexcusable. In like manner, the French fade, insipid, is the Latin fatuus, foolish ; 2 ' insipid ' itself, as well as 1 unsavoury,' contains the same root as i sapient,' ' sage,' i savant/ all being from the Latin sapere, to have taste ; and insulsus, meaning foolish in Latin, was originally in-salsus, without salt, taste- less. A parallel idiom occurs in the Hebrew of Job v. 6, ' Is there any taste in the white of an egg ? ' This, according to Gesenius, would be more cor- rectly rendered, ' Is there any taste in herb broth (kohl-brahe) ? lit. the slime of purslain,' which the Arabians call ' the foolish plant,' i.e., insipid. ' More foolish than purslain ' is one of their pro- verbial comparisons. The corresponding Hebrew word in the passage cited is halldmuth, denoting (1) fatuity, (2) insipidity. The Latin word fatuus, foolish, which I had but 1 ' Thou art a fori of thy love to boste ' (Spenser, Shepheards Calender, Februarie). 2 Fatuus is applied to the beet by Martial, in the sense of tasteless. 216 FATUOUS. just now occasion to refer to, and which still lives for us in our ' fatuous ' and < infatuated,' is one that hitherto, so far as I am aware, has eluded analysis. Perhaps I am too sanguine in thinking it has yielded to my efforts. At all events, if we take note of the similar names which have been given to the fool in other languages, we will see reason to believe it probable beforehand that the Latin might fairly have signified c open-mouthed.' The hanging of the lower jaw imparts such an idiotic expression to the countenance, and an air of vacant wonderment, that gaping has been uni- versally regarded as a mark of imbecility and stupidity ; a closed mouth and compressed lips, on the other hand, are the natural expression of firm- ness and self-control. For instance, in French, badaud, badault, i a fool, dolt, sot, fop, asse, gap- ing hoy don ' (Cotgrave), Prov. badau, is from the Provencal and Italian badare, to gape. 1 6 Naque ??iouc7ie, a Flycatcher, a gaping hoydon, an idle gull ' (Cotgrave). Cf. gobe-mouches. Bdgueule^ a fool, originally ' gaping with an open mouth ' (Cotgrave). In English, ' gaby ' is one that gapes with a vacant stare ; 0. Norse gapa, to gape, gap, a simpleton (Wedgwood), prov. Eng. gaups, a sim- pleton, from gaup, to gape. Compare gawk-a- 1 Hence also Ft. badin, a jester, badiner, ' badinage ; ' 0. Fr. baer, bayer, ' to bay. ' FATUOUS. 217 mouth, a gaping fool (Devonshire). Thus ' Poor Robin' (1735), speaks of fools who * stand with their eyes and their mouths open, to take in a cargo of gape-seed^ while some a little too nimble for them pick their pockets.' 6 Booby,' It. babbeo, is generally understood to be a gaping imbecile, from the sound ba naturally made in opening the mouth. 1 Gawney, a provincial term for a fool or simple- ton, which in Lincolnshire appears a,sya?vney, comes from the Anglo-Saxon ganian, to yawn or gape, and with the most curious exactness corresponds to the Greek ckaunos, gaping, also silly, foolish, whence chaunopolites, an open-mouthed, gaping cit, a cockney. Compare, kecMnaioi, gapers, Aris- tophanes' burlesque name for the Athenians, also the Greek chdskax (a gaper, gaby), from ckasko, to gape or yawn ; chin, Dor. chan, the gaping ' gan- der.' The same root has been traced by some in the Latin fat-isco, to yawn, gape, or open in chinks. It is with this word, whatever may be the root, that I would place in close connection fatuus, the open-mouthed, gaping fool. Thus fat-uus would stand in the same relation to fat-isco that gaby does to gape and gap (Sans. jabk). Fat-eor 1 Farrar, Chapters on Language, p. 159; Wedgwood, s.v. Com- pare, however, the 0. Fr. baube, a babbler, ebaubi, astounded, Sp. bobo, simpleton, which Diez connects with It. balbo, Lat. balbus, a stammerer. 218 FATUOUS. (whence conjitcor, confessus), to confess, may not improbably contain the same root, with the sig- nification of opening or disclosing a matter, in opposition to keeping it close and hidden. 