Page:Journal Of The Indian Archipelago And Eastern Asia Series.i, Vol.4 (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.107697).pdf/203

 furious charge, or assault, Mangamukkan, to charge some object furiously ; Baramuk-amukan, to charge furiously and a ; Péifgamuk one thet makes a furious charge. When the English infantry charged with the hayonet at Waterloo, a Malay might with propriety say the English ran a-muck; when the French charged over the bridge of Lodi, he might say the same thing. Marshal Lannes would be considered by a Malay as an illustrious Paugamuk and Sir Thomas Picton another. Dr Johnson says he “knows not from what derivation is made to mean to run madly, and attack all we meet.” He might, however, have discovered it, if he had read Dampier as carefully as Swift, who is said to have made his style the model of some part of his Gulliver’s travels. The Rev Mr Todd, in his edition of the Dictionary, has a long explanation of small value ruaning over nearly a whole quarto columa. His chief authority is Tavernier, whose account is full of mistakes. In one place he writes the word Mocca, and in another Moqua. He states the kris, with which the muck is run, to be poisoned, which I never heard to be the case. He says it is the Mahommedans on their return from the pilgrimage to Meeca, who run a-muck, but the natives of the Eastern isiands ran a-muck before they ever heard of the Mahommedan religion, and the unconverted natives at the present day equally run a-muck with the converted. The Rev Mr Pegg is next quoted by Mr Todd out of the Gentleman’s Magazine, and Mr Pegg charges the practice to excess in cock- fighting, and the loss of property including wife and children. When this crisis arrives, the loser, according to Mr Pegg, begins to chew aroot, what is called bang, which the Rey Gentleman takes to be the same thing as opium, and it is after that, that he runs a-muack. This is all a fable, and the great probability is that no such case, as that stated by the Rey Gentleman ever occurred, The truth is that running a~muck is the result of a sudden and violent emotion wholly unpremeditated. There is, therefore, no poisoning of dag- gers, no swallowing of opium, which instead of rousing would set the party asleep, and no eating of bang, which was unknown to the islanders at the time in which Mr Pege wrote. Moreover bang and opium are not the same thing, for the first is the produce of the common hemp-plant, and the last of the white poppy. Finally, Mr Todd quotes a note of Malone to the prose works of Dryden, in which he asserts that thesword a-muck, written ag one word, is an adverb, equivalent to “killingly,” which is even more wide of accuracy, than the account of Mr Pegg himself, and his other authority Tavernier. Warton in a note to Pope repeats the same mistake about gaming, and smoking opium, before running a-muck. Sir Walter Scott’s note in his edition of Dryden is little more than a repetition of Malone’s. He speaks of the loss by gaming, of the jntoxication with opium, and says that “ Amocco” means “to kill.” “Heis, at last, he says,” “cut down, or shot like a mad dof, which is true. Ofa very different character from the gossip of Taversier