Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

In other respects the volume before us greatly betters its forerunner.
That contained many words which were rather vulgarisms than
provincialisms, and more properly English than American. Almost all
these Mr. Bartlett has left out in revising his book. Once or twice,
however, he has retained as Americanisms phrases which are proverbial,
such as "born in the woods to be scared of an owl," "to carry the foot
in the hand," and "hallooing before you're out of the woods." But it
will be easier to follow the alphabetical order in our short list of
_adversaria_ and comments.

ALEWIFE. We doubt if Mr. Bartlett is right in deriving this from a
supposed Indian word _aloof_. At least, Hakluyt speaks of a fish called
"old-wives"; and in some other old book of travels we have seen the
name derived from the likeness of the fish, with its good, round belly,
to the mistress of an alehouse.

BANK-BILL. Is not an Americanism. It is used by Swift, Pope, and
Fielding.

BOGUS. Mr. Bartlett quotes a derivation of this word from the name of a
certain _Borghese_, said to have been a notorious counterfeiter of
bank-notes. But is it not more probably a corruption of _bagasse_,
which, as applied to the pressed sugarcane, means simply something
worthless? The word originally meant a worthless woman, whence our
"baggage" in the same sense.

[Footnote A: This, perhaps, was to be expected; for he calls Dr.
Latham's _English Language_ "unquestionably the most valuable work on
English philology and grammar--which has yet appeared," (p. xxx.,
note,) and refers to the first edition of 1841. If Mr. Bartlett must
allude at all to Dr. Latham, (who is reckoned a great blunderer among
English philologers,) he should at least have referred to the second
edition of his work, in two volumes, 1855.]

CHAINED-LIGHTNING. More commonly chain-lightning, and certainly not a
Western phrase exclusively.

CHEBACCO-BOAT. Mr. Bartlett says, "This word is doubtless a corruption
of _Chedabucto_, the name of a bay in Nova Scotia, from which vessels
are fitted out for fishing." This is going a great way down East for
what could be found nearer. _Chebacco_ is (or was, a century since) the
name of a part of Ipswich, Massachusetts.

TO FALL a tree Mr. Bartlett considers a corruption of to _fell_. But,
as we have commonly heard the words used, to _fell_ means merely to cut
down, while to fall means to make it fall in a given direction.

TO GO UNDER. "To perish. An expression adopted from the figurative
language of the Indians by the Western trappers and residents of the
prairies." Not the first time that the Indians have had undue credit
for poetry. The phrase is undoubtedly a translation of the German
_untergehen_ (fig.), to perish.

HAT. "Our Northern women have almost discarded the word _bonnet_,
except in _sun-bonnet_, and use the term _hat_ instead. A like fate has
befallen the word _gown_, for which both they and their Southern
sisters commonly use _frock_ or _dress_." We do not know where Mr.
Bartlett draws his Northern line; but in Massachusetts we never heard
the word _hat_ or _frock_ used in this sense. They are so used in
England, and _hat_ is certainly, _frock_ probably, nearer Anglo-Saxon
than _bonnet_ and _gown_.

IMPROVE. Mr. Bartlett quotes Dr. Franklin as saying in 1789, "When I
left New England in the year 1723, this word had never been used among
us, as far as I know, but in the sense of _ameliorated_ or _made
better_, except once in a very old book of Dr. Mather's, entitled
_Remarkable Providences_." Dr. Increase Mather's _Providences_ was
published in 1684. In 1679 a synod assembled at Boston, and the result
of its labors was published in the same year by John Foster, under the
title, _Necessity of a Reformation_. On the sixth page we find,
"Taverns being for the entertainment of strangers, which, if they were
_improved_ to that end only," etc. Oddly enough, our copy of this tract
has Dr. Mather's autograph on the title-page. But Mr. Bartlett should
have referred to Richardson, who shows that the word had been in use
long before with the same meaning.

