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 German, Flemish, Dutch, Spanish, and French Schools (1854) and the Essays on the Administrations of Great Britain (1864), written by his lifelong friend, Sir George Cornewall Lewis. His translation from the Icelandic of Viga Glum’s Saga appeared in 1866.

HEAD, SIR FRANCIS BOND, (1793–1875), English soldier, traveller and author, son of James Roper Head of the Hermitage, Higham, Kent, was born there on the 1st of January 1793. He was educated at Rochester grammar school and the Royal Military Academy, whence in 1811 he was commissioned to the Royal Engineers. He was for some years stationed in the Mediterranean, and he served in the campaign of 1815, being present at the battle of Waterloo. He went on half-pay in 1825, when he accepted the charge of an association formed to work the gold and silver mines of Rio de La Plata. In connexion with this enterprise he made several rapid journeys across the Pampas and among the Andes, his Rough Notes of which, published in 1826, and written in a clear and spirited style, obtained for him the name of “Galloping Head.” On his return in 1827, he became involved in a controversy with the directors of his company, and in defence of his conduct he published Reports of the La Plata Mining Association (London, 1827). He was soon afterwards restored to the active list of the army as a major unattached, mainly owing to his efforts to introduce the South American lasso into the British service for auxiliary draught. In 1830 he published a life of Bruce, the African traveller, and in 1834 Bubbles from the Brunnens of Nassau, by an Old Man. In 1835 he was knighted, and in the following year created a baronet. In 1835 he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, and in this capacity he had to deal with a political situation of great difficulty, being called upon in 1837 to suppress a serious insurrection. Shortly afterwards, in consequence of a dispute with the home government, he resigned his post and returned to England, via New York (see Quarterly Review, vols. 63-64). Thereafter he devoted himself to writing, chiefly for the Quarterly Review, and to hunting. He rode to hounds until he was seventy-five. In 1869 Sir Francis Head was made a privy councillor. He died on the 20th of July 1875, at Duppas Hall, Croydon.

Head was the author of a considerable number of works, chiefly of travel, written in a clever, amusing and graphic fashion, and displaying both acute observation and genial humour. His principal works, beside those mentioned above, and a narrative of his Canadian administration (1839), were The Emigrant (1846); Highways and Dryways, the Britannia and Conway Tubular Bridges (1849); Stokers and Pokers, a sketch of the working of a railway line (1849); The Defenceless State of Great Britain (1850); A Faggot of French Sticks (1852); A Fortnight in Ireland (1852); Descriptive Essays (1856); comments on Kinglake’s Crimean War (1853); The Horse and his Rider (1860); The Royal Engineer (1870); and a sketch of the life of Sir John Burgoyne (1872).

His brother, (1782–1855), was educated at the Charterhouse. In 1808 he received an appointment in the commissariat of the British army in the Peninsula, where he was a witness of many exciting scenes and important battles, of which he gave an interesting account in “Memoirs of an Assistant Commissary-General” attached to the second volume of his Home Tour, published in 1837. In 1814 he was sent to America to take charge of the commissariat in a naval establishment on the Canadian lakes, and he subsequently held appointments at Halifax and Nova Scotia. Some of his Canadian experiences were narrated by him in Forest Scenery and Incidents in the Wilds of North America (1829). In 1831 he was knighted.

He published in 1835 A Home Tour through the Manufacturing Districts of England, and in 1837 a sequel to it, entitled A Home Tour through various parts of the United Kingdom. Both works are amusing and instructive, but his Rome, a Tour of many Days, published in 1849, is somewhat dull and tedious. He also translated Historical Memoirs of Cardinal Pacca (1850), and the Metamorphoses of Apuleius (1851).

HEAD (in O. Eng. héafod; the word is common to Teutonic languages; cf. Dutch hoofd, Ger. Haupt, generally taken to be in origin connected with Lat. caput, Gr.  ), the upper portion of the body in man, consisting of the skull with its integuments and contents, &c., connected with the trunk by the neck (see, and ); also the anterior or fore part of other animals. The word is used in a large number of transferred and figurative senses, generally with reference to the position of the head as the uppermost part, hence the leading, chief portion of anything.

HEAD-HUNTING, or, as the Dutch call it, a custom once prevalent among all Malay races and surviving even to-day among the (q.v.) of Borneo and elsewhere. Martin de Rada, provincial of the Augustinians, reported its existence in Luzon (Philippine Islands) as early as 1577. The practice is believed to have had its origin in religious motives, the worship of skulls being universal among the Malays. Severe repressive measures have led to its decrease. Among the Igorrotes all that remains is the dance, accompanied by singing, around the bare pole on which the head was formerly fixed. With the Ilongotes a bridegroom must bring his bride a number of heads, those of Christians being preferred. The chief examples of head-hunters are the Was, a hill-tribe on the north-eastern frontier of India, and the Nagas and Kukis of Assam.

See Bock, Headhunters of Borneo (1881); W. H. Furness, Home Life of Borneo Head-hunters (Philadelphia, 1902); T. C. Hodson, “Head-hunting in Assam,” in Folk-Lore, xx. 2. 132.

HEALTH, a condition of physical soundness or well-being, in which an organism discharges its functions efficiently; also in a transferred sense a state of moral or intellectual well-being (see, and ). “Health” represents the O. Eng. hælth, the condition or state of being hál, safe or sound. This word took in northern dialects the form “hale,” in southern or midland English hole, hence “whole,” with the addition of an initial w, as in “whoop,” and in the pronunciation of “one.” “Hail,” properly an exclamation of greeting, good health to you, hence, to greet, to call out to, is directly Scandinavian in origin, from Old Norwegian heill, cognate with the O. Eng. hál, used also in this sense. “To heal” (O. Eng. hælan), to make in sound health, to cure, is also cognate.

Drinking of Healths.—The custom of drinking “health” to the living is most probably derived from the ancient religious rite of drinking to the gods and the dead. The Greeks and Romans at meals poured out libations to their gods, and at ceremonial banquets drank to them and to the dead. The Norsemen drank the “minni” of Thor, Odin and Freya, and of their kings at their funeral feasts. With the advent of Christianity the pagan custom survived among the Scandinavian and Teutonic peoples. Such festal formulae as “God’s minne!” “A bowl to God in Heaven!” occur, and Christ, the Virgin and the Saints were invoked, instead of heathen gods and heroes. The Norse “minne” was at once love, memory and thought of the absent one, and it survived in medieval and later England in the “minnying” or “mynde” days, on which the memory of the dead was celebrated by services and feasting. Intimately associated with these quasi-sacrificial drinking customs must have ever been the drinking to the health of living men. The Greeks drank to one another and the Romans adopted the custom. The Goths pledged each other with the cry “Hails!” a greeting which had its counterpart in the Anglo-Saxon “waes hael” (see ). Most modern drinking-usages have had their equivalents in classic times. Thus the Greek practice of drinking to the Nine Muses as three times three survives to-day in England and elsewhere. The Roman gallants drank as many glasses to their mistresses as there were letters in each one’s name. Thus Martial: The English drinking phrase—a “toast,” to “toast” anyone—not older than the 17th century, had reference at first to this custom of drinking to the ladies. A toast was at first invariably a woman, and the origin of the phrase is curious. In Stuart days there appears to have been a time-honoured custom of putting a piece of toast in the wine-cup before drinking, from a fanciful notion that it gave the liquor a better flavour. In the Tatler No. 24 the connexion between this sippet of toast and the fair one pledged is explained as follows: “It happened that on a publick day” (speaking of Bath in Charles II.’s reign)