1 Com- pare our English expression ' to split ' ( = to inform), and the Latin rhnosus (full of chinks or splits, leaky), applied to one who cannot keep a secret. The stem of fat-igo may perhaps be identified with that of j)at-eo (to be open), and traced to the Sanskrit root pat, to split or open. As the day has now gone by when an etymologist could not timidly suggest a relationship between an Aryan root and a Sheniitic without fear of being branded with that most damaging of epithets, i pre-scien- tific,' I may venture to point out the resemblance of the Hebrew pdthdh and pdthach, to open. This may, or may not, be only a coincidence, still the corresponding uses of the word are sufficiently re- markable to deserve being noted. From pdthdh, to be open {—fat-igo), comes the participial form potkeh, c one who opens ' (his lips, Prov. xx. 19), also ' a foolish or silly person' (=fatuus, Job v. 2), and the derivative pethi is the common word for a simple or silly person in the book of Proverbs e.g., vii. 7). 1 The dictionaries deduce the word from fdtus, the past participle of fari, to speak ; but in that case we would expect fateor, with a long vowel. FATUOUS. 219 From fatuus comes the verb fatuor, 1 to talk foolishly, which afterwards acquired the very dif- ferent meaning of being inspired, or filled with the divine influence. Such a transition is com- mon in other languages, and can easily be ex- plained as follows : — No one, unaccustomed to such trying scenes, can listen to the ceaseless raving of a patient oppressed with fever, or the unconnected rhapsodies poured forth by the insane, without experiencing some- what of an almost superstitious fear, which invests even commonplace and unmeaning expressions with a strange significance. The words given vent to in such cases are known to come from the lips quite apart from the consciousness of the speaker. They seem, therefore, like the utterances of some unknown power, which has taken possession of the patient, and uses him for its mouthpiece. This feeling, which perhaps in some degree may help us to understand why it is that the wayward and fragmentary interlocutions of the fool add a new element of grandeur and sublimity to the wondrous scenes of Lear, that the snatches of song and proverb introduced by the poor distraught Ophelia are so inexpressively pathetic, that the soliloquies delivered by Lady Macbeth when walking in her 1 Dr Smith does not seem to have any authority for making two distinct words out of this, and marking the initial syllable short in the one case and long in the other (Lat. Diet.) 220 NATURAL. troubled sleep are so potent in inspiring awe and a sense of terrible mystery — the same feeling has led men in all ages to regard the idiot and the lunatic with reverence, as beings endued with a portion of the divine afflatus. Thus in Latin there is the one V70x<\. furor for madness and inspiration. In Greek, mantis , a prophet, is near akin to mania, madness : and in old English writers c fury ' is used of spiritual influences, however gentle, as in this invocation to the Deity — ' Breathe thou a heavenly fury in my breast, I sing the sabbath of eternal! rest.' William, Earl of Stirling (d. 1640). Amongst many savage races madmen are vene- rated as being the special abode of some deity, 1 and idiots are treated with kindness and forbearance, from a belief that they possess superhuman inspir- ation. The Eskimo, for instance, regard an insane 1 Compare the Greek enihousiastikds, entheos, dwelt in by a god, inspired. Vide Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 117; Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation, p. 132. Mania is used both for madness and the prophetic spirit, so that Plato says, ' The greatest blessings we have spring from madness when granted by the divine bounty.' Fide The Prophetic Spirit in its Relation to Wisdom and Madness, by Rev. A. Clissold. ' The fool alone, in " All's Well that Ends Well " has somewhat of the " prophetic " vein in him, which he ascribes to himself, ac- cording to the general notion of the age, that fools, in virtue of their capacity for speaking " the truth the next way," possessed something of a divine and foretelling character ' (Gervinus, Shaks- pere Commentaries, p. 402). On the superstition that the insane were possessed or inspired by a deity, see Maury, La Magie et l'Astrologie, pp. 261-263, 269, 272, 285. The old Countess of Strathmore is reported to have consulted an idiot when she desired an oracular pronouncement as to the prolongation of her husband's life (Southey, C.