RAMBLE SEVENTH. FANCIES AND FANTASTICS. "The same old love of laughing in this beautiful mad-house of Earth." JEAN PAUL RICHTER. MOTLEY ever are the minglings of this strange, sleep-rounded life, "A wedding or a festival, And Speech reflects this infinite richness and variety. For if language has run pliant and plastic into the mould of our every-day thoughts and feelings, lending itself to the uses of the Understanding and the Common Sense, and smacking of our workshop world, yet can it also "Babble of green fields." If it generally exhibits but broad high-ways and level plains-platitudes often enough: yet does it many a time lead off through by-paths to wild woods and cavernous depths and elfin haunts, where visionary forms and rustling spirit-voices meet eye and ear! The Grotesque and Arabesque play through speech. Children of the nimble fancy, they round our language with a fringe of smiles and tears. The fantastic in Words is but a reflection of the fantastic in Things. For Nature, too, loves a freak. And as, amid the infinite variety of organic and inorganic forms, creative energy at times sports in seemingly lawless prodigality, so the informing Fancy has interwoven in words its fairy imaginings "Retinues of airy kings, Skirts of angels, starry wings!" 'NIGHT-MARE' is a snatch of fancy taken from the Scandinavian mythology. In that mythology Mara was a Finland elf, who in night-sleep came with horrid visitation to men. And in Laing's Chronicles I find as follows: "Vailand who ruled over the Upsal domain, was bewitched by the elf Mara. He became drowsy, and laid himself down to sleep; but when he had slept but a little while, he cried out, saying, Mara was treading on him; but when they took hold of his head she trod upon his legs, and when they laid hold of his legs, she pressed upon his head and it was his death." Chronicles of the Kings of Norway. 'PREPOSTEROUs' is curious enough. It is præ and posterus, having that before which ought to come after-"putting the cart before the horse," as we say; and how could one be more perfectly brought to a stand than by being 'non-plussed' that is, so bamboozled as to be able to say-non plus--no more! 'INTERLARD' is plainly the mixing fat and leanentrelarder; to get things 'on tick' is properly to get them on ticket or bill-a form common in old literature; a 'HABERDASHER' has, according to Minsheu, a fantastic genesis in the expression of a shopkeeper offering his wares, Habt ihr dass?-have you this; 'TEETOTALISM' is just T-totalism, that is temperancetotalism! and 'NEWS' is matter brought from all quarters-(N)orth, (E)ast, (W)est, (S)outh = NEWS! But these Gypsies of language, seemingly so destitute of history or ancestry, do often, when keenly tracked, reveal long historic processes in their composition. What a strangely extravagant round has the word 'LOCO-FOCO' taken! We first have it, probably as a corruption of loco foci (i. e. in place of a fire) and so applied to lucifer matches (lucifer matches! that is, light bringing matches) and then by a bizarre incident, in which lucifer matches acted a part, applied as a designation of a particular political party. The occasion of its application is said to have been as follows. At a meeting of the extreme democrats in Tammany Hall, New York, there was a great diversity of opinion, and consequently great confusion-on account of which the chairman left his seat and the lights were extinguished with a view to dissolving the meeting; when those in favor of extreme measures produced loco-foco matches, rekindled the lights, continued the meeting, and accomplished their object. Hence the name of 'LOCO-FOCO' which continueth even unto this day. Again, the familiar phrase to 'OUT-HEROD HEROD,' is not a mere chance-combination, but holds in itself the pith and marrow of a thousand legends. In regard to King Herod we are merely told that "he sat upon a throne and made an oration" unto the people--of what character we are not informed, and yet from subsequent events and the awful punishment which befel him, we may reasonably conclude that it was bombastic, bold and blasphemous. But in the old 'Mysteries' and 'Moralities' he is constantly represented as of a fierce, proud, virulent character. Now it was doubtless from these that Shakespeare drew the expression: and hence its peculiarly expressive power. That old expression to sit 'above, or below the salt' becomes instinct with meaning when we recollect that it was the custom, in old times, to place a large dish of salt about the middle of the table, 'above' which the more honorable guests were wont to sit, while the vulgar took their places in unnoticed obscurity 'below.' And Sidney Smith thus gives us the origin of the expression 'within or without the pale:" "The limit. which divided the possessions of the English settlers [in Ireland] from those of the native Irish was called the pale; and the expression of inhabitants within the pale and without the pale, were the terms by which the two nations were distinguished."* The phrase 'I don't care a fig' would seem, at the first blush, to contain no special force, the fig being to us rather a valuable article ; † but the expression rises to pungent point when we recollect that the phrase is an importation from Spain, where figs are decidedly cheap: for which I find a double voucher in Shakespeare: "Pistol. Die and be damned; and figo for thy friendship! Fluellen. It is well. Pistol. The fig of Spain! Fluellen. Very good." Henry V. III. 6. * Edinburgh Review: article on "Parnell and Ireland." † Our 'Not a straw'-what the Latins named nihil (ne hilum)-would seem to carry more force. |