To INHEAVEN. "A word invented by the Boston transcendentalists." And
Mr. Bartlett quotes from Judd's _Margaret_. Mr. Judd was a good
scholar, and the word is legitimately compounded, like _ensphere_ and
_imparadise_; but he did not invent it. Dante uses the word:--

"Perfetta vita ed alto merto _inciela_
Donna piu su."

LADIES' TRESSES. "The popular name, in the Southern States, for an
herb," etc. In the Northern States also. Sometimes _Ladies' Traces_.

LIEFER. "A colloquialism, also used in England." Excellent Anglo-Saxon,
and used wherever English is spoken.

LOAFER. We think there can be no doubt that this word is German.
_Laufen_ in some parts of Germany is pronounced _lofen_, and we once
heard a German student say to his friend, _Ich lauf'_ (lofe) _hier bis
du wiederkehrst_: and he began accordingly to saunter up and down,--in
short, to _loaf_ about.

TO MULL. "To soften, to dispirit." Mr. Bartlett quotes
_Margaret_,--"There has been a pretty considerable _mullin_ going on
among the doctors." But _mullin_ here means stirring, bustling in an
underhand way, and is a metaphor derived from _mulling wine_. _Mull_,
in this sense, is probably a corruption of _mell_, from Old Fr.
_mesler_, to mix.

TO BE NOWHERE (in the sense of failure) is not an Americanism, but
_Turf_-Slang.

SALLY-LUN, a kind of cake, is English.

TO SAVE, meaning to kill game so as to get it, is not confined to the
Far West, but is common to hunters in all parts of the country.

SHEW, for _showed_. Mr. Bartlett calls this the "shibboleth of
Bostonians." However this may be, it is simply an archaism, not a
vulgarism. _Show_, like _blow, crow, grow,_ seems formerly to have had
what is called a strong preterite. _Shew_ is used by Lord Cromwell and
Hector Boece.

SLASHES. "Swampy or wet lands overgrown with bushes. Southern and
Western." Used also in New York.

SPAN of horses is Dutch (High or Low).

TO WALK SPANISH; to "walk" a boy out of any place by the waistband of
his trousers, or by any lower part easily prehensible. N.E. This is,
perhaps, as old as Philip and Mary.

TO SPREAD ONE'S SELF is defined by Mr. Bartlett "to exert one's self."
It means rather to exert one's self ostentatiously. It is a capital
metaphor, derived, we fancy, from the turkey-cock or peacock,--like the
Italian _pavoneggiarsi_. We find in the _Tatler_ "spreading her graces
in assemblies." This last, however, may be a Gallicism, from _etaler_.

STRAW BAIL. "Worthless bail, bail given by 'men of straw.'" This is
surely no Americanism, and we have seen its origin very differently
explained, namely, that men willing for a fee to become bail walked in
the neighborhood of the courts with straws stuck in their
shoes,--though Mr. Bartlett's explanation is ingenious.

SUNFISH. Mr. Bartlett thinks this a corruption; but the resemblance of
the fish, as seen in the water, to the ordinary portraits of the sun in
almanacs and on tavern-signs seems to us enough to account for the
name.

A few phrases occur to us that have escaped Mr. Bartlett.

A CARRY: portage. _Passim_.

CAT-NAP: a short doze. New England.

CHOWDER-HEAD: muddle-brain. New England.

COHEES (accent on the last syllable): term applied to the people of
certain settlements in Western Pennsylvania, from their use of the
archaic form, _Quo' he_.

TO COTTON TO.

DON' KNOW AS I KNOW: the nearest your true Yankee ever comes to
acknowledging ignorance.

GANDER-PARTY: a social gathering of men only. New England.

LAP-TEA: where the guests are too many to sit at table. Massachusetts.

LAST OF PEA-TIME: day after fair.

LOSE-LAID (loose-laid): weaver's term, and probably English; means
weak-willed. Massachusetts.