-P. Book, vol. iv. p. 514). NATURAL. 221 person, whom they call a pivdlerortok, as possessed of the highest perfection in divining, and capable of seeing things when absent or still future. The 6 natural ' or fool, pivdlingayak, as being a clair- voyant, is esteemed by them a useful person to be maintained in every hamlet. 1 It must have been a somewhat similar notion that gave rise to the French word benet or benest, i a simple, plaine, doltish fellow, a noddy-peake, ... a silly com- panion ' (Cotgrave), which is only another form of benist, benoist, benedict, blessed, holy, happy. We might be reminded here of the English slang phrase i an anointed scamp,' meaning an arch villain, Yorkshire, c a nointed youth ; ' but this without doubt is a corruption of the French andanti, brought to nothing, worthless, good for nought — anoienter being actually found as another form of aneantir. 2 A truer comparison would be ' silly,' originally innocent, blessed, happy, A.-Sax. scelig, Ger. selig. So the German albern, foolish, simple, Mid. Ger. alewaere, Swiss alb, A.-Sax. ylfige, and perhaps our alf, 6 oaf,' represents the Middle German alwdr, 0. H. Ger. alawdr, all-true, alawdri, kind. 3 Compare the expressions ' an in- nocent,' i a natural,' i simple,' ' buon huomo^ 6 bon 1 Dr H. Rink, Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 57. 5 Roquefort, Glossaire de la Langue Romane. 3 The Icelandic dlfr, an elf, denotes also a silly, vacant, person, one bewitched by the elves (Cleasby). Vide also Diefenbach, Orig. Europ. 222 NATURAL. enfant] Gk. eucthes, < daffte ' (= humble in the Ormultm). 1 Cretin, the name given to the deformed idiots of Switzerland, is said by some to be the same as chrUien, the Christian par excellence, the most chastened, because the most loved. 2 While on the subject of fools, I ma}' note that the A. -Irish omadhaun is the Irish amadan, an idiot or simpleton, also amad, which corresponds exactly to the Sanskrit a-mati, folly, stupidity {a negative, and mati, mind, Lat. a-mens y out of one's mind). The idiot, as it were, is contrasted with the rational ' man,' Sans. ?nanu, ' the thinker,' from the root man, to think. 3 Goddis ajns is an old Scotch expression of similar import for ' dull, blockish animals, that have no more of men, the chief of God's creatures, but the shape, as apes have.' 1 Zour sory joyis "bene bot janglyng and japis, And zour trew^seruandis silly goddis apis.' Gaivin Douglas, Prologue to Bk. IV. 1. 27. ' Thus we say in Scotland, " a good God's body," or " God's goss," for a silly, but good-natured man ; ' 4 in Ireland ' one of God's innocents.' 1 See also De Quincey, vol. iii. p. 306 ; Lane, Egyptians, vol. ii. pp. 43, 44. 3 Cf. Gattel, s.v.; Genin, Recreations Philologiques, vol. ii. p. 164. Somewhat similar to those mentioned above is the transition of meaning of Ger. schlecht, (1) right, good, (2) simple, (3) foolish, worthless. An ' upryght man ' is one of the ' rainging rabblement of rascals,' in Harman's Caveat for Cursetors, p. 13 (Repr. 1814). 3 Pictet, Orig. Indo-Europ., vol. ii. p. 543; Stokes, Irish Glosses, p. 66. 4 Glossary to G. Douglas, 1710. ( 223 ) CHAPTER IX. * hearse ' — ' hoe ' — ' furro w ' — names of ma- chines derived from animals — ' pulley ' etc. — ' ha tchment ' — ' lozenge ' — ' blazon ' — ' timbre' — 'halo' — ' aureole! In tracing the word ' hearse ' through its manifold windings up to its distant source, the transitions of meaning presented to us are not a little curious. Applied at the present day to the large ornamen- tal carriage for the conveyance of the dead, which forms so conspicuous a feature in the long-drawn 6 pomp of woe ' that characterises a i respectable funeral/ c hearse/ once on a time, denoted not this, but a temporary canopy, or light frame of woodwork supporting a pall, erected in the church, under which frame the body used to be placed while the service for the dead was being performed. 