Some English Expletives.

Evening Star, Issue 8719, 11 January 1892, Page 4

Some English Expletives.

AIT INTERESTING BEVIKW OF THE ORIGIN OF OATHS. William Congreve’s play, ‘ The Old Bachelor,’ is certainly a landmark in the history of expletives. It literally bristles with oaths, which does not surprise ns so much when we find that its first representation, on the boards of Drnry Lane Theatre, took place in 1693, just after the conclusion of the siege of Namur, when our old friend " Unole Toby ” was wounded, and when, as he informs us: ( 'Our army swore terribly in Flanders.” Congreve’s plays exhibit some curiously attenuated forms of English oaths. The grand old interjection Zounds (what a sonorous ring it has) becomes ’oons; God’s blood shortens into ’Adsbnd; ’Adsheart also occurs, and’Adslidikins, a variety of the Shakespearean 'Slid. Then we have A Gad’s Name, Egad, I vow to Gad, 0 Gad, Gadsobs, ’Sdeath, and its shorter form Death, Lard, 0 Lord, fiy the Lord Harry, and the puerile expression Gad’s daggers, belts, blades, and scabbards 1 “ What a dickens” is an old saying which we also find in ‘ The Merry Wives of Windsor.’ “I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.” Dickens is possibly a contraction of devilkins. In Egad we notice the pronunciation of tho letter “o” as “a,” which was affected at this period by the dandies and loungers who frequented the fashionable resorts of the Spring Garden, the piazzas of Coveat Garden, and the Royal Exchange, It probably did not extend to the lower orders of society ; (or in Congreve’s ‘ Love for Love ’ the old nurse says God 1 and Lord ! and the young man from sea a God’s name. The oath By God is übiquitous in old English literature. In the ‘Lay of Havelok the Dane,’ written about the year 1280, in the reign of Edward tho First, we meet with the exclamation Deus several times. It is, of course, the Latin word for God, and probably the original form of our interjection, Deuce! In ‘Piers Plowman’ the English form, By God, is seen, while in Chaucer’s poems it stands side by side with the French Farde or Purdy. It appears in an infinite number of forms—corruptions either intentional to avoid taking God’s name in vain, or unintentional, from ignorance of what the phrase meant. Besides the old forms, by cock, 'ecod, and ’egad, we have the modern, by gar, by gaw, by gord, by gum, by gosh, and the negro slave’s by golly. Congreve also has 0 Gemini, which sounds strangely out of date, like our by Jove. Tertullian tells us that the early Christian used the old Roman oath, Meherole (by Hercules), without knowing what it meant. So too the mother, when scolding her child, says “plague you,” or “drat you," does not know, or care to know, that those expressions are elliptical for God plague you, and God rot you. The sound of the first syllable of the names Gemini and Jove explains why the modern Christians continue to sweat by them. One of Sheridan’s characters, a lady, exclaims By Gemini! Its more recent form is By Jimminy. But to return to ' Love for Love.’ Mess ! and By the Mess ! is a survival of the once common oath By the Maes. Wo meet with it in Chaucer’s 1 Boke of the Duchesse,’ and in ' Hamlet,’ Hi., 2: “By the Mass ’tis very like a camel ”; and in ‘ Damon and Pythias ’ (1571), which will be found in the collection of old plays edited by Isaac Reed, we have the lines: Jaoke— By the Masse, I will boxe you ! Wyll—By oocke, I will foxe you Marry and Amen is a form of the old oath By Mary. In the ‘ Chester Mysteries’ (circ. 1450) the Patriarch Noah is made to swear by Marye. Why not by Joan of Arc? Zooks means God’s looks. We find two other forms of the interjection in the play—viz , ‘ Gadszooks and ’Odszooks.’ The exclamation Flesh! is a contraction of ’Odsflesh, which appears elsewhere as Odsfish. ’Odao is probably a corruption of Godsbones. Marry-ootne up, like the Marry guep of L» iH., 202, has been interpreted Mary go up, an allusion to the Assumption of our Lady. Next we come to Sheridan’s plays. In ‘ A Trip to Scarborough ’ (first acted in 1777), we come across some good round oaths. The exquisite Lord Foppington, when trying on his new clothes, exclaims: “Death and Eternal tortures, Sir ! I say the coat is too wide here by a foot.” Tailor : “My lord, if it bad been tighter ’twould neither have hooked nor buttoned,” Lord F : “Rat the hooka and buttons, sir! As Gad shall jedge me, it bangs on my shoulder like a chairman's surtout.” A little later the Fop exhibits his powers of conversation: “lam overjoyed that you think of continuing here, atap my vitals ! (his favorite expression). For God’s sake, madam, how has your ladyship been able to subsist thus long under the fatigue of a country life ?” and, when wounded in an encounter provoked by his own folly, cries out: “ Ah, quite through the body, atap my vitals!” They were very nearly stopped that time. We must not quit Sheridan’s works without noticing the bold Bob Acrrs’s “genteel" style of oath, which adapts itself to the subject for the time being under discussion: “Ods whips and wheels, I’ve travelled like a comet." Ods blushes and blooms ; Ods crickets ; Ods frogs and tambours; Ods jigs and tabors; Ods hilts and blades; Ods flints, pans, and triggers; Ods balls and barrels; Ods bullets and blades; Ods crowns and laurels. His servant, on the contrary, usually swears by the Mass.

During the time of the Commonwealth profane swearing was vigorously suppressed, together with play-acting and other popular amusements, which appeared worldly to the Puritan eye. We read in ‘Hansard’s Parliamentary History ’ that on June 28, 1650, a law was made that every person styling himself a duke, marquis, earl, viscount, or baron, who profanely cursed or swore, should forfeit 80s; a baronet or knight, 20a ; an esquire, 10s; a gentleman, Gs 8d; and all inferior persons, 3s 41. Wives and widows were to pay penalties equivalent to what their husbands would have paid, and single women according to their father’s rank. The distinction between dukes—especially self-styled ones and inferior persons seems at first sight to be out of keeping with the democratic principles of a commonwealth ; but though the House of Lords was abolished, the nobility were still recognised as a class, and the crude doctrine of the equality of man, which was so insisted upon by the French Republicans in after times, was here conspicuous by its absence, At the restoration of the monarchy there followed, as a natural consequence of this system of repression, a time of unbridled license and of reaption in the opposite direction, when the people indulged in strong language to their hearts’ content, At last, in the nineteenth year of King George 11, a statute was passed which recites that “ forasmuch as the horrid, impious, aud execrable vices of profane cursing and swearing (so highly displeasing to Almighty God, and loathsome and offensive to every Christian) are become so frequent and notorious, unless speedily and effectually punished (eio) they must justly provoke the Divine vengeance to increase the many calamities these nations now labor under” (the calamities referred to being probably the War of the Austrian Succession, which included the battles of Dettiugen and Foatenoy, and the Scotch Rebellion of 1745), and that “ whereas the laws now in being for punishing those crimes have not answered the intents for whioh they were designed, by means of difficulties attending the putting such laws in execution," and goes on to provide a remedy for this shocking state of things by enacting that, after June 1, 1748, any person convicted before a magistrate, on the testimony of one witness, of profanely cursing and swearing, should forfeit a sum of money proportionate to his status in the social scale. For this purpose the British public were divided into three classes : (1) Day laborers, common soldiers, common sailors, and common seamen, who were to be fined one shilling for every oath, (2) Other persons under the degree of a gentler man, who were to pay two shillings, (8) Persona of or above the degree of a gentleman, who were to forfeit the sum of five shillings for each oath they uttered, ‘Gentleman’s Magazine,’