MOONGLADE: a beautiful word for the track of moonlight on the water.
Massachusetts.

OFF-OX: an unmanageable fellow. New England.

OLD DRIVER: } euphemistic for the
OLD SPLIT-FOOT: } Devil.

ONHITCH (unhitch): to pull trigger.

ROTE: sound of the surf before a storm. Used also in England. New
England.

SEEM: I can't _seem_ to see, for I can't see. She couldn't _seem_ to be
suited, for couldn't be suited.

STATE-HOUSE. This seems an Americanism. Did we invent it, or borrow it
from the _Stad-huys_ (town-hall) of New Amsterdam? As an instance of
the tendency to uniformity in American usage, we notice that in
Massachusetts what has always been the _State-House_ is beginning to be
called the _Capitol_. We are sorry for it.

STRIKE: } terms of the game of STRING: } nine-pins.

SWALE: a hollow. New England. English also; see Forby.

TORMENTED: euphemistic, as "not a _tormented_ cent." New England.

WELL-SWEEP.

We have gone through Mr. Bartlett's book with the attention which a
work so well done deserves, and are thoroughly impressed with the
amount of care and labor to which it bears witness. We have quarrelled
with it wherever we could, because it cannot fail to become the
standard authority in its department. Its value will increase from year
to year. For instance, the Spanish words, in which it is especially
rich, are doomed to undergo strange metamorphoses on Anglo-Saxon lips;
for it is the instinct of the unlearned to naturalize words as fast as
possible, and to compel them to homebred shapes and sounds. There is
often an unwitting humor in these perversions,[A] and they are always
interesting as showing that it is the nature of man to use words with
understanding, however appearances might lead us to an opposite
conclusion.

[Footnote A: We remember once hearing a man say of something, that it
was written in a "very grand delinquent [grandiloquent] style,"--a
phrase certainly not without modern application. We have heard also
Angola-Saxons and Angular-Saxons,--the latter, at least, not an unhappy
perversion.]

The least satisfactory part of Mr. Bartlett's book is the Appendix, in
which he has got together a few proverbs and similes, which, it seems
to us, do no kind of justice to the humor and invention of the people.
Most of them have no characteristic at all, except coarseness. We hope
there is nothing peculiarly American in such examples as these:--"Evil
actions, like crushed rotten eggs, stink in the nostrils of all"; and
"Vice is a skunk that smells awfully rank when stirred up by the pole
of misfortune." These have, beside, an artificial air, and are quite
too long-skirted for working proverbs, in which language always "takes
off its coat to it," if we may use a proverbial phrase, left out by Mr.
Bartlett. We confess, we looked for something racier and of a more
_puckery_ flavor. One hears such now and then, mostly from the
West,--like "Mean enough to steal acorns from a blind hog"; "I take my
tea _bar-foot_," the answer of a backwoodsman, when asked if he would
have cream and sugar. Some are unmistakably Eastern; as, "All deacons
are good,--but there's odds in deacons"; "He's a whole team and the dog
under the wagon"; "That's first-rate and a half"; "Handy as a pocket in
a shirt" (ironical). Almost every county has some good die sinker in
language, who mints phrases that pass into the currency of a whole
neighborhood. We picked up two such the other day, both of the same
coinage. The county-jail (the only stone building where all the
dwellings were of wood) was described as "the house whose underpinning
comes up to the eaves"; while the place unmentionable to ears polite
was "where they don't rake up the fires at night." A man, speaking to
us once of a very rocky clearing, said, "Stone's got a pretty heavy
mortgage on that farm"; and another, wishing to give us a notion of the
thievishness common in a certain village, capped his climax
thus:--"Dishonest! why, they have to take in their stone walls o'
nights." Any one who has driven over a mountain-stream by one of those
bridges made of _slabs_ will feel the force of a term we once heard
applied to a parson so shaky in character that no dependence could be
placed on him,--"A slab-bridged kind o' feller!" During some very cold
weather, a few years ago, we picked a notable saying or two. "The fire
don't seem to git no kind o' _purchase_ on the cold." "They say Cap'n
M'Clure's gone through the Northwest Passage." "Has? Think likely, and
left the door open, too!" Elder Knapp, the once noted itinerant
preacher, had a kind of unwashed poetry in him. We heard him say
once,--"Do you want to know when a Unitarian" (we think it was) "will
get into heaven? When hell's froze over, and he can skate in!" We quote
merely for illustration, and do not mean to compare the Elder with
Taylor or South.