1 Sometimes it was a ceno- taph, or monument of a more permanent character, set up as a memorial of the deceased 1 See a good note in Peacocke's 'Church Furniture,' p. 127, where he gives a representation of a hearse, but quite mistakes its etymology. Vide also p. 26. 224 HEARSE. — e.g., c cenotaphium, a herse, a sepulchre of honour.' 1 ' A cenotaph ' (says Weever in his ' Funeral Monuments,' 1631) ' is an emptie Funerall Monument or Tombe erected for the honour of the dead, wherein neither the corps nor reliques of any defunct are deposited, in imitation of which our Hearses here in England are set vp in Churches, during the continuance of a Yeare, or for the space of certaine moneths ' (p. 32, fol.) ' The solemnitie of Polydores obit at his emptie hearse is described in the said booke [iEn. 3] much what after the same manner. " Anon therefore to Polydore an Hearse we gan prepare." ' Ibid., p. 35. Compare also the following from the poems of Bishop Henry King (1657) : — ' The beating of thy pulse (when thou art well) Is just the tolling of thy Passing Bell : Night is thy Hearse, whose sable Canopie Covers alike deceased day and thee. And all those weeping dewes which nightly fall, Are but the tears shed for thy funerall/ Ed. Hannah, p. 19. And these from Spenser — ' Leave these relicks of his living might To decke his herce, and trap his tomb-blacke steed.' Faerie Queene, II. viii. 16. ' Beene they all dead, and laid in dolefull herse, Or doen they onely sleepe, and shall againe reverse '? ' Ibid., III. iv. 1 At the funeral of Sir John Dudley i at Westmyns- ter, the xxj of Septemher/ 1553, 1 Old Glossary, quoted by Way, in • Promptorium Parvulorum.' HEARSE. 225 ' In the qwer was a hersse mad of tymbur and covered with blake, and armes upon the blake.' Diary of Henry Machyn, 1550-1563 (Camden Soc.) p. 44. Bailey defines the word t Hearse, a Monument liung with the Atchievements of an honourable Person deceased ; also a covered or close Waggon to carry a dead Corpse in ' (Diet, s.v.) Though these meanings of a decorated bier, a pall, or canopy, are ancient, we must go back further still. In wills and other documents of the twelfth and three following centuries we find fre- quent mention made of the hersia, /iercia, or her- cium, as a well-known article of church furniture, employed at the most solemn services, and especially at funerals, when the corpse was lying in state. 1 The i Promptorium Parvulorum ' (c. 1440) explains the ' Heerce on a dede corce ' to be a c pirama ' or 1 piramis. ' It was, in fact, a sort of pyramidal candle- stick, or iron frame of triangular form, designed to hold the multitude of wax tapers usually lighted on such occasions, tier above tier. Another name, or rather another form of the name, of this structure in medieval Latin was kerpica, and this points us to its true origin. 2 The hersia or hercia was so called on account of its re- 1 I draw this information from Mr Way's excellent note in the 'Promptorium Parvulorum.' Vide also Diary of Henry Machyn (Camden Soc), p. xxix. ; Skeat in Notes and Queries. 4th Ser. vol. iv. p. 51. 2 The identification of ' hearse ' with the Lat. (ac-)cerso, Sans. harsh, to draw, by some philologists, shows how dangerous it is to theorise about a word without tracing its historical relationship. P 226 REHEARSE. semblance in shape to the French /terse, 0. Fr. herce, It. crpicc, a harrow, and those words themselves come from the Lat. hirpex (kirjiic-is), also irpex, a large iron-toothed rake, a harrow. So the sar- rasi?w, a kind of portcullice, Bailey mentions (Dictionary, s.v,), was otherwise called a hearse, evidently from its harrow-like shape. From the Low Latin Jierciare l arose the French /terser, c to harrow,' ' also to vexe, turmoile, disquiet, hurry, torment' (Cotgrave), just as we speak of c harrow- ing one's feelings,' or 'a harrowing tale.' From /terser, through the form harser, came apparently harasser with the same meaning, our ' harass.' We now can see the point of connection also between * hearse ' and the verb to f re-hearse.' The latter means literally 6 to harrow over again,' to go over the same ground and turn it up anew : figu- ratively, to repeat what has been already said. A similar expression is ' to rip up ' an old grievance, &c. Compare the following — 'What direful greeting will there then be . . . remem- bering and ripping up all their lewdness, to the aggravation of their torment.' Baxter, Saints' Best, Pt. iii. eh. 3. 