Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/509

 12 s. ix. NOV. 19, i92i.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 419 ally if his battalion came from a different part of the country (mine was a Lancashire unit) might vary considerably, though I should expect it to agree to the extent of | quite 75 per cent. Those who cavil at the list because it contains slang in use before the war or slang derived from the Regular Army, or because it contains many words and phrases which are corruptions or mispronunciations of the French, would make it a very short one. The object of the inquiry, as I take it, is to record all the slang in common use amorig the soldiers during the Great War, whether it was actually original or borrowed from other sources. The gutter, the old Army, the music-hall, the confraternity of crime, the seagoers, and the East have all contributed to it, and the result, even when it is shocking to modest ears, should be preserved, if only as showing the kind of speech that evolves when all classes of the community, each bringing their own special words and expressions, are thrown together, as they have never been thrown before, into the melting-pot of national defence. And surely such gems as " san- fairyann," used practically as an English word by millions of men who had not the faintest knowledge of the French original, are genuine slang. It is extremely difficult, when one's circumstances have so changed, to recollect all the slang one heard in the Army ; and to those about to attack the question one cannot do better than offer the cheerful encouragement of the old gag : " Over the top and the best o' luck ! " ALEYN LYELL READE. Trclcavc-n House, Blundellsands, nr. Liverpool. The note by MB. A. FORBES SIEVEKING on the word " Boche " (p. 342) is very instructive. I thought that the word might have been derived from the German word " Bursche," a fellow-apprentice, or student, when I was informed by a German that the name " Boches " was given in 1870 by the children in Alsace-Lorraine to the German soldiers on account of the horse -hair tufts on their helmets. It was said to be derived from the German word " Busch," a bush, plume, or tuft, and that it was a child's expression. MR. FORBES SIEVEKING, however, gives it another and an older derivation. LEES KNOWLES. Under the head of ' Wallah,' the Hon. East India Company is referred to as H.M.E.I.C., presumably Her Majesty's East India Company. The "M" is a mistake; and " H " stood for Honourable. " So LONG." A question is asked as to the origin of this expression. About twenty years ago I was told that it is allied to Samuel Pepys's expression " so home," and should be written " so along " or "so 'long," meaning that the person using the expression must go his way. FRANK PENNY. I suppose one of the few words used during the war which will become permanent additions to our language is camouflage. The origin of this word has been much obscured because it does not happen to be in Littre, although camouflet is, with which it has been often confused. But Larousse gives camoufierto disguise, derived from the Italian camuffare = to paint the face, to trick out in finery. Camouflet is of uncertain origin say Hatzfeld and Darme- steter, but its military meaning is a countermine either to suffocate the enemy or to blow him up. It is interesting to note that it has been suggested that " bosky " is derived from the French, " A bon vin point d'enseigne," or " Good wine needs no bush." DE V. PAYEN-PAYNE. on Collected Papers, Historical, Literary, Travel and Miscellaneous. Vols. iii., iv., and v. By Sir Adolphus William Ward. (Cambridge Ur iversity Press, 1 10s. each volume.) FOR these collected papers the Master of Peter- house draws upon the work of sixty years. Very few other authors could do as much ; fewer still, looking dispassionately at lectures and addresses, at articles in reviews, at introductions to new editions produced throughout so long a period, would find so many things worth preserving. Sir Adolphus Ward himself and his friends and readers are much to be congratulated on this copious harvest. These three volumes might well stand as fairly representative of the English scholarship of their time, of its strong main tradition, of its solid knowledge, its competence and its wide range. We should rank first among the papers here given us those concerned with the men and the institutions of Germany and Holland during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is not, perhaps, mere fancy which sees in the writer a mind bearing some kinship to that of Reuchlin. But the essays on different topics of Elizabethan literature, on later German scholars and scholarship, and, again, on various English writers, all bring together sound information and ripe judgment, and do so in the unmistakable manner of a master as opposed to a dilettante.