The element of exaggeration has often been remarked on as typical of
American humor. In Dr. Petri's "Compact Handbook of Foreign Words,"[A]
(from which Mr. Bartlett will be surprised to learn that _Hoco-pocos_
is a nickname for the Whig party in the United States,) we are told that
the word _humbug_ "is commonly used for the exaggerations of the
North-Americans." One would think the dream of Columbus half-fulfilled,
and that Europe had found in the West the near way to Orientalism, at
least of diction. But it seems to us that a great deal of what is set
down as mere exaggeration is more fitly to be called intensity and
picturesqueness, symptoms of the imaginative faculty in full health and
strength, though producing, as yet, only the raw material.[B]
By-and-by, perhaps, the world will see it worked up into poem and
picture, and Europe, which will be hard-pushed for originality ere
long, may thank us for a new sensation. The French continue to find
Shakspeare exaggerated, because he treated English just as our folk do
when they speak of "a steep price," or say that they "freeze to" a
thing. The first postulate of an original literature is, that a people
use their language as if they owned it. Even Burns contrived to write
very poor English. Vulgarisms are often only poetry in the egg. The
late Horace Mann, in one of his Addresses, commented at some length on
the beauty of the French phrase _s'orienter_, and called on his young
hearers to practise it in life. There was not a Yankee in his audience
whose problem had not always been to find out what was "_about east_"
and shape his course accordingly. The Germans have a striking proverb;
_Was die Gans gedacht, das der Schwan vollbracht_; What the goose but
thought, that the swan fullbrought; or, to de-Saxonize it a little,
_pace_ Mr. Bartlett, What the goose conceived, that the swan
achieved;--and we cannot help thinking, that the life, invention, and
vigor shown in our popular speech, and the freedom with which it is
shaped to the need of those who wield it, are of the best omen for our
having a swan at last.

[Footnote A: _Gedraengtes Handbuch der Fremdwoerter_, etc., etc.,
Leipzig, 1852.]

[Footnote B: Take, for instance, the "negro so black that charcoal made
a chalk-mark on him," or the "shingle painted to look so like stone
that it sank in water,"--itself overpersuaded by the skill of the
painter. We overheard the following dialogue last winter.
(Thermometer,--12 deg..) "Cold, this morning."--"That's _so_. Hear what
happened to Joe?"--"No, I didn't."--"Well, the doctors had ben givin'
him one thing another with merc'ry in't, and he walked out down to the
Post-Office and back, and when he come home he kind o' felt somethin'
hard in his boots. Come to pull 'em off, they found a lump o'
quicksilver in both on 'em."--"Sho!"--"Fact; it had shrunk clean down
through him with the cold." This rapid power of dramatizing a dry fact,
of putting it into flesh and blood, and the instantaneous conception of
Joe as a human thermometer, seem to us more like the poetical faculty
than anything else. It is, at any rate, humor, and not mere quickness
of wit,--the deeper, and not the shallower quality. Humor tends always
to overplus of expression; wit is mathematically precise. Captain Basil
Hall denied that our people had humor; but did he possess it himself?
for, if not, he would never find it. Did he always feel the point of
what was said to himself? We doubt, because we happen to know a chance
he once had given him in vain. The Captain was walking up and down the
_piazza_ of a country tavern while the couch changed horses. A
thunderstorm was going on, and, with that pleasant European air of
indirect self-compliment in condescending to American merit, which is
so conciliating, he said to a countryman lounging near, "Pretty heavy
thunder, you have here." The other, who had taken his measure at a
glance, drawled gravely, "Waal, we _du_, considerin' the number of
inhabitants."]

