Kitabı oku: «Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850», sayfa 4

ALE-DRAPER.—EUGENE ARAM

(Vol. ii., p. 310.)

Your correspondent D. asks whether the word ale-draper was ever in "good use." The only place in which I can find it is Bailey's Dictionary, where it occurs thus:

"Ale-draper (a humorous name), a seller of malt liquors; an alehouse-keeper or victualler."

The humour, I suppose, consists in applying to one kind of occupation that which was commonly given to another; in taking draper from the service of cloth, and pressing it by force into that of ale. That it was ever considered as a word of respectable standing, can hardly be imagined. In such writers as Tom Brown it is most likely to occur.

1. With reference to Eugene Aram, D.'s remark about the over-ingeniousness of his defence has been anticipated by Paley, who was present at the trial, and said that Aram would not have been hanged had he less studiously defended himself. That laboured address to the jury must have employed his thoughts for years. I should like very much to know whether anyone has ever attempted to verify the references which he gives to the cases in which he says that bones have been found. The style of the speech has been much praised, but is surely not very surprising when it is considered that Johnson had previously written the Rambler. The composition wants ease.

2. Ever since I began to read about Eugene Aram, and that is some years ago, I have had a settled opinion that his attainments, and perhaps his abilities, had been greatly overrated. He was doubtless a man of considerable mental powers; but we cannot but suspect that had he acquired all the learning which is attributed to him, he would have attracted more notice than it was his fortune to obtain.

3. Mr. Scatchard's attempts, and all other attempts, to clear him from "blood-guilty stain," must be equally futile, for he himself confessed his guilt while he was in prison.

Some time ago, a dozen years or more, there appeared in the Literary Gazette, as a communication from a correspondent, an anecdote concerning Aram, which well deserves to be repeated. During the time that he was in the school of Lynn, it was the custom for the head-master, at the termination of every half-year, to invite the parents of the boys to an entertainment, and all who accepted the invitation were expected to bring with them the money due on account of their sons, which, postquam exempta fames epulis, they paid into the head-master's hands. The master would thus retire to rest with a considerable sum in his possession. On one of these occasions, after he had gone to his chamber and supposed that all the family were in bed, he heard a noise in a passage not far distant, and, going out to see what was the cause of it, found Aram groping about in the dark, who, on being asked what he wanted, said that he had been obliged to leave his room on a necessary occasion, and had missed his way to the place which he sought. The passage was not one into which he was likely to wander by mistake, but the master accepted his excuse, and thought no more of the matter till Aram was arrested for the robbery and murder of Clarke, when he immediately recollected the circumstance, and suspected that he had intended on that night to commit another robbery or murder. I have not the number of the Literary Gazette in which this statement was given to refer to, but I am sure that I have repeated the substance of it correctly, and remember that it was inserted as being worthy of credit. It is another illustration of the fact that the nature of a man is unchangeable.

Bulwer's novel, which elevates Aram from a school-assistant into a private gentleman, may have pleased those, if there were such, who knew nothing of Arum's acts before they began to read it. But all who knew what Aram was, must be disgusted at the threshold. I regarded the book, at the time of its appearance, as one of the most presumptuous falsifications of biography that had ever been attempted. It is not easy to see why Bulwer might not have made an equally interesting story, if he had kept Aram in his proper station.

J. S. W.

Stockwell.

ON THE WORD "GRADELY."

Permit me to make a few remarks on the word gradely:—

1. It seems to have no connexion with the Latin noun gradus, Angl. grade, step.

2. Its first syllable, grade, is both a substantive and an adjective; and gradely itself both adjective and adverb, as weakly, sickly, godly, &c.

3. It is not confined to Lancashire or to England, but appears in Scotland as graith (ready), graith (furniture); whence graithly (readily), to graith, grathe, or graid (prepare), &c. See Jamieson's Sc. Dict. and Supplement.

4. It is in fact the Anglo-Saxon gerad, which is both substantive and adjective. As a substantive it means condition, arrangement, plan, reason, &c. As an adjective, it means prudent, well-prepared, expert, exact, &c. The ge (Gothic ga) is merely the intensive prefix; the root being rad or rath. The form in ly (adjective or adverb), without the prefix g, appears in the Anglo-Saxon raedlic, prudent, expert; raedlice, expertly. This interesting root, which appears as re, ra, red, rad, rath, &c.; sometimes by transposition, as er, ar, erd, &c. (perhaps also as reg, rag, erg, arc, &c.), seems to represent the nobler qualities of man: thought, reason, counsel, speech, deliberate action; and perhaps, also, government.

