Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/319

 S. I. APRIL 16,'98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

311

leath should now be added to the existing monument 1

Other facts and observations on this sub- ject occur to me. but I fear this note is ilready over-lengthy. I am on the spot, and
 * hall be glad to be of use to any one interested

B';he matter. MONTGOMERY CARMICHAEL, British Vice-Consul at Leghorn.

MASCOT" (9 th S. i. 229). Mascotte appears in Hatzfeld and Darmesteter's ' Dictionnaire,' now in course of publication. It is there said to be a Provengal word, diminutive of masco, witch, and to have been popularized by Edmond Audran's comic opera 'La Mascotte,' which was performed for the first time at the Bouffes-Parisiens, Paris, 29 Dec., 1880. Masco, a modern Provenqal word, is affirmed by the same authority to be of unknown origin, while mascotte itself is defined as meaning, in familiar speech, " personne, chose considered comme portant bonheur." In the words of a ballad in the opera (I. ii.) :

Un jour, le diable, ivre d'orgueil,

Choisit dans sa grande chaudiere

Des demons qu'avaient 1'mauvais ceil,

Et les envoya sur la terre !

Mais le bon Dieu, not' protecteur,

Quaud il 1'apprit, creant de suite

Des anges qui portaient bonheur,

Chez nous les envoya bien vite ! Ces envoye"s du paradis Sont des mascottes, mes amis, Heureux celui que le ciel dote D'une mascotte !

Sitot que dans une maison Un de ces anges-la penetre, C'est la vein', la chance & foison Qu'il apporte & son heureux maitre... Est-ce uii malade ? il est gu^ri ! Un pauvr' ? de suite il fait fortune ! Si c'est un nialheureux mari, II perd la femm' qui 1'importune ! Ces envoyes, &c.

The ' Supplement au Diet, d' Argot ' of Lore'- dan Larchey, 1880, p. 82, notices the word thus: "Mascotte, fetiche de joueur (Rigaud)." It is also in Gasc's ' Diet, of the Fr. ana Engl. Languages': " Mascotte, mascot, mascotte, gambler's fetish." " Mascot " is merely an English spelling, like "ballot" from the obsolete ballotte.

Honnorat, in his 'Vocabulaire Frane.ais- Prove^al,' published at Digne in 1848, gives as the Provencal for enchant-eur, -eresse, "masca, sorciera," both words feminine in form, while masco is apparently masculine. It is obviously identical with the Low Latin masca,, which, says Scheler, was antecedent to the masculine form mascus, and which had the several meanings of witch, incubus, and

spectre, the oldest of these, according to the same authority, being " witch." In this sense masca is of great antiquity, occurring as it does in the ancient legal code of the Lom- bards: "Nullus pnvsumat aldiam ancillam, quasi strigam, qua* dicitur Masca, oocidere " (see Du Cange for the reference). Emanuele d'Azeglio, in his 'Studi sul Dialetto Pie- montese,' published at Turin in 1886, includes masca in his list of purely Piedmontese words, defining it as " spirito folletto, larva," i.e., hobgoblin or phantom. Scheler, however, asserts that the word still means a witch in Piedmont ; and perhaps this meaning is exemplified in the phrase "furb com na masca " (cunning as a witch ?), applied, says Azeglio at p. 71, to one who will not let him- self be made game of (" non si lascia corbel- lare").

It is strange that the Low Latin masca should be ignored by the authority cited at the very beginning of the present communi- cation. Most etymologers would be satisfied if they could trace any word in current use to so remote a date as that of the ( Lex Longobardorum.' How the provision of this law against the slaying of mascce in the social position of semi-bondwomen should be inter- preted, I am unable to judge ; but the Pro- venc,al word must evidently have acquired a good meaning in order to yield mascotte. - note in conclusion, as an interesting fact, that masca, witch, although not connected etymo- logically with Fr. masque, face-cover, may perhaps account for the abusive term masque applied to females, and usually treated as a distinct word. Frenchmen wrote as if they thought so two hundred years ago, for I find in Boyer's 'Dictionary': "Masque, an ugly Witch or Jade ; Que la peste soit la Masque, deuce take her for a Witch." F. ADAMS.

106A, Albany Road, Camberwell.

This word has become so thoroughly Eng- lish (having been used as the name of a London paper) that I may be pardoned for giving its history at some length, especially as it appears to have been unknown to both the 'Century Dictionary,' as stated by the querist, and to the best of our slang diction- aries, Farmer and Henley, as I find by con- sulting my copy. As an element of English and American slang the word dates back, of course, to the comic opera ' La Mascotte,' so that the point really at issue is how the composer of that work arrived at it. There is in Paris a periodical entitled Interme'diaire des Chercheurs et Curieux, started in 1864, as expressly stated in its opening advertise- ment, to "imiter et naturalise!-" in France "une feuiUe periodique anglaise, le ffotes