Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/158

 126 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. vn. AUG. u, 1020. "HODMAN": "SQUIL": CHRIST CHURCH SLANG. IN 'Christ Church,' by the Rev. Henry L. Thompson, 1900, one of the ' University of Oxford College Histories ' (p. 151), is a quotation from ' Terrse films,' 1733, in is the following : " The men [of Christ Church] gave themselves airs .... those of other Colleges were ' Squils ' -and ' Hodmen.' " Thompson comments thus : " The phrase ' Squils and Hodmen ' needs some explanation. The first word is now happily forgotten, but was in use within the last twenty years, as a colloquial designation of members of other colleges. It was supposed to be a cor- ruption of ' Ex-Collegees,' or ' Esquilini.' The word ' Hodmen ' has an interesting literary history. In Littleton's dictionary (1677) it is Explained as ' advena.' ' alienigena.,' as opposed to the Westminster Students at Christ Church, who considered themselves ' indigene.' From this usage it might easily come to be identified with ' Squils.' But in 1706 the compiler of another dictionary, who must have read Littleton care- lessly, explains it as a name for a young West- minster scholar ; and this mistake is repeated in all the later dictionaries that mention the word. "The climax is reached in Halliwell's dictionary in 1855, where the word is explained as a nickname ?for a Canon of Christ Church ! " From the above one might gathar that, -though the unpleasant word "Squil " went out of use some thirty years ago, the word "Hodman" was still in use. Of course, Thompson did not mean this. Certainly, the word was unknown in my Christ Church time, some fifty years ago, though "Squil " non-Christ Church men by such Christ Church undergraduates as " gave them- selves airs." As to "Hodman," the only quotations with the true meanings given in the ' New English Dictionary ' are from Adam Littleton's Dictionary, 1677, and Amherst 'Terrse Fil.,' 1721. One may "therefore assume that it died out in the eighteenth century. The latter quotation is the same as Thompson's from ' Terrse films,' though given under a date twelve years earlier. The Dictionary gives quotations of the word "variously misexplainecl " in dic- tionaries, beginning with Phillips (ed. Kersey) 1706, and ending with Halliwell. Neither Thompson nor the Dictionary offers any reason why "Hodman" should have meant " Advena, alienigena : [quippe quod Alumni Regii e schola Westmonaster- iensi eo adsciti se pro Indigenis habeant]." See Littleton. I suppose that it was used to imply inferiority, a hodman being inferior to a bricklayer. One may compare with it which according to Grose's ' Classical Dic- tionary of the Vulgar Tongue ' meant " An empty bottle. An university joke ; gentle- men commoners not being deemed over full of learning." Among the dictionaries giving mis- explanations is Dyche's finished by Pardon, 10th edit., 1758. In this the explanation is slightly different. It is applied to "a young scholar just admitted from West- minster School," &c., i.e., a freshman. Even Farmer and Henley in ' Slang and its Analogues,' and Farmer in ' The Public School Word-Book,' which includes some words " that have been or are modish at the Universities," give the wrong meaning started apparentlv by Phillips. 'The Public School Word-Book ' also quotes Halliwell without any comment. It is strange that neither these slang dictionaries, nor any others, as far as I have found, nor the 'New English Dictionary^ say anything about the word " squil," happily now extinct, although it was current for probably some two hundred years, and perhaps much longer. ROBERT PIEBPOINT. MASSINGER'S PLAYS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. MB. BBANDEB MATTHEWS in Gayley's ' Representative English Comedies ' and Mr. A. H. Cruickshank in ' Philip Massinger point out that Massinger's 'New Way to Pay Old Debts ' was the only Eliza- bethan or Jacobean play except Shake- speare's which held the stage until the first quarter of the nineteenth century ; but they neither of them make any reference to per- formances of other of Massinger's plays in the "commerical theatres," that is, not as antiquarian revivals, but in the ordinary course of theatrical representation, during the nineteenth century. Fanny Kemble's ' Records of a Girlhood ' contains several interesting passages about the performance of 'The Maid of Honour,' which she per- suaded her father to put on the stage because she wanted to" act the part of Camiola,
 * was then commonly used as a nickname for
 * he slang term " Gentleman Commoner,'*