Thus in the Semitic family of languages we have the radicals rââ (saw, foresaw, counselled); râdhâ (helped, ruled); râthâd (arranged); râto (directed, instructed); and others, with their numerous derivatives.

The Indo-European family gives us, in Sanscrit, râ or râe (ponder, experience); rât (speak); râdh (accomplish); râj (excel); râgh (attain, reach); and others, with derivatives. In Greek, rheô (speak), transp. erô or werô (whence verbum, wort, word); rherô or rhedô (do), transp. erdô, also ergô (whence werke, work); archô (rule), and others, with derivatives. In Latin, reor (think), whence ratus and ratio (reason); res (thing, action); rego (rule), with derivatives (rex, regula, rectus, &c.). In Celtic (Welsh), rhe (active); rheswm (reason); rhaith (judgment, right); rhi (prince); rhag (van, before). In Sclavonic, rada, rade (counsel); redian (to direct), &c.

In the Teutonic dialects (Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, Scotch, and English) the forms of this root are very numerous. Thus we have, in Anglo-Saxon, rad, raed (counsel); raedlich, grad, as above, whence geradien (to prepare), and other words. In German, rede (discourse); rath (counsel); reden (to speak); regel (a rule); recht (right); gerecht (just); gerade (exactly), &c.; bereiten (prepare), &c. In English, ready, read, rule, right, riddle, reason, rather, to which we must add gradely. In Scotch, red, rede, rade, rath, &c., with the words mentioned above; of which graith (furniture) is the German geräth. Your readers will derive much information on this class of words by reference to Jamieson, under red, rede, rath, graith, &c.

Benj. H. Kennedy.

Shrewsbury, Oct. 19.

Gradely.—It seems rather a rash step to differ from the mass of critical authority with which your last number has brought this shy, old-fashioned provincial word into a blaze of literary notoriety. Yet I cannot help conceiving the original form of this adverb to be grathedly (, root , with the preteritive prefix ) or gerathely. In our Yorkshire dialect, to grathe (pronounced gradhe) means, to make ready, to put in a state of order or fitness. A man inconveniently accoutred or furnished with implements for the performance of some operation on which he was employed, observed to me the other day, "I's ill grathed for't job"—rather a terse Saxon contrast to my latinized paraphrase.

Grathedly would then mean, "In a state of good order, fitness, readiness, or perfection."

To the cognate German gerade adv., I find the senses, "directly, just, exactly, perfectly, rightly."

The prevailing impression given by your numerous testimonials as to the character of the word gradely, is one of decency, order, rightness, perfectness.

I fancy the whole family (who might be called the children of rath), viz. , rathe (gerathe, grathedly, gradely), rather (only a Saxon form of readier), have as a common primeval progenitor the Sanscrit (radh), which is interpreted "a process towards perfection;" in other words, "a becoming ready."

G. J. Cayley.

Wydale, Oct. 21.

P.S.—Greadly is probably a transposition for geradly. The Yorkshire pronunciation of gradely is almost as if written grared-ly.

I think it probable that the words greed, greedily, are from the same radicle. By the way, is radix perhaps derived from (rad), a tooth (from the fang-like form of roots), whence rodere and possibly radius?

COLLAR OF ESSES

Although the suggestion made by C. (Vol. ii., p. 330.), viz. that the Collar of Esses had a "mechanical" origin, resulting from the mode of forming "the chain," and that "the name means no more than that the links were in the shape of the letter S.," could only be advocated by one unacquainted with the real formation of the collar, yet, as I am now pledged before the readers of "Notes and Queries" as the historiographer of livery collars, it may be expected that I should make some reply. This may be accompanied with the remark, that, about the reign of Henry VIII., a collar occurs, which might be adduced in support of the theory suggested by the Rev. Mr. Ellacombe, and adopted by C. It looks like a collar formed of esses; but it is not clear whether it was meant to do so, or was merely a rich collar of twisted gold links. That was the age of ponderous gold collars, but which were arbitrary features of ornamental costume, not collars of livery. Such a collar, however, resembles a series of esses placed obliquely and interlaced, as thus: SSSS; not laid flat on their sides, as figured by C. Again, it is true an (endless) chain of linked esses was formed merely by attaching the letters like hooks together. This occurs on the cup at Oriel College, Oxford, engraved in Shaw's Ancient Furniture in Shelton's Oxonia Illustrata, and in the Gentleman's Magazine for August last; but the connexion of this with the English device is at least very doubtful. The cup is not improbably of foreign workmanship, and Menneus assigns such a collar to the knights of Cyprus; even there the S was not without its attributed import:

"Per literam autem S. quæ Silentii apud Romanos nota fuit, secretum societatis et amicitiæ simulachrum, individuamque pro patriæ defensione Societatem denotari."—Fr. Mennenii Deliciæ Equest. Ordinum, 1613. 12mo. p. 153.