1 Being as a cursed goat separated to stand beneath on earth, as on the Left-hand of the Judge, Christ shall rip up all the benefits He bestow'd on thee.' The Practice of Piety, L. Bailey, p. 56 (1743). In Gaelic rdc signifies to repeat as well as to rake. So far, I trust, all is plain. Our i hearse ' is 1 Spelman, Gloss, s.v. Arabant. hoe. 227 traceable to the Latin Ziirpex, a harrow. If we inquire, however, what is the origin of the word hirpex itself, the answer is by no means equally easy. It has been imagined by some to have been borrowed from the Greek hdrpax (apiraf?) ; but, to say nothing of the difficulty that the two words agree neither in form nor in meaning, it is highly im- probable that the Latin husbandman should have been indebted to foreigners for the name of so common an implement. Before suggesting a derivation of my own, I would premise that in many languages instruments which are used in cleaving or grubbing up the earth have been likened to animals which rend and tear their victims — the teeth of the hoe, the harrow, and the plough, as they wounded and scarified the ground, not unnaturally suggested the fangs of a beast of prey, the tusks of the boar, the sharp incisors of the ravening wolf — and those tools received names accordingly. For instance, our ' hoe ' is the Goth, koka, a plough (< the tearer '), and exactly represents in a modern shape the Sans. koka, a wolf (' the tearer '), Kuhn. So the San- skrit word vrika designates alike the wolf and the plough, and in Icel. vargr hqfs, ' the sea- wolf,' is a poetical name for a ship, no doubt from its cleav- ing and ploughing up the waves. The Sanskrit krntatra, Kourde kotan, Lat. culter, i coulter ' (the instrument that cleaves the earth), the plough, are 228 porcus. near akin to the Russ. krotu, Pol. hret (the animal that cleaves the earth), the mole, Lith. kertus (the shrew-mouse), all coming from the same root krt, to cut or cleave. 1 Similarly the German scker, sckermaus, 0. Ger. scero, the mole, with which Pictet 2 compares our shrew-mouse, A. -Sax. screawa, owns kinship with scaro, the plough-share, both coming from seer an, to cleave or tear. In Greek 6 the digger ' (skalops) is a name for the mole. 3 The Sans, potra signifies at once a pig's snout and a ploughshare, from the idea of grubbing up the earth being common to both ; and so Pictet explains the Greek hunnis (vvvis), a ploughshare, to have originally been i swine's- snout,' from Ms (£?), a pig. The Latin porcus, a pig, seems to have meant originally the beast that roots up and scatters the earth, and to have come from the Sanskrit root pre, to scatter. 4 Porca, on the other hand, was 1 Pictet, Orig. Indo-Europ. vol. i. p. 452. The Sanskrit kira, a boar, and the Persian Iciraz, a harrow, are traced to the root Jcf, har, to scatter, from their both scattering about the earth (Ibid., vol. ii. p. 9Q). 2 Ibid., vol. i. p. 41. 3 It may be doubted whether ' mole ' is for mold-warp (mould- caster), as all the dictionaries give it. It is rather the German maul-xverf, i.e., mouth-caster, from its habit of burrowing with its snout. Our 'coney,' Wei. owning, Irish coinin, Lat. cuniculus (1, a rabbit ; 2, a burrow, mine), is cognate with Lat. cuneus (what cleaves, a wedge), and comes from the Sanskrit root khan, to dig. Hence also Sans, Jchanaka, ' the miner,' a name for the rat. 4 Compare Egyptian ferk,forlc, to tear, Heb. prk, Arab, phrq, to FURROW. 229 the name given to the ridge of earth thrown up by the iron snout of the ploughshare, and is the same word as appears in German asfurcke, A.Sax. fur/i, our i furrow,' 0. Eng. furg} i Farrow,' to bring forth a litter of pigs, being a derivative from A.