Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. | Page 2

not unmoved to the temptations of that eloquent vagabond cheap-Jack) and popped up his nose before we could say Jack {326} Robinson; and when Jack-in-the-green ushered in May-day? While a halo of charmed recollections encircles the memory of Jack-pudding, dear to the Englishman as Jack Pottage and Jack Sausage (Jean Potage and Hans Wurst) are to Frenchman and German.
Our childhood past, Jack still haunts us at every turn and phase of our existence. The smoke-jack and bottle-jack, those revolutionary instruments that threw the turnspit out of employment (and have well-nigh banished him from the face of the earth), cook the Jack hare, which we bring in in the pocket of our shooting-jacket. We wear jack-boots, and draw them off with boot-jacks; prop up our houses with jack-screws; wipe our hands on jack-towels; drink out of black-jacks, and wear them on our backs too, at least our ancestors did; while flap-jacks[3] gave a relish to their Lenten diet, jack-of-the-clock[4] told them the hour; Jack priests held rule over them; and gentle exercise at the jack, at bowls, helped them to digest their dinners. We ride upon jack-asses; jacks flourish in our fish-ponds; jack-a-lanterns and jack-snipes flit over our bogs, the one scarcely less difficult to capture than the other; jack-daws multiply in our steeples, and jack-herons still linger about our baronial halls.
The four jack knaves, jack-a-lents, jack-a-dandies, jack-a-nasties, and jacks-in-office (jack-an-apeses every man jack of them), with that name fraught with mysterious terror, Jack Ketch, are the scape-graces of this numerous family; and, at every Jack who would be the gentleman, at a saucy Jack who attempts to play the jack with us, our indignation rises, like that of Juliet's nurse. But, on the whole, Jack is an honest fellow, who does his work in this life, though he has been reproached with Tom's helping him to do nothing; but let the house that Jack built vindicate him from this calumny. Jack, we repeat, is an honest fellow, and is so more especially, when as Jack-tar (Heaven protect him from Jack-sharks both on sea and shore!) he has old Ocean beneath, and the union-jack above him. Of black and yellow jack, who are foreigners, we make no mention; neither of Jack-Spaniards, nor of Jacko the monkey, whom we detest; but, go where we will, Jack meets us, and is master of all trades, for that we hold to be the right, though, we are aware, not the usual version of the saying. In short, with Merry Andrews, Jerry Sneaks, Tom Noddies, and Silly Simons, we may all have a casual acquaintance; but Jack, sweet Jack, kind Jack, honest Jack, Jack still is our familiar.
JOHN JACKSON.
[Footnote 1: Jack and Gill were measures. "Wherefore," says Grumio, "be the Jacks fair within and the Gills fair without," meaning the leathern jacks clean within, and the metal gills polished without.]
[Footnote 2: His character has suffered by antiquarian research, which tells us that the song was made on a Colonel Horner, intrusted by the last Abbot of Wells with a pie, containing the title-deeds of the abbey, which he was to deliver to Henry VIII., and that he abstracted one for his own purposes, whereupon the abbot was hanged.]
[Footnote 3: The old name for pancakes. Slap-jacks is their present name in America.]
[Footnote 4: The figure which struck the hour, as on the old clocks of St. Dunstan's, and of Carfax in Oxford.]
* * * * *
MYTHE VERSUS MYTH.
When I first began to write on Mythology, I followed the Germans in using mythus for the Greek ~mythos~. I afterwards thought it would be better to Anglicise it, and, strange to say, I actually found that there was a rule in the English language without an exception. It was this: Words formed from Greek disyllables in ~os~, whether the penultimate vowel be long or short, are monosyllables made long by e final. Thus, not only does ~b?los~ make bole, but ~polos~ pole, ~poros~ pore, ~skopos~ scope, ~tonos~ tone, &c.; so also ~gyros~, gyre; ~thymos~, thyme; ~stylos~, style; ~kybos~, cube, &c.: I therefore, without hesitation, made an English word m[=y]the. Mr. Grote, in his History of Greece, has done the very same thing, and probably on the same principles, quite independently of me; for, as I am informed, he has never condescended to read my Mythology of Greece and Italy, perhaps because it was not written in German. We have had no followers, as far as I am aware, but Miss Lynn, in her classical novels, and Mr. J. E. Taylor, in his translation of the Pentamerone, &c.
Meantime the English language had got another form of ~mythos~, namely, m[)y]th, which I believe made its first appearance in Mr. Cooley's Maritime and Inland Discovery, and so has the claim of priority, if not of correctness. This form has been so