Even persons not otherwise interested in the study of provincialisms
will find Mr. Bartlett's book an entertaining one. The passages he
quotes in illustration are sometimes strangely comic. Here is one: "To
SAVE. To make sure, i.e., to kill game, or an enemy, whether man or
beast. _To get_ conveys the same meaning.... The notorious Judge W----
of Texas ... once said in a speech at a barbecue, (after his political
opponent had been apologizing for taking a man's life in a duel,)--

"'The gentleman need not make such a fuss about _getting_ such a
rascal; everybody knows that I have shot three, and two of them I
_saved_.'"

We have but one fault to find with Mr. Bartlett's Dictionary, and that
it shares with all other provincial glossaries. No accents are given.
No stranger could tell, for example, whether _hacmatack_ should be
pronounced hac'matack, hacma'tack, or hacmatack'. The value of Mr.
Wright's otherwise excellent dictionary is very much impaired by this
neglect. Ignorance of the pronunciation enhances tenfold the difficulty
of tracing analogies or detecting corruptions. The title of Mr.
Coleridge's volume (the second on our list) is enough to give scholars
a notion of its worth. It is the first instalment of the proposed
comprehensive English Dictionary of the Philological Society, a work
which, when finished, will be beyond measure precious to all students
of their mother-tongue. At the end of the volume will be found the Plan
of the Society, with minute directions for all those who wish to give
their help. Cooperation on this side the water will be gladly welcomed.

Of Dean Trench's two volumes, one is new, and the other a revised
edition. No one has done more than he to popularize the study of words,
which is only another name for the study of thought. His new book has
the same agreeable qualities which marked its forerunners, maintaining
an easy conversational level of scholarly gossip and reflection, the
middle ground between learning and information for the million. Without
great philological attainments, and without any pretence of such, he
gives the results of much good reading.

Mr. Craik's book is a compact and handy manual.

The SLANG Dictionaries are both as ill-done as possible, and the author
of the smaller one deserves to be put under the pump for taking the
name of the illustrious Ducange, one of those megatheria of erudition
and industry that we should look on as an extinct species, but for such
men as the brothers Grimm. The larger book has the merit of including a
bibliography of the subject, for which the author deserves our thanks,
though in other respects showing no least qualification for the task he
has undertaken. We trust there are not many "London Antiquaries" so
ignorant as he. One curious fact we glean from his volume, namely, the
currency among the London populace of certain Italian words, chiefly
for the smaller pieces of money. What a strident invasion of
organ-grinders does this seem to indicate! The author gives them thus:
"Oney saltec, a penny; Dooe saltee, twopence; Tray saltee, threepence,"
etc., and adds, "These numerals, as will be seen, are of mongrel
origin,--the French, perhaps, predominating."! He must be the gentleman
who, during the Exhibition of 1851, wrote on his door, "No French
spoken here." _Dooe saltee_ and _tray saltee_ differ little but in
spelling from their Italian originals, _due soldi_ and _tre soldi_. On
another page we find _molto cattivo_ transmogrified into "_multee
kertever_, very had." Very bad, indeed! For one more good thing beside
the Bibliography, we are indebted to the "London Antiquary." In his
Introduction he has reprinted the earliest list of _cant_ words in the
language, that made by Thomas Harman in Elizabeth's time. We wish we
could only feel sure of the accuracy of the reprint. In this list we
find already the adjective _rum_ meaning _good, fine_,--a word that has
crept into general use among the lower classes in London, without ever
gaining promotion. The fate of new words in this respect is curious.
Often, if they are convenient, or have knack of lodging easily in the
memory, they work slowly upward. The Scotch word _flunky_ is a case in
point. Our first knowledge of it in print is from Fergusson's Poems.
Burns advertised it more widely, and Carlyle seems fairly to have
transplanted it into the English of the day. As we believe its origin
is still obscure, we venture on a guess at it. French allies brought
some words into Scotland that have rooted themselves, like the
Edinburgh _gardyloo_. _Flunky_ is defined in Fergusson's glossary as "a
better kind of servant." This is an exact definition of the Scotch
_hench-man_, the most probable original of which is _haunch-man_ or
body-guard. Turn haunch-man into French and you get _flanquier_;
corrupt it back into Scotch and you have _flunky_. Whatever liberties
we take with French words, the Gauls have their revenge when they take
possession of an English one. We once saw an Avis of the police in
Paris, regulating _les chiens et les boule dogues_, dogs and bull-dogs.

