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

remember the time
when he played at jack-straws, fished for jack-sharps, and delighted in
a skip-jack, or jack-a-jumper, when jack-in-a-box came back from the
fair (where we had listened 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 ~bôlos~ 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