However, the answer to the suggestion of Mr. Ellacombe and C. consists in this important distinction, that the Lancastrian livery collar was not a chain of linked esses, but a collar of leather or other stiff material, upon which the letters were distinctly figured at certain intervals; and when it came to be made of metal only, the letters were still kept distinct and upright. On John of Ghent's collar, in the window of old St. Paul's (which I have already mentioned in p. 330.), there are only five,

 
S       S       S       S       S,
 

at considerable intervals. On the collar of the poet Gower the letters occur thus,—

 
SSSSS       SSSSS.
 

On that of Queen Joan of Navarre, at Canterbury, thus,—

 
S | S | S | S | S | S |
 

There is then, I think, little doubt that this device was the symbolum or nota of some word of which S was the initial letter; whether Societas, or Silentium, or Souvenance, or Soveraigne, or Seneschallus, or whatever else ingenuity or fancy may suggest, this is the question,—a question which it is scarcely possible to settle authoritatively without the testimony of some unequivocal contemporary statement. But I flatter myself that I have now clearly shown that the esses were neither the links of a chain nor yet (as suggested in a former paper) identical with the gormetti fremales, or horse-bridles, which are said to have formed the livery collar of the King of Scots.

John Gough Nichols.

 
"Christus purpureum gemmati textus in auro
Signabat Labarum, Clypeorum insignia Christus
Scripserat; ardebat summis crux addita cristis."
 

By the same sort of reasoning—viz. conjecture—that Mr. John Gough Nichols adheres to the opinion that the Collar of SS. takes its name from the word Seneschallus, it might be contended that the initial letters of the lines above quoted mystically stand for "Collar, S. S." Enough, however, has already been written on this unmeaning point to show that some of us are "great gowks," or, in other words, stupid guffs, to waste so much pen, ink, and paper on the subject.

There are other topics, however, connected with the Collar of SS. which are of real interest to a numerous section of the titled aristocracy in the United Kingdom; and it is with these, as bearing upon the heraldic and gentilitial rights of the subject, that I am desirous to grapple. Mr. Nichols, and those who pin faith upon his dicta, hold that the Collar of SS. was a livery ensign bestowed by our kings upon certain of their retainers, in much the same sense and fashion as Cedric the Saxon is said to have given a collar to Wamba, the son of Witless. For myself, and all those entitled to carry armorial bearings in the kingdom, I repudiate the notion that the knightly golden Collar of SS. was ever so conferred or received. Further, I maintain that there was a distinction between what Mr. Nichols calls "the Livery Collar of SS.," and the said knightly golden Collar of SS., as marked and broad as is the difference between the Collar of the Garter and the collar of that four-footed dignitary which bore the inscription,

 
"I am the Prince's Dog at Kew,
Pray whose Dog are you?"
 

In his last communication Mr. Nichols lays it down that "livery collars were perfectly distinct from collars of knighthood;" adding, they did not exist until a subsequent age. Of course the collars of such royal orders of knighthood as have been established since the days of our Lancastrian kings had necessarily no existence at the period to which he refers. But Gough (not Mr. Gough Nichols) mentions that the Collar of SS. was upon the monument of Matilda Fitzwalter, of Dunmow, who lived in the reign of King John; and Ashmole instances a monument in the collegiate church at Warwick, with the portraiture of Margaret, wife of Sir William Peito, said to have been sculptured there in the reign of Edward III. What credit then are we to attach to Mr. N.'s averment, that the "Collar of Esses was not a badge of knighthood, nor a badge of personal merit, but was a collar of livery, and the idea typified by livery was feudal dependence, or what we now call party?" What sort of feudal dependence was typified by the ensign of equestrian nobility upon the necks of the two ladies named, or upon the neck of Queen Joan of Navarre? Mr. Nichols states that in the first Lancastrian reigns the Collar of SS. had no pendant, though, afterwards, it had a pendant called "the king's beast." On the effigy of Queen Joan the collar certainly has no pendant, except the jewelled ring of a trefoil form. But on the ceiling and canopy of the tomb of Henry IV., his arms, and those of his queen (Joan of Navarre), are surrounded with Collars of SS., the king's terminating in an eagle volant (rather an odd sort of a beast), whilst the pendant of the queen's has been defaced.