book II
cap. 12.) says, "which term I shall explain in the very words of Littleton: 'It seemeth that this word _hotchpot_ is in English a pudding; for in a pudding is not commonly just one thing alone, but one thing with other things together.' By this housewifely metaphor our ancestors meant to inform us that the lands, both those given in frankmarriage, and those descending in fee-simple, should be mixed and blended together, and then divided in equal portions among all the daughters."]
_High and Low Dutch._--Is there any essential difference between High and Low Dutch; and if there be any, to which set do the Dutchmen at the Cape of Good Hope belong?
S. C. P.
[High and Low Dutch are vulgarisms to express the German and the Dutch languages, which those nations themselves call, for the German _Deutsch_, for the Dutch _Holländisch_. The latter is the language which the Dutch colonists of the Cape carried with them, when that colony was conquered by them from the Portuguese; and has for its base the German as spoken before Martin Luther's translation of the Bible made the dialect of Upper Saxony the written language of the entire German empire.]
_"A Wilderness of Monkeys."_--Would you kindly inform me where the expression is to be found: "I would not do such or such a thing for a wilderness of monkeys?"
C. A.
Ripley.
["_Tubal._ One of them showed me a ring that he had of your daughter for a monkey.
"_Shylock._ Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal: it was my turquoise; I had it of Leah, when I was a bachelor: I would not have given it for _a wilderness of monkies_."--_Merchant of Venice_, Act III. Sc. 1.]
_Splitting Paper._--Could any of your readers give the receipt for splitting paper, say a bank-note? In no book can I find it, but I believe that it is known by many.
H. C.
Liverpool.
[Paste the paper which is to be split between two pieces of calico; and, when thoroughly dry, tear them asunder. The paper will split, and, when the calico is wetted, is easily removed from it.]
_The Devil on Two Sticks in England._--Who is the author of a work, entitled as under?
"The Devil upon Two Sticks in England; being a Continuation of Le Diable Boiteux of Le Sage. London: printed at the Logographic Press, and sold by T. Walter, No. 169. Piccadilly; and W. Richardson, under the Royal Exchange, 1790."
It is a work of very considerable merit, an imitation in style and manner of Le Sage, but original in its matter. It is published in six volumes 8vo.
WILLIAM NEWMAN.
[William Coombe, Esq., the memorable author of _The Diaboliad_, and _The Tour of Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque_.]
* * * * *
REPLIES.
STONE PILLAR WORSHIP AND IDOL WORSHIP.
(Vol. v., p. 121.; Vol. vii., p. 383.)
_Stone Pillar Worship._--Sir J. E. TENNENT inquires whether any traces of this worship are to be found in Ireland, and refers to a letter from a correspondent of Lord Roden's, which states that the peasantry of the island of Inniskea, off the coast of Mayo, hold in reverence a stone idol called _Neevougi_. This word I cannot find in my Irish dictionary, but it is evidently a diminutive, formed from the word _Eevan_ (Io[.m]ai[.g]), image, or idol: and it is remarkable that the scriptural Hebrew term for idol is identical with the Irish, or nearly so--¤'WN¤ (_Eevan_), derived from a root signifying _negation_, and applied to the vanity of idols, and to the idols themselves.
I saw at Kenmare, in the county of Kerry, in the summer of 1847, a water-worn fragment of clay slate, bearing a rude likeness to the human form, which the peasantry called _Eevan_. Its original location was in or near the old graveyard of Kilmakillogue, and it was regarded with reverence as the image of some saint in "the ould auncient times," as an "ould auncient" native of Tuosist (the lonely place) informed me. In the same immediate neighbourhood is a gullaune (+gallán+), or stone pillar, at which the peasantry used "to give {414} rounds;" also the curious small lakes or tarns, on which the islands were said to move on July 8, St. Quinlan's [Kilian?] Day. (See Smith's _History of Kerry_.)
However, such superstitious usages are fast falling into desuetude; and, whatever may have been the early history of Eevan, it is a sufficient proof of no vestige of stone pillar worship remaining in Tuosist, that, to gratify the whim of a young gentleman, some peasants from the neighbourhood removed this stone fragment by boat to Kenmare the spring of 1846, where it now lies, perched on the summit of a limestone rock in the grounds of the nursery-house.
J. L.
Dublin.
