Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/324

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. v. APRIL 6, 1912.

find the audience more responsive. A spoken sentence will never run alone in all its life, and is never to be trusted to itself in its most in- significant member. See it toell out with the voice and the part of the audience is made surprisingly easier."

Another delightful letter, written on the 18th of December, 1863, says :

" On Christmas Eve, there is a train from your own Victoria Station at 1.35 P.M. which will bring you to Strood (Rochester Bridge Station! in an hour, and there a majestic form will be descried in a basket. Yours affectionately,

43. D."

JOHN COI/LJNS FRANCIS.

N

(To be continued.)

AMERICANISMS.

~!T is a well-known and inevitable rule that old forms of speech survive in distant places ^fter they become archaic in the place of their origin. Thus Agrigentum and Syracuse preserved words and phrases which had grown obsolete in the Greek of the mainland. As Dean Trench says, ' E. P. and P.,' Lect. V.: " What has been said of our Provincial English, that it is often old English rather than bad Eng- lish, is not less true of many so-called American- isms. There are parts of America where ' het ' is still the participle of ' to heat ' ; if our Au- thorized Version had not been meddled with we should so read it at Dan. iii. 19 to this day ; where ' holp ' still survives as the perfect of ' to help ' ; ' pled ' (as in Spenser) of ' to plead ' ; Ixmgfellow uses ' dove ' as the perfect of ' to dive ' ; nor is this a poetical license, for I have lately met the same in a well-written book of American prose."

Thus we find " next grass " and " last grass" in Sylvester's ' Du Bartas ' (1598) and in a London Gazette advertisement of 1685 ('N.E.D.'). This word "grass," in the sense of " spring," occurs in American advertisements of horses from 1778 to 1805, and once, casually, in The Knickerbocker Magazine for June, 1843. No doubt it still lingers in country districts along the Atlantic Coast; but 1843 is the latest instance in print that I have found. ^j|

Again, we have the euphemistic employ- ment of " Land " for " Lord," which looks like a bit of Elizabethan Puritanism. Ben Jonson in ' Bartholomew Fair ' calls the Puritan preacher, the " Banbury man," Zeal- of-the-land Busy. (As to Banbury men, see 7 S. iii. 128, 158.) He it is who denounces the Bartholomew pig as an unlawful dish, and Dame Purecraft bags him to maks it as lawful as hs can. Well, this same " Land " for " Lord " is in frequent use in ths U.S.,
 * in such phra-533 as " For tb.3 land's sak?,"

" The land knows," " Good land ! " If it did not cross over in the Mayflower, it did in one of the Mayflower's followers. It is now heard from Maine to Texas, from Dela- ware to Oregon.

A third example (among many) is the word " slick," a variant form of " sleek," used in Marlowe's 'Dr. Faustus ' (1604) and in Fuller's ' Pisgah Sight' (1650). This also crossed the Atlantic with the " pilgrim fathers," and is very familiar. In 1888 a storekeeper within sixty miles of the Pacific Ocean, advertising his stock, wound up by saying, " If your pocket-book is overburdened, bring it down here, and I will clean it out as slick as David did Goliah." The word has also been developed into a verb, especially in connexion with " up ' or " down."

Among names of animals I will notice the " woodchuck " or " ground-hog," known to zoologists as Arctomys monax. This little beast is mentioned in 1768, with a reference to 1682 ; and is said in 1781 to be named from the noise he makes in eating. So far as my observation goes, he is called a wood- chuck principally in New England, and a ground-hog in other parts of the country. Candlemas Day (2 February), which has long been associated with weather predictions, is commonly called ground-hog day it being said that then the animal comes out of his hole, to find out whether he can see his shadow. If he sees it, he says it is bright and clear, and more cold weather may be expected. So back he goes into his winter quarters. If, on the other hand, it is cloudy, and he sees no shadow, he is supposed to remain outside. Other animal names of the same order are the bobolink, the bull-snake, the fire-bird, the lightning- bug, the razor-shell clam.

As might have been expected, the curious vicissitudes of American politics have pro- duced many nicknames ; such as Barn- burners, Feds, Hunkers, Knownothings, Locofocos, Mugwumps, Stalwarts. And pro- minent men have received nicknames too : as Black Dan, Old Abe, Old Buck, Old Bullion, Old Chapultepec, Old Hickory. And it seems probable that " the old boy : ' for the devil is originally American.

Local nicknames also are plentiful : such as Buckeyes, Crackers, Hoosiers, Jark- Mormons, Pukes, Wolverines. By a singular oversight the word " Hoosier " does not find a place in the ' N.E.D.' an omission which will be remedied in the supplement to that monumental work.