put together. If any inquisitive foreigner should happen to learn that our most superb public edifices-St. Paul's and York cathedrals, for example-are ashler-work; that is, constructed (as here defined) of stones as they come from the quarry; what an elevated opinion he must form of English architecture! No one, as far as we know, has attempted an etymology of the word; which seems to be confined to the British islands: we believe it to be Celtic. The Gaelic is clach shreathal (pronounced shreāl); i. e., stone laid in rows-from sreah, a row. We have another Celtic term still more extensively diffused-viz., gavelock, a large crow used by masons and quarrymen. A lynx-eyed antiquary might here find materials for some speculation respecting the native country of the workmen employed in the construction of our old castles and cathedrals. But indeed, speaking seriouslythough we suspect Sir Francis Palgrave exaggerates the amount of the Celtic element in our actual language-we can have no doubt that that element is a very considerable one; and that the author, if there ever shall be one, of a complete English Lexicon, will be, inter alia, a Celtic scholar. AVERAGE. We believe our English termination has here helped to confound three perfectly distinct words. The old lawterm denoting the service which a tenant was bound to render to his lord with teams and carriages, is from Latin. barb. averium, originally, goods, property; in a secondary sense, jumentum; Scoticè, aiver (compare chattel and cattle). The marine termFrench, avarie, is the German haferey; Lower Saxon, haverije— meaning, in the first instance, harbour dues; more commonly, a contribution towards loss or damage incurred at sea; and in a still more extensive acceptation, a mean proportion between unequal quantities. Lastly, average or averish, after-grass, stubble— a sense, we believe, confined to the Anglian and Northumbrian counties is the Icelandic afrett or afrettr; Danish, afred, aevret -primarily, an inclosure, also pasturage-after-grass. We are ashamed to say, that a whole bevy of provincial glossarists have acquiesced in the portentous mongrel etymology of hiver, eatage! Tell it not at Copenhagen! Had they resolved the parallel term eddish into eatage, it would have been more to the purpose. This is a word of remote antiquity. In Ulphilas, we find atisks, seges; in Anglo-Saxon, edisc, vivarium; in the Leges Bajuvariorum, ezzisczun-apparently, park or paddock-fence; in various glosses of the eighth and ninth centuries ezzisc, ezzisca, seges; and in the modern Bavarian, ätzen, to depasture-ätz, eddish, aftermath—and essisch, a common field; all from the verbs etan, ezzan, essan, to eat. In average the primary import is inclosure-the derivative, food or pasturage--in eddish, originally food, there is a curious a curious fluctuation between the two meanings. It is not unworthy of notice, that in Greek xopros means both gramen and hortus: if food or pasturage is the original sense, the Persian khorden, to eat, furnishes a plausible etymology. AWARD. Of the various etymologies proposed for this word, we shall merely observe, that Tooke's- a determination à qui c'est à garder'-is the clumsiest and worst. Award has evidently a subjective, not an objective meaning; and an etymon that confounds the two ideas, seems neither logical nor very probable. We have nothing certain to offer in lieu of it; but, like Rumour, we have a couple of supposes.' Qvardi, in Icelandic, is a half-ell, statute measure, whence the verb aqvarda, to allot; i. e., to give a man his measure. If we suppose this to have come in with the Northmen, and to have become a forensic term, it follows, that when our barristers and commissioners make their awards, they are dealing out justice by the half-ell. They who think this trop boutiquier, may take refuge in the Lower Saxon warden, to fix the worth, to estimate. In the Rouchi or Valenciennes dialect, which has borrowed a good deal from the Belgic, auvarde is an expert, or legal appraiser 'Utrum horum mavis accipe!' BIRCH. This tree of knowledge bears a name analogous to the one so well known at Eton and Westminster, not only in all the German and Slavonic tongues, but also in the Sanscritb'hurjja. On this foundation Klaproth builds an argument for the northern origin of the dominant race in Hindostan. It seems birch was the only tree the invaders recognized, and could name, on the south side of the Himalaya; all others being new to them. The inference may be right or wrong-it is, at all events, ingenious. BLIND. We admit the ingenuity of Tooke's derivation from blinnan, to stop, but, like Miss Edgeworth's hero, Mr. Macleod, we