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338 338 On Oc and Oyl. of mentioning a trace of it, which has occurred to me in another quarter, in one of Scarron^s comedies^ which are now but little read. The plots of all these pieces are Spanish, and they are most probably borrowed from Spanish writers, who may therefore be considered as speaking in them. In Jodelet Duelliste^ Act i. Sc. 2, a swaggering, hectoring gentleman comes in : on his appearance the servant says : " Voici quelque fendant, issu d'^un roi des Goths^ In the Bachelier de Salamanque it is said of a young libertine, (Act I. Sc. 2.) Un More Grenadin est plus que lui devot ; Encorque di'origine il soit chevalier Goth^ Je meure, s'^il songea jamais a ses prieres. The contrast between the Moors and the Goths is well known: the latter were brave and pious ; and here the Spaniard, who ought to be so, is distinctly called a descendant of noble Goths, chevalier Goth d''origine answering exactly to hidalgo^ because the Mahometans did not make so much account of purity of blood as the Christians and the Germans. If on these rounds we should be inclined rather to derive the name of the country from a people than from a word, we are led to ask another question : Is oc really used there as an affir- mative ? For a native of Languedoc, the author of a diction- ary of the language [Dictionnaire Languedocien — Fran^ais par FAbbe de S.*^' * (Sauvage or Sauvages), Nimes 1756. 8vo.] expressly asserts (p. 322) that it has only the three affirma- tives o, 6i, and dui, and not oc, so that the name could scarcely be derived from it This assertion however, which I here notice as an instructive warning, is totally erroneous. The author himself retracted it in the altered and enlarged edition of his book which he published thirty years afterward (Nimes 1785. two vol.). He there now and then illustrates the words with phrases, and also with passages from the Bible : and in these we frequently find oc. Crezes aisso (this) ? oc Se7ihor, Jehsit diw ad els (said to them) oc. Peter saith : Oc Senhor tic sabs que eti amo te. Moreover Dante, who was thoroughly acquainted with the language, and himself composed poems in it, testifies that its affirmative was oc (as he writes it in Latin), or oco (the Italian spelling). When Richard Coeur-de-Lion, who, as he died lW9y ^^'^'^