_Idol Worship._--The islands of Inniskea, on the north-west coast of Ireland, are said to be inhabited by a population of about four hundred human beings, who speak the Irish language, and retain among them a trace of that government by chiefs which in former times existed in Ireland. The present chief or king of Inniskea is an intelligent peasant, whose authority is universally acknowledged, and the settlement of all disputes is referred to his decision. Occasionally they have been visited by wandering schoolmasters, but so short and casual have such visits been, that there are not ten individuals who even know the letters of any language. Though nominally Roman Catholics, these islanders have no priest resident among them, and their worship consists in occasional meetings at their chief's house, with visits to a holy well. Here the absence of religion is filled with the open practice of pagan idolatry; for in the south island a stone idol, called in the Irish _Neevougi_, has been from time immemorial religiously preserved and worshipped. This god, in appearance, resembles a thick roll of homespun flannel, which arises from a custom of dedicating a material of their dress to it whenever its aid is sought: this is sewed on by an old woman, its priestess, whose peculiar care it is. They pray to it in time of sickness. It is invoked when a storm is desired to dash some helpless ship upon the coast; and, again, the exercise of its power is solicited in calming the angry waves to admit of fishing.
Such is a brief outline of these islanders and their god; but of the early history of this idol no authentic information has yet been obtained. Can any of your numerous readers furnish an account of it?
WILLIAM BLOOD.
Wicklow.
* * * * *
"BLAGUEUR" AND "BLACKGUARD."
(Vol. vii., p. 77.)
I cannot concur in opinion with SIR EMERSON TENNANT, who thinks he has a right to identify the sense of our low word _blagueur_ with that of your lower one, _blackguard_. I allow that there some slight similitude of pronunciation between the words, but I contend that their sense is perfectly distinct, or, rather, wholly different; as distant, in fact, as is the date of their naturalisation in our respective idioms. Your _blackguard_ had already won a "local habitation and a name" under the reigns of Pope and his immediate predecessor Dryden. Of all living unrespectable characters our own _blagueur_ is the youngest, the most innocent, and the shyest. He is entirely of modern growth. He has but lately emerged from the soldier's barracks, the suttler's shop, and the mess-room. As a prolific tale-teller he amused the leisure hours of superannuated sergeants and half-pay subalterns. Ten or twelve years ago he had not yet made his appearance in plain clothes; he is now creeping and winding his way with slow and sure steps from his old haunts into some first-rate coffee-houses and shabby-genteel drawing-rooms, which Carlyle calls _sham gentility_. He bears on his very brow the newest _flunky-stamp_. The poor young fellow, after all, is no villain; he has no kind of connexion with the horrid rascal SIR EMERSOM TENNENT alludes to--with the _blackguard_. That he is a boaster, a talker, an idiot, a nincompoop; that he scatters "words, words, words," as Polonius did of old; that he is bombastic, wordy, prosy, nonsensical, and a fool, no one will deny. But he is no rogue, though he utters rogueries and drolleries. No one is justified in slandering him.
The _blackguard_ is a dirty fellow in every sense of the word--a _gredin_ (a cur), the true translation, by-the-bye, of the word _blackguard_. Voltaire, who dealt largely in Billingsgate, was very fond of the word _gredin_:
"Je semble à trois gredins, dans leur petit cerveau, Que pour être imprimés et reliés en veau," &c.
The word _blagueur_ implies nothing so contemptuous or offensive as the word _blackguard_ does. The emptiness of the person to whom it applies is very harmless. Its etymon _blague_ (bladder, _tobacco-bag_), the pouch, which smoking voluptuaries use to deposit their tobacco, is perfectly symbolic of the inane, bombastic, windy, and long-winded speeches and sayings of the _blagueur_. Every French commercial traveller, buss-tooter, and Parisian jarvy is one. When he deports himself with modesty, and shows a gentlemanly tact in his peculiar avocation, we call him a _craqueur_ (a cracker). "Ancient Pistol" was the king of _blagueurs_; Falstaff, of _craqueurs_. I like our _Baron de Crac_, a native of the land of white-liars and honey-tongued gentlemen (Gascony). The genus _craqueur_ is common here: as it shoots out into a thousand branches, shades, varieties, and modifications, judicial, political, poetical, and so on, it would be {415} quite out of my province to pursue farther the description of _blagueur_-land or _blarney_-land.
P.S.--Excuse my French-English.
PHILARÈTE CHASLES, Mazarinæus.
Paris, Palais de l'Institut.
* * * * *
HARMONY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS.
(Vol. viii., p. 316.)
In answer to Z. I may state that the first attempt of this kind is attributed to Tatian. Eusebius, in his _Ecc. Hist._ (quoted in Lardner's _Works_, vol. ii. p. 137. ed. 1788), says, he "composed I know not what--harmony and collection of the gospels, which he called ~dia tessarôn~." Eusebius himself composed a celebrated harmony, of which, as of some others in the sixteenth and two following centuries, there is a short account in Michaelis's _Introduction to the New Test._, translated by Bishop Marsh, vol. iii.