"BLIGHTY."

Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 36, 10 February 1917, Page 13

"BLIGHTY."

A WORD OF LONG DESCENT.

It is necessary to remember, as someone has pointed out, wnen we quote JulietVs answer to the question "What's ill a name?" that Shakespeare puts it into the mouth of a girl of fourteen years, writes a correspondent in the Sydney "Daily Telegraph." He knew very well that there is a great deal in a name, and that some occult harmony between a name and the person, place, or thing signified is immensely effective. It ie said that Dickens suffered torture in choosing names for hie characters, and i Forster has told us that Martin Chuzzle- ' wit was finally evolved t-rough a course consisting of Sweezleden, Sweezleback, Chuzzletoe, Chuzzleboy, Chuzzlewig, and Chubblewig, nor was Chuzzlewit selected until after more heeitation and diecuesion. Words may be much more than a mere vocabulary; "ye know not," wrote Ascham long ago, "what hurt ye do to learning, that care not for words but for matter, and so make a divorce between the tongue and the heart." If a name at its beet possesses in itself a suggestion of some subtle characterisation, some accordance of sound and sense, how ie it that "Blighty" has found euch rapid and complete currency amongst our soldier*; singularly mean and unbeautiful v it is to eye and ear alike? Soldiers have such a fine, spontaneous sense of fltnecs in adopting phrases and sobriquets that it would be interesting to get at the real inwardness of the appeal of "Blighty." Iβ it that a poor, expressionless word has been chosen for what haa thought* too deep for tears, and so ia carried off lightly in this word of emotionless tone what lies so near the heart? Everybody knows now what "BHghtj" means,' though at first it was a matter of wild' guessing. Nobody could have supposed on the face of it that it stood for England, TMs precious stone set In a silver set, This .blessed plot, this earth, this reals), this lEugland, This laud of such dear souls, this dear, dear land, 'England, bound . In with the triumphant sea. "England" is a word that lingers, a poet's word, and Shakeepeare's England has now been dubbed •"Blighty." The word has come to Uβ, ac "khaki" (meaning "'dust coloured") came to Uβ from India. But "Blighty" is not etymologically Indian. It has had a long and chequered history. Originally it was spelt "wiliyat," and meant "foreign," says an Indian scholar. Rev. A. Trevellick Cape; and now it is changed about, and as "Blighty" it means '"England," with the connotation of "home." How has this transformation come about? It is well known that the question of the derivation of a word is often a battleground, and opposite sidee claim the victory. The evoiTition of "Blighty," however, seems tolerably plain and direct, as given by the above exponent. "About A.D. 664 an Arab force invaded Afghanistan and took Kabul. Among the words | I used by these successful Mohammedan marauders the word 'wiliyat,' derived from the Arabic 'wali' (to be master)-, and meaning "possessing and controlling/ was in frequent use. For centuries, at varying intervals of time, there were invasions of India by these aggressive people and their descendants. King after king came and went. One of the most famous, Alohmed, who died some j thirty-six years before William the Conqueror landed in England, invaded India seventeen times, and fought for 25 years. Then came a thrust right down into India, and a king established his capital at Delhi." The will-to-power of those old marauders led them to cast sin evercovetous eye upon lands which might be annexed to their growing empire; and "wiliyat"—possessing and ruling"—became synonymous with the idea of a foreign country, ac who should say, "Here is Isaboth's vineyard, let Uβ possess it"; thus "wiliyat" took on the concrete meaning of a strange and alien , land and people. Later, when conquer-.j ors and conquered had learned to dwell together in amity, and old feuds were forgotten, the word, by a further association of ideas, came to signify "union" also. "Wiliyat, a 'foreign country in the lingua franca of India, easily became a term for "England," and from it "Wfliyati," more vulgarly "Bilati," with somewhat various secondary ehadee of meaning. Now in ite corrupted form "Blighty, , it has passed into another sphere. After acclimatisation in ite Indian home, it has flung itself across two continents, and finds a new setting in English speech, and may remain a 6 one of the fantastic additions to the language made by the great war. Starting 1200 years ago from the Arabian Desert, it made its way across Afghanistan, over the Himalayas, into the bazaars of India; was picked up in barraek3 by British eoldiers, whose pronunciation made short work of it; was flung suddenly and but yesterday into the trenches of the war-riven fields of France; and by its latest swift currency lias passed familiarly to Australia and' New Zealand and Canada and other lands undreamed of when "Wiliyat" first j inspired the conquests of certain horde* of swarthy Arabians.