-Sax. fearh, 0. H. Ger.farA, Dut. varken, a pig, words which are immediately akin to porcus, we can see that ' furrow ' and ' farrow ' are not connected together by a mere superficial resemblance, but by a radical and fundamental identity. The north of England soc, Fr. soc, L. Lat. soccus, the ploughshare, is the Irish soc, Cymric swch, which mean a snout and a ploughshare. 2 On the other hand, the projecting bone of the nose, by a play of fancy, has been termed the vomer by anato- mists, on account of its resemblance to the share. Now, as the transition of meaning from a rend- ing or grubbing animal to a rending or grubbing instrument of tillage is not unusual, I do not think I will be risking too fanciful a suggestion if I venture to bring hirpex, irpex, the harrow, with its grim array of iron teeth, into connection with the old Sabine word hirpus, 2 or irpus, a wolf, just divide. Birch, Bunsen's Egypt, vol. v. Similar is the radical meaning of Sans, hira, ddraha, bhuddra, as names for the pig, viz., the tearer or grubber (Pictet, vol. i. p. 371). 1 0. E. Miscell., p. 13. Compare Fr. veau, a calf, also used to denote ' a baulk untilled between two lands or furrows ' (Cotgrave). 2 Surely we may compare the A.-Sax. eorp, Icel. erpr, Scand. irpa, a wolf, though Pictet denies this. Hirpus (i.e., virpus, vripus), represents the Sans, vrihas, Lith. vilkas, Gk. (v)lukos, Lat. {v)lupus (vulpus), Goth, vulfs, 'wolf.' 230 MACHINES AND ANIMALS. as the synonymous word lupus was applied to sundry things furnished with many sharp points and indentations, e.g., a handsaw, and a jagged bit for hard-mouthed horses. < Wolf,' according to Wright's Provincial Dic- tionary, has the latter meaning in English; and xirgull in Icelandic, a halter, is akin to vargr, a wolf, and German wiirgen, to throttle, ' worry.' It may be remarked in general, that engines and machines which served for carrying, supporting, and lifting, or for purposes of attack in war, were often designated by the names of animals which seemed to have similar powers and functions, and were called ' ram,' ' horse,' ' ass,' ' sow,' ' cat,' &c, according as some fanciful analogy might occur to the parties using them. For example, when the rebels besieged Corfe Castle, Mercurius Rusticus 1 states that ' to make their approaches to the wall with more safety, they make two engines, one they call the sow, and the other the boar.' 1 K. Edward the first with an engine named the warwolfe, pierced with one stone . . . two vauntmures. As the ancient Yrika is a plough. Hirpus : vrikas : : hirpex : vrika. All come from the Sans, root vrask', to tear. This root also may be traced in the name of another agricultural implement for tearing the earth, if Mommsen (vol. i. p. 21) and Pictet be correct (vol. ii. p. 90) in iden- tifying ligo, a hoe, Gk. lach-aino (XaxeuVw), to dig, with our 'rake,' A..-Sax. racian, Ger. rechen, Gael. rac. For these words can scarcely be separated from lac-er, Gk. lak-os, rak-os, 'rag,' which contain the root vrask'. Hence also ulcus, Gk. helkos (?Xkos), a wound, holkos (oXkos), sulcus, a furrow. Cf. Ferrar, Comparative Grammar, p. 174. 1 Southey, C. -P. Book, vol. i. p. 527. MACHINES AND ANIMALS. 231 Komans had their Crates, Vinece, Plutei ... so had the Eng- lish in this age their Cathouse and Sow for the same purpose. The Cathouse, answerable to the Cattus, mentioned by Vegetius. . . . The sow is yet usual in Ireland.' Camden, Remaines (1637), p. 201. ' This Mouse or Mantelet was defended by our men out of the brick tower' (Lat. musculus). Edmonds, Casar's Commentaries of the Civ. Wars, p. 54(1655). I subjoin a list of animals whose names I have met thus employed: — It. asinone, a great ass. Also ' an engine to mount a piece of ordinance ' (Florio). It. caualetto, 6 any little nagge or horse. Also any tressel, 1 or saddlers or Armorers woodden horse ' (Florio). Fr. ckevalet, Eng. ' horse,' a stand for towels, clothes, &c. 6 Easel,' a painter's tressel, Ger. esel, Lat. asellus y a little ass. Gk. killibas (iaX\lj3a<;) , of the same meaning, is from killos (/aXXo?), an ass. Gk. onos (ovo. ' Lozange or spancle (spangyl) lorale' (Prompt. Parvulorum). 