Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/82

 76

NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. HI. JA*. s, m

as a doubtful word, particularizing the writer using it.* A study of the authorities demon- strates that the word rungs came into the language from a maritime source, and that it is quite a proper word when confined to its proper place, as relating to the floor of a ship. Extended to the steps, rundles, or rounds of a ladder, it becomes a vulgarism just as it would be correct for me to call a club a cudgel ; but if I apply the term cudgel to a walking-stick, I commit a vulgarity. In Wright's 'Dictionary of Obsolete and Pro- vincial English' (1893), "containing words from the English writers previous to the nineteenth century which are no longer in use, or are not used in the same sense, and words which are now used only in the pro- vincial dialects," rung^ " the step of a ladder," is included. Of the instances from writers given by PROF. SKEAT having a bearing upon the point, two belong to the Chaucer era, one being Chaucer himself. They cannot be taken as criteria ; they are too much out of date, and the language was unformed then. Besides, these references brought forward as examples of rungs are not rungs ^at all, but the obsolete ranges. There remains the solitary instance of Bryce, who may be looked upon as the one exception proving the rule. Even laying aside the array of authority against, would a dozen of such instances upon the subject of a refinement weigh in the balance against Scott, especially when he puts the term into the mouth of a courtier ? Another writer of repute using round is George Eliot (Mrs. Lewes, ne'e Evans). To the foregoing let me add something personal. I have found here (over a large district in the north of Ireland) that the steps of a ladder are invariably called rungs by the labouring classes, and rounds by the educated. When that fact fitted with Dr. Blain's dictum, in the dilemma of Blain v. SKEAT was I not justified in assuming for myself that the former (who made a study of the question) was right, and that the latter (who probably never considered the point before beyond the etymology) is wrong? Outside of the aca- demic discussion, PROF. SKEAT makes two mistakes. It is colouring the facts to intro- duce the phrase, "nor does a word become vulgar merely because it pleases J. S. M. T. to call it so." I simply quoted an authority, and said that I preferred to follow thai authority. In any remarks I made on the subject I never had the slightest intention

mons,' p. 560 (1631). The author, however, did not make use of rungs, but the Chaucerean term. See post.
 * The references is to Bishop Andrewes's 'Ser

>f sneering either at men or things. I am orry to see in the columns of C N. & Q.,' vhere everything ought to be discussed in a riendly and helpful spirit, that sometimes ''our correspondents import considerable acri- mony. To sneer without justification is departing from rules that should prevail, and is not only likely to call forth the irrita- tion deprecated, but in a leading writer is setting a bad example to lesser lights.

J. S. M. T.

PROF. SKEAT at the last reference points out that rung in the sense of cudgel is twice used by Burns. It is also used by Scott in the same sense. In * The Abbot,' chap, vii., Ealph Fisher says to Roland Graeme :

" I wot not what hinders me from clearing old scores with this hazel rung, and showing you it was your Lady's livery-coat which I spared, and not your lesh and blood, Master Roland."

Rung here is equivalent to Cuddie Head- rigg's kebbie (* Old Mortality,' chap. xiv.).

JONATHAN BOUCHIER.

In Northumberland rung is the name invariably given. On the contrary, round is never used, at least among the workmen. Ladders are often made with three or four flat bars, longer than the round ones, and projecting sufficiently on each side to admit a wooden peg, so that the whole may be kept compact and firm. These are called flat rungs, sometimes " throughs " (thrufs). Bars of the above kind are a good deal used in the various fittings and furnishings about farm- steads, and are almost always called rungs, never rounds, at least among the workmen. Old-fashioned shepherds on the borders may sometimes still call a walking-stick a rung. The term is still well understood. To walk " twa fald o'er a rung " is to go doubled with a stick. JOHN WILSON.

Leazes Park, Newcastle-on-Tyne.

" FELICITY," THE INWARDS OF A PIG (9 th S. iii. 3). It is rather a " large order " to assume " a hard pronunciation of the c," and I should think it far more likely that in the young and uninstructed rustic mind the inside of a pig stands as inclusive of everything that is mys- terious or dimly understood. Hence it was, no doubt, that a little boy here asked his teacher whether the soul was not "somethink out o' the hinside of a pig." J. T. F.

Winterton, Doncaster.

A DESCENDANT OF JONATHAN SWIFT (9 th S. ii. 325). I have in ' N. & Q.' called attention to the fact that a learned official, when label- ling a copy of Aulus Gellius, 1706 (it was given by Erasmus Edwards, Lord Orford's