Vocabularies of vulgarisms are of interest for the archaisms both of
language and pronunciation which we find in them. The dictionaries say
_coverlet_, as if the word were a diminutive; the rustic persists in
the termination _lid_, which points to the French _lit_, bed. On the
other hand, he still says _hankercher_, having been taught so by his
betters, though they have taken up the final _f_ again. Sewel, in the
Introduction to his Dutch Dictionary, 1691, gives _henketsjer_, and
Voltaire, forty years later, _hankercher_, as the received
pronunciation. Sewel tells us also that the significant _l_ was still
sounded in _would_ and _should_, as it still is by the peasantry in
many parts of England.

Mr. Swinton's book, the last on our list, is an entertaining one, and
gives proof of thought, though sometimes smothered in fine writing. It
is written altogether too loosely for a work on philology, one of the
exactest of sciences. But we have a graver fault to find with Mr.
Swinton, and that is for his neglect to give credit where he is
indebted. He seems even desirous to conceal his obligations. The
general acknowledgment of his Preface is by no means enough, where the
debt is so large. The great merit of Dr. Richardson's Dictionary being
the number of illustrative passages he has brought together, it is
hardly fair in Mr. Swinton so often to make a show of learning with
what he has got at second hand from the lexicographer. Dr. Trench could
also make large reclamations, and several others. There is beside an
unpleasant assumption of superiority in the book. An author who says
that _paganus_ means village, who makes _ocula_ the plural of _oculus_,
and who supposes that _in petto_ means _in little_, is not qualified to
settle Dr. Webster's claims as a philologer, much less to treat him
with contempt. The first two blunders we have cited may be slips of the
pen or the press, but this cannot be true of the many wrong etymologies
into which Mr. Swinton has fallen. We hope that in another edition he
will correct these faults, for he shows a power to appreciate ideas
which is worth more than mere scholarship, vastly more than the
reputation of it among the unscholarly.

_A History and Description of New England, General and Local._ By A. J.
COOLIDGE and J. B. MANSFIELD. Illustrated with Numerous Engravings. In
Two Volumes. Vol. I. Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Boston: Austin
J. Coolidge, 1859. pp. xxv., 1023.

This is a book of great labor, being nothing less in plan than a
condensed town-history of New England. In spite of all efforts to the
contrary, one is forced to admit that there is very little poetry in
American history. It is a record of advances in material prosperity,
and scarce anything more. The only lumps of pure ore are the _Idea_
which the Pilgrims were possessed with and its gradual incarnation in
events and institutions. Beyond this all is barren. There is a fearful
destitution of the picturesque elements. It is true that our local
historians commonly avoid all romance as if it were of the Enemy; but
if we compare their labors with "The Beauties of England and Wales,"
for example, the work certainly of uninspired men, we shall be
convinced that the American Dryasdust suffers from poverty of material.
There is no need to remind us of Hawthorne; but he is such a genius as
is rare everywhere, and could conjure poetry out of a country
meeting-house.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20