'Lozenge, a little square cake of preserved herbs, flowers, &c. ; also a quarrel of a glasse window ; anything of that form.' How little conscious we are, as we suck the neat, little, sugary tablet of the confec- tioner — the only meaning that ' lozenge ' has now for most men — that its name was once a word of dignity that called up images of heraldic splendour and sepulchral pomp. 1 We may compare with this the word 6 blazon,' the shield on which a coat-of-arms is displayed 1 The confusion we here see arising, and transition of meaning from the honour due to the dead to the mere figure or outward material form which that honour at times has assumed, may per- haps help us to explain Spenser's use of ' herse ' in the sense of ceremonial generally in those verses of the Faerie Queene where, during the solemn service of the church — ' The faire Damzel from the holy herse, Her loyesicke hart to other thoughts did steale' (III. ii. 48) ; unless, indeed, the poet in his own mind connected that word with another, which he also employs, 'hersall,' for rehearsal, or with the verb hery, to honour or worship. ' heavie herse,' in the Shep- heards Calender (November, 1. 61), is explained in the contemporary annotations of his friend Edward Kirke, to be ' the solemne obsequie in f uneralles.' 238 TIMBRE. (Fr. blason, Prov. blezo). It formerly meant the armorial bearings themselves, as the means by which the honour and rank of the family are blazed or blazoned forth, their praise or commen- dation, with an oblique allusion, perhaps, to the warm and glowing tints in which the arms were limned or illuminated. Cotgrave defines blasonner 1 to blaze Armes ; also, to praise, extoll, commend ; or, to publish the praises, divulge the perfections, proclaime the vertues of.' And not unlike is the history of the French word timbre, a postage label. It formerly denoted a shield impressed with a device or coat-of-arms ; earlier still, it signified a coat-of-arms, and espe- cially a helmet, Sp. timbre ; and the helmet itself was so termed from its resemblance to a brass bell or kettledrum, utensils which would serve that turn at a pinch, as well as Mambrino's famous helmet. Timbre, in the sense of a bell, is akin to timbon, l a kind of brasen drum ; ' tympan, a ' tim- brel ' or ' tabour ' (see Cotgrave, s.vv.); Lat. tym- panum, Gk. tumpanon, a drum. ' Halo.' — This name for the misty circle which sometimes forms around the moon and the sun has come to us, as is well known, from the Greek. In that language holds (a\a>s), or aloe (aXcorj), was used to denote any enclosed plot of ground, especially one enclosed for a thrashing-floor. This holds, or floor, from the constant revolving motion of the oxen HALO. 239 employed in thrashing out the grain, naturally as- sumed a circular shape ; so the word, from the as- sociated idea of rotundity, came to be transferred to the discs of the sun and moon, and finally, in a specific sense, to the bright encircling ring which we still call a ' halo.' I mention this now in order to direct attention to the curiously similar way in which synonymous terms have arisen in other languages. In German, hof, which is the ordinary word for an enclosure, plot, or courtyard, is used also for a halo, and for a dark circle round the eyes. A common north-country word for a halo is burr, which is also found under the forms brugh, brough, bruff} Proverbial sayings are — ' Far burr near rain ; ' ' About the moon there is a brugh, The weather will be cauld and rough.' 2 This, however, is only a derived sense of the word brugh, which is applied to circular forts or bar- rows. It is the Anglo-Saxon burh, beorh, or burgh, 3 a court, fortress, or castle. Brother Geoffry the Grammarian, in his ancient i English-Latin Dic- tionary ' (about 1440), gives ' burwhe, sercle (bur- 1 Fide'Ferguson, Dialect of Cumberland,p. 16; Jamieson, Forby, &c. 2 Swainson, Weather Folk-Lore, p. 186. 