think it may be dooted-for the following reasons :—1. blinnan does not mean to stop up, obturare, but simply to cease, discontinue; 2. it is not a simple verb, but in reality be-linnan, as is proved by the old high German gloss pi-linnan, cessare, and the Icelandic linnan, the preposition be or bi not being known in this language; nevertheless the adjective is exactly the same, blindr, though it is not easy to see how it could be formed from the simple linnan. We say nothing respecting the real etymology, because we believe that nothing is known of it beyond the Moso-Gothic blinds. Schmitthenner's reference of it to blenden, occœcare, seems to be a hysteron-proteron. Blenden is a causative verb, denoting to make blind, like raise from rise, set from sit, consequently, of more recent origin than the adjective. Grimm's deri vation from blandan, to confuse, is more probable, but not quite convincing. COTTER. Our readers are doubtless aware that the appellations, Cotarii, Coscez, Bordurii, in Domesday, have caused our antiquaries a great deal of perplexity. We do not undertake to settle the entire question, but we may perhaps furnish something like a clue to one of the terms. In Lower Saxony, the former abode of our ancestors, the following classes existed late in the eighteenth century:-1. bauer, the Anglo-Saxon ceorl, one who holds and cultivates a farm of not less than a carucate or ploughgate of land, commonly about thirty acres; 2. halbmeyer, in Brunswick halbspänner, a smaller farmer occupying only half the amount; 3. käterkother, kotsass, kossat, one who holds a cottage and a quantity of land not exceeding the fourth part of an ordinary farm, having no plough or team, and, consequently, no land under tillage; 4. brinksitter, who has nothing but a cot, and a small garden or croft, sometimes called handfröhner, from being chiefly occupied in servile manual labour for his feudal superior. The above words are used with some occasional latitude of application, but we believe that we have given the original meanings. There is no etymological connexion between bordarius and brinksitter, the former being derived from bord, a cottage, the latter from brink, a small croft; nor do they appear to have denoted the same class of persons; but we have not the smallest doubt of the original identity of coscez with kossat, or kotsass. It is evident that the AngloSaxons brought the term with them from Germany, and, consequently, that something like the same gradations of society existed among them in their Pagan state as at the time of our national survey. We believe that a careful study of the old Lower Saxon, Frisic, Danish, and Icelandic laws would amply repay the legal and constitutional antiquary as well as the philologist.* CURL.-Among various etymologies for this word, only one of which is to the purpose, Mr. Todd gives pleasantly enough, Danish krille, which means to itch! The Icelandic krulla does, indeed, signify to curl, but this is as etymologically distinct from krille as κρυός is from κριός. The primary meaning of the word seems to have been hitherto overlooked. We conceive that our curl, the Scottish curling (a game on the ice), with the verb to hurl, including the Cornish hurling (a sort of cricket), are merely different forms and modifications of roll. In Schmeller's Dictionary we find krollen, to curl the hair; horlen, hurlen, to roll, to play at We may take this opportunity of directing the attention of the reader curious in such matters to a valuable little tract on Ancient Juries, lately published by Mr. Repp, an Icelander of extensive learning, employed in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh. skittles. skittles. Scroll is also of the same family, exactly answering to Latin volumen. Compare troll, stroll, &c. DEARTH.-Tooke, in his antipathy to abstracts, explains dearth into dereth, Anglo-Saxon derian, nocere. This we hold to be just as felicitous as the Bishop of Winchester's guess that a lugg meant a cathedral.