Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/487

 io« 8. iv. NOV. is, 1905.J NOTES AND QUERIES. 401 LONDON. SATURDAY. NOVEMBER 18, 1905. CONTENTS.-NO. 99. HOTKS :—Punch, the Beverage. 401—The Jubilee of ' The Saturday Hevlew,' 402-Capt. James Jefferyes, of Blarney Castle 4O4—Gibbon's ' Decline and Fall in America— "Character is fate "—Matthew Arnold's Sonnet 'Bast and West.' 405—"Ondatra" : Its Origin—Blectrlc Hail- ways—"Add": "Adder" —Irish Weather Klme, 409— Lawson's ' New Guinea,' 407. OUKRIBS:-Pig: Swine: Hog—' Ulm and Trafalgar.' 407— '• Skerrlck "—Bowes of Elford—" When In doubt— don't," 408—' The Arms of Abraham'—Bells—" That i«, he would have "—Mozart—Plans of Lucca—' Poculum Blevatum '— Maxwell Brown: Goodson — " Smith" in Latin—Sir William II. De Lancey — ' Arabian Nights.' 409 — The Lyceum Theatre-Komney Portrait—Prebend of Cantlers lu St. Paul's—Authors of Songs Wanted, 410. —Polar Inhabitants— Kits Coty House, 413—Cheshire Words—Farrell of the Pavilion Theatre — Great Queen Street—Bnglish Poets and the Armada—Lamb's Grand- mother 414—Detached Belfries—Lord Bathurst and the Highwayman — Catalogues of MSS., 415 — Sir Francis Brake and Chigwell Kow—John Aleyn, Law Reporter— Wotfield Churchwardens' Accounts—Looping the Loop: Centrifugal Railway, 416—The Pigmies and the Cranes— Detectives in Fiction—Hair-Powdering Closets—"Mobile vlrtutis genus est patleutla," 417. NOTB8 ON BOOKS:—The Cambridge 'Beaumont and Fletcher' — Swinburne's Tragedies — 'The Ingoldiby Legends' — 'The Kssays of Blla'—'The Scottish His- torical Review '—Shetland Pictorial Postcards. Booksellers' Catalogues. Notices to Correspondents. PUNCH, THE BEVERAGE. (See ' N. k Q.' passim ; also Yule and Burnell, 'Anglo-Indian Diet.,' «.».) FOB the origin of this word, the commonly accepted account is that given by Fryer, •who travelled in the East 1674-83. Being at Goa in 1676, he says (p. 157) :— " At Nerule is made the beat Arach or Nepa de Goa, with which the English on the coast make that enervating liquor called Paunch (which is Indostau for /'ice), from the Ingredients." (These he does not specify.) Is this history -of the word correct? I greatly doubt. A priori, it is not very probable; for why should Englishmen give a name from Hindi for a drink of their own compounding? and, more- over, it is likely enough that many a tentative bowl of punch was brewed before the sacred number Jive was settled upon. Indeed was it ever settled ? Mandelslo, a writer here- after to be spoken of, mentions only four ingredients. Another writer (in Y. and B.] gives five, one being " biscuit rosti." 1 fancy that every punch-maker would swear by his own recipe. There is plenty of evidence that in the seventeenth century Anglo-Indians drank freely of punch, and that India was regarded as the native home of it. So Phillips (' World of Words,' 1662) says, 'Punch, a kind of Indian drink"; and a French writer (in Y. and B.), " boisson dont es Anglois usent aux Indes." But it is not yet shown that they invented punch. When now we come to the evidence obtain- able from various authors, the first notice of she English word as yet forthcoming is in a ' History of Barbadoes,' by Richard Ligon. Eie was there in the years 1647-51. He men- tions various " strong drinks," among which " punch is a fourth sort:—it ig made of water and sugar put together : whiche in tenne dayes standing will be very strong, and fit for labourers." This is not the punch that we know ; but it will scarcely be thought that in this employ- ment the word is of independent origin. Anyway, it is a puzzler. But even before Ligon the word occurs most strangely and most notably in a foreign guise. The Dutch- man Mandelslo, on a voyage from Gambroon to Surat, in 1638, drank jxilepunzen, the word being understood, no doubt rightly, to repre- sent the English "bowl-of-punch," as does a corresponding French word bollepons/e (both in Y. and B.). If, then, by 1638 foreigners had learnt from Englishmen to enjoy a bowl of punch, and to call it by its English name, we shall not be asking too much if we require all the previous years of the century for the invention of it among Englishmen. Now what was the status of Englishmen in India during those early years ? Almost nil. Only in 1614 they obtained from the Great Mogul permission to build a factory at Surat, with a few subordinate agencies in the neighbourhood. This was their first footing in India. Conse- quently we have only twenty-four years (1614-38), in which they must have invented punch, fixed the name, and made it so gener- ally known as to have become a household word among Dutchmen. It may be worth notice also that in those years there seems to have been almost perpetual collision and squabble between the pushing Briton and the jealous Hollander—small space for the convivial intercourse in which the latter should have been taught to love punch. In view of these facts and fairly admis- sible surmises, Fryer's evidence, coming a full half-century after, seems too late to be of much value. It is quite possible, indeed, that at that time some Anglo-Indian etymo- logist, seeking an explanation for the un- explained, should have thought that he found it in Hindi punch. Or might we even hazard