3 The change of pronunciation from brugh, burgh, to bruff, is not uncommon — e. g., ' bethoft ' is an old spelling of bethought, 'thof' of though, 'faff of fought. 'Furlough' is the Dutch verlof. Ancient forms are trow = trough, cowe — cough, rowe = rough. In provincial dialects buff = bough, plufF = plough, bawft = bought, thoft = thought. In old writers we find taught rhyming with aloft, and daughter with after. 240 AUREOLE. rowe), orbiculus,' 1 as well as ' burrche, towne (burwth, burwe, burrowe), burgus.' In Arabic, ddrat, meaning a bouse, dwelling, circular place, or round beap of sand, is used also for a balo round tbe moon. This brigbt pbenomenon was called by tbe Romans area — a word wbicb runs exactly parallel witb tbe Greek holds, meaning, (1) a plot of ground, (2) a thrashing-floor, (3) a balo round one of tbe beavenly bodies. A similar luminous appearance encompassing tbe bead of a saint in Cbristian art is termed an i aureole,' mediasval Lat. aureola. Tins is gene- rally imagined to represent tbe classical Latin aureola (sc. corona), a diminutive of aurea, and to mean ' a golden circlet,' as indeed it is generally depicted. It is bigbly probable, bowever, tbat, not aureola, but areola (a little balo), 2 a diminutive of area, is tbe true and original form, and tbat tbe usual orthography is due to a mistaken connec- tion with aurum, gold, just as for the same reason urina became, in Italian, auri?ia; 3 It. arancio be- came Fr. orange, L. Lat. 2 ooma cairantia ; Gk. oreichalcos became Lat. aurichalcum. This is cer- tainly more likely than that it is a diminutive of 1 Promptorium Parvulorum. The burr of a lanc\ a projecting ring to protect the hand, is no doubt the same word (vide Way's note s.v.) The 0. Eug. term was ' trendel.' ' Wunderlic trendel weaiS ate- owed abutanpare sunnan.' A.-Sax. trendel, a circle, Dorset trendel, a round tub. 2 Areola [in anatomy] is the circle of the Pap or Teat ' (Bailey). 3 ' From its yellow colour ' (Florio), q.d. aurea aqua. AUREOLE. 241 aura, a luminous breath or exhalation, which is the view put forward by Didron in his ' Christian Iconography' (p. 107). He quotes a passage from an apocryphal treatise, ' De Transitu B. Marias Virginis,' which states that ' a brilliant cloud ap- peared in the air, and placed itself before the Virgin, forming on her brow a transparent crown, resembling the aureole or halo which surrounds the rising moon ' (p. 137). Here, obviously, areola would have been the more correct word to have employed, and it is the one which recommended itself to De Quincey. He writes — 1 In some legends of saints we find that they were born with a lambent circle or golden areola about their heads.' Works, vol. xv. p. 39. So correct a writer would not have applied the superfluous epithet of ' golden ' to this i superna- tural halo,' as he subsequently terms it, if the word were to him only another form of aureola. The aureole and nimbus must not be considered peculiar to Christian symbolism, as they existed, not only amongst the Greeks and Romans, 1 but even amongst the Hindus and Egyptians. 2 Mr Paley, in his commentary on iEschylus (Suppl. 637), sug- gests a curious origin for the nimbus which surrounds the heads of the saints. He maintains that it is identical with the metallic plate called 1 Didron, Christian Iconography, p. 132. 2 Ibid., p. 146 seq. 242 AUREOLE. meniscus, which was placed over Grecian statues, originally for the purpose of protecting them from the defilements of birds, 1 afterwards as a mere customary adornment. Clement of Alexandria, when arguing with the heathens, taunts them with this fact, that the swallows were in the habit of perching most unceremoniously on the statues of their gods, paying no respect either to Olympian Zeus, or Epidaurian Asclepius, or even to Athene Polias, or the Egyptian Serapis, and he marvels that this had not taught them the senselessness of images. 2 In the apocryphal Epistle of Jeremy the same argument is directed against the idols of Babylon — ' Upon their bodies and heads sit bats, swallows, and birds, and the cats also. By this ye may know that they are no gods : therefore fear them not.' 3 1 Mt)vI