TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 12849, 6 July 1907, Page 8

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

The new eong-book, issued Hearts by tho Admiralty for uko in of tho Navy, makes curiIron. oue reading when we recollect how different aro tho conditions now from those in the days when tho verses were written. Tho spanner, the wrench, and the chisel, do not, remarks Mr Arnold White, lend themselves to the i omance of:— "Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish Indies. Fan well and adieu to you ladies of Spain, For w«'vo received orders to sail for old England; But hope in a ehort time to sco you again. "We'll rant and we'll roar all o'er the wild neoan, We'll rant and we'll rave all o'er tho wide sea.>, Until we strike soundings in the Channel of Old England, From Ushant to Scilly is thirty-four leagues.' . These are the days of tho patent stockless anchor, weighed by the steam windlass, and commissions are so short that Polly (now Ellen or Elenora) no longer weeps when her sweetheart embarks. "Tho Girl I I^eft Behind Me' has not long to wait, and has constant news of her lover's ship. Sailors are still encouraged to sing '"Hearts of Oak/ but tho ship now comes from tl.o mines of Bilbao and Durham, and oak is rigorously tabooed in naval construction. Mr White, whom no one can accuse of being unpatriotic, is impressed by tho unreality, inaccuracy, and ferocity of tho old ]>atriotic songs, and ears he cannot find in the volume a single song which could be sung appropriately in the seamenV quarters of tho Dreadnought. "We badly need a lrric poet who shall sm» of the spanner and the vice and the-oil-can; who shall give melody to tho

proper insulation of wires, and pathos to tho resistance of circuits, or the re rolutioii of cranks." Mr Kipling has touched on this field, but "McAndrew's Hymn"' is not singable. "What is required is a short and burning poem, throbbing with life, thatehall make the blood flow quicker, whilo substituting the names of modern naval mechanism for tho things that have vanished for over."' But poots, wo fear, are too busy writing about tenderer, and, in many cases, less interesting eubjecte.

' The name of Lord A Judicial' Young, who died the Humourist, other day, at the age of eighty-eight, was a household word in Scotland. It has I aeen said that his great talents entitled him to a higher post than a Judgo of Sessions, but ho certainly adorned the judicial Bench. Hβ was ono of tho greatest Scottish lawyers of tho nineteenth century. At tho Bar his reputation for destructive cross-ex-amination was so great that many a litigant compounded with his opponent rather than face tho advocate from the witness-box. Sometimes ho included tho Bench in his sallies. "D'ye call that an ishie?" scornfully asked a Judge who prided himself on his rough Scotch accent, counsel having askt»d that a certain issue go to the jury. "Xo, my lord," said Young euavely, "I call it an issue" On tho Bench he established a reputation for unconventionality and wit. To him are accredited the threw degrees of liars, "tho liar, tho d—d liar, and the expert witness," and the description of a bequest of £250,000 to tho Church of Scotland as "the heaviest fire insurance on record." He was an exceptionally strong criminal Judgo. A certain defendant, on coming up through the trap-door into the dock at Glasgow, unexpectedly caught sight of tho Judgo , s well-known features. "Michty God," ho groaned, "it's Young." Ho hated red-tape and circumlocution, and anything that retarded actual business. "Balfour's Practicks!" ho exclaimed to a young counsel quoting from an antiquated book of reference, "Balfour's fiddlesticks!" On hearing that the House of Lords had upheld a decision of his, he remarked, "It may bo right for all that." Counsel found him rather difficult to work with, on account of his liking for joking and his brusque manner, but sometimes they got the better of him. In an action for assault, a formidable array of miners appeared to give evidence, and Lord Young abbreviated tho examination by saying, as each man stepped into the box, "Never mind whero he lives, ho's a miner, and was there." He asked one of them it ho had seori the defendant strike at tho plaintiff, and, having been answered in the affirmative, turned to counsel with tho remark, "What more do you want?" Then ho told tho witness he might go. A long pause ensued. Tho Judgo gazed round perplexedly. At length counsel, who had been indifferently playing with his watch-chain, looked up and said naively, "Perhaps your lordship will call your next witness." . Taken to task by a Word-Comiag. correspondent for *-sing tho word "swashbuckling," tho "Spectator , pleads guilty, but pleads ©xtonuating circumstances. It quotes with approval Dryde-n'e principle, "I trade both with tho living and tho dead for tho enrichment of our tongue," and says it would rather "exceed discretion occasionally than suffer from an unflattering pedantry." The 'Spectator" then passes on to a consideration of the folly of pedantry in language. Tho indispersable French word tete, meaning head, is believed t<, have oomo from tho Latin testa, a jar. We have an almost exact parallel in the slang word "mug" for face. Some day "mug" may bo as respectable a* word for ftico as tete is for head in French. In Paris to-day tho English ■word snob i%being used in the sense of dand;' or fop. "Swashbuckling" is wrong, because it is formed on a falso analog) , , the verb "to buckle" leading tho writer asti ay, but if the public showed that they wanted it, tho 'Spectator" would not hold out against it. "Helpmate" and "shamefaced" aro words forniod on falso analog}', and they have been admitted into good English. Pedants sny that "reliable* , ' is wrong, lor you rely upon , a thing, and the adjective should) therefore bo "reliable upon." But to banish "reliable," and words open'to the same objection, "indispensable," "laughable," and "objectionable," would bo folly. Slang, scorned by many puriste, is a most interesting source of language "Shelved," wo should say, was good English, and in years to come the picturesque American "to got a cinch on" may bo equally sound. "Many slang words in English aro not the vulgar inventions they are sujyposed to be, but good borrowed words waiting for promotion." "Humbug" was long avoided by polite persons, yet it is believed to have a sound Icelandic derivation. The word "toff" is the height of slang, yot when a coster says, "Ain't he a bloomin' toff?" he is making use of a Yiddish word meaning good, which might easily be promoted as high as "humbug." The fact is, tho pedant is powerless in settling these matters; ho is as on© trying to sweep back tho tido with a broom.