The Jeweller's Window

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30769, 5 June 1965, Page 5

The Jeweller's Window

STRANGE TASTES

ISpectally uritlen for "The

Press*’ by

ARNOLD WALL)

A N idiot who should

never have been sent to an ordinary school was one of my school-fellows. He loved to drink the ink. Any person who. like myself. loves to browse in dictionaries. may be compared with that poor fellow, for dictionaries are not intended to be “read.” There is a story of a Scottish farmer who. kept waiting in the laird's library, passed his time in examining a dictionary. The laird came in at last and asked him how he got on with the reading. Sandy replied. "They’re grand stories, laird, but they’re unco shorrt.” Now that never bothered me. For more years than I care to count dictionaries have been my favourite reading.

The brevity of the entries is rather an advantage than otherwise. One flits like a bee from flower to flower extracting honey from every one. 1 find I now possess about 25 of the these fascinating

books in about six languages and dating from 1668 to the present day, but I have had even more and older treasures (or treasuries) of this class.

There are. of course, many sorts of dictionaries: the kind which always appealed so strongly to me was the etymological. The desire to know the origin of words is strong in many of us and has been for very many years. It is within the last hundred only that this subject has been treated scientifically, but the amateurs have been guessing for at least 2000 years.

So there is nothing unnatural or abnormal in my devotion to the treasure-houses of etymology. Few people. I imagine, really “read” the etymological dictionary, they only “consult” it. That is why I compare myself to my poor inkoholic school-fellow who found a use of his own for something which others did not know of and was not intended to be used in that way at all. Bedlam St. Mary of Bethlehem was founded as a priory in LonIdon in 1247 and in 1547 was I converted into a madhouse lor lunatic asylum. The name was variously spelt in the I Middle Ages-Betleem without the “h,” Bedlem, Bethlem etc. The “h,” which we now pronounce, was originally a mere sign to show that the “ee” was for two syllables, not for one as in “seem.” The word meant a madhouse and later came into use for any scene of noisy rowdy behaviour. From “bedlam” came the “bedlamite,” the madman, also Tom o’ Bedlam a sort of licensed beggar, one who was discharged from the asylum, often only half cured, and apt. to become a public nuisance. It is rather odd to find the name of the Saviour's birthplace coming to mean what it did. “Bedlam" is so like "beldam.” an old woman, literally a beautiful woman, that the two words were bound to be sometimes confused. The great Charles Dickens, if 1 remember rightly, once wrote “hence beldamite," but that might have been a printer’s error.

Immigration. South Africa's Immigration Minister, Senator A. Trollip. said a record number of 40,865 immigrants came to South Africa last year, but prospects for this year were not so good. Last year w'as the first year in which the number of white immigrants from African countries was smaller than from other parts of the world.