* It is a noun formed from the adjective dear, like caritas from carus, and, etymologically speaking, neither denotes suffering nor scarcity, but simply costliness, high price-Old German, tiur, precious, tiuran, to hold dear, glorify. The German equivalent for derian is derjan or daron, lædere-as distinct from tiur and dear as light is from darkness. EXCEPT. It has been the fashion since the appearance of the Diversions of Purley to call except, save, and similar expressions, verbs in the imperative mood. Dr. Webster, though he professes o have made no use of Tooke's writings, frequently advances the same doctrines in nearly the same words, and is very severe on grammarians who regard such words as conjunctions. In the examples, Israel burned none of them save Hazor only '-' I would that all were as I am, except these bonds'-he considers it as certain that save and except are transitive verbs with an object following them. We hesitate not to say that they cannot be verbs, imperative or indicative, because they have no subject, and that a verb could not be employed in any language that distinguishes the different persons without a gross violation of idiom. This will clearly appear if, in the vulgar Latin version of the latter sentence, Opto omnes fieri tales, qualis et ego sum, exceptis vinculis his,' we substitute excipe vincula hæc,' or any other person of excipio. The fact is, that in the above instances save is an adjective with the force of a participle (Latin, salvus), and except an abbreviated participle; in short, these and many similar forms were originally ablatives absolute, a construction as familiar in Anglo-Saxon, Old German, and Icelandic, as in Latin, but necessarily less apparent in modern languages, in which the distinctions of case are obliterated. The following examples, all taken from existing versions of the New Testament, show the progress of the ablative participle to an indeclinable word. Icelandic undanteknum thessum böndum,' exactly equivalent to exceptis vinculis his—Italian, eccettuate queste catene, preserving the number and gender, but losing the case; Spanish, salvo estas prisiones; Portuguese, excepto estas pri zoēns; German, ausgenommen diese bände, where all distinction of number, case, and gender is lost. Such phrases as demus ita esse, French supposons qu'il vienne, sometimes rendered in English by verbs and sometimes by conjunctions, are different constructions, totally unconnected with the point in debate. * Vide Fortunes of Nigel, vol. iii. c. 9, p. 250. HAGGLE HAGGLE. Mr. Todd refers this word to the French harceler; and Dr. Webster tries to connect it through the medium of higgle with the Danish hykle, to play the hypocrite. Hykle is borrowed from the German heucheln, and neither agrees with our English word in form nor meaning. A derivation furnished by Schmeller is somewhat curious. Häkeln, literally to hook, also applied to a sort of boys'-play, in which each inserts his hooked forefinger into that of his opponent, and tries to drag him from his standingwhence metaphorically to strive, wrangle. According to this etymon, haggling is playing at finger-hookey.' LOUD.-Mr. Tooke confidently refers this word to the AngloSaxon hlowan, to low, and exults greatly at the discovery that some of our old writers wrote it lowd. They who are acquainted with the capricious orthography of the middle ages will be able to appreciate this sort of evidence at its real worth. Until it is shown by what process hlud can be extracted from hlowan, which we do not think a very easy task, we shall prefer believing that loud does not mean what is lowed or bellowed, but what is heard. We do not, indeed, find any simple verb, hluan, or hluen, to hear; but there are the following traces of one-Gothic hliuma, the ear, evidently a verbal noun-Old German, hliumunt, hearsay, report; hlosen, to listen;-and many others. On this supposition, the Anglo-Saxon hlud, Old German, hlut, Modern German laut, loud, also, sound, will denote quod aure percipitur. It is, at least, certain that a similar verb has nearly gone the round of the European languages :-Greek xλów, Latin cluo, clueo, inclytus, Lithuanian klausyti, Irish cluinim, Welsh clywed, besides several Sclavonic words. The root of all is to be found in the Sanscrit sru, to hear, in which the s is palatal, consequently organically allied to the initial consonant of xλów and its fellows. MUCH, MORE. According to Tooke, more, most, are from the Anglo-Saxon mowe, a mow, or heap, q. d. mower, mowest. Much is abbreviated from mokel, mykel, mochel, muchel, a diminutive of mo.' More strange, we fear, than true! We know the Greeks had their dovλórepos, and similar words, but nobis non licet esse tam disertis. We affirm, without fear of contradiction, that there is not an instance of a substantive in the comparative or superlative degree, in a single Germanic dialect of which we have any knowledge. The remainder of the statement is equally incredible. It would be difficult to show how the Gothic mikils, a word known to be more than fourteen hundred years old, was manufactured from either mo or mow; and such phrases as se mycel Atlas, that is, according to our oracle, Atlas the little mow, sound as odd to us, as meritorious, respectable, worthy of the gallows, did to Golownin's Japanese VOL. LIV. NO. CVIII. |