No one would at present think of any other answer to a Query as to the
meaning of this term than that the phrase originated with the scarecrows
and stuffed apings of humanity with which the rising generation enlivens
our streets on every fifth of November, and dins in our ears the cry,
"Please to remember the guy," and that it alludes to the Christian name
of the culprit, Guido. Have, however, any of your readers met this
title, or any allusion to it, in any writer previously to 1605? and may
its attribution to the supposed framer of the Gunpowder Plot only have
been the accidental appropriation of an earlier term of popular
reproach, and which had become so since the conversion of the nation to
Christianity? This naturally heaped contumely and insult upon every
thing relating to the Druids, and the heathen superstitions of the
earlier inhabitants.
Amongst others, _Guy_ was a term by which, no doubt, the Druids were
very early designated, and is cognate, with the Italian _Guido_ and our
own _Guide_, to the Latin _cuidare_, which would give it great
appropriativeness when applied to the offices of teachers and leaders,
with which these lordly flamens were invested. Narrowly connected with
their rites, the term has descended to the present day, as is decidedly
shown in the French name of the mistletoe, _le Gui_, and as denoting the
priesthood. The common cry of the children at Christmas in France, _au
gui l'an neuf_, marks the winter solstice, and their most solemn
festival; so _ai-guil-lac_, as the name of new year's gifts, so
necessary and expensive to a Frenchman, which they particularly bear in
the diocese of Chartres, can only be explained by referring it to the
same origin. In the French vocabulary at present this word, as I have
before observed, is restricted to the mistletoe, the _viscum album_ of
Linnæus: but in Germany we have pretty much the same conversion of a
favourite druidical plant, the trefoil, or shamrock, and the cinquefoil;
both of them go in Bavaria and many other parts of Germany under the
name of _Truten-fuss_, or Druid's foot, and are thought potent charms in
guarding fields and cattle from harm; but there too, as with us,
possibly the oldest title of guy, the term Druid, has grown into a name
of the greatest disgrace: "_Trute, Trute, Saudreck_," "Druid, Druid, sow
dirt," is an insulting phrase reserved for the highest ebullitions of a
peasant's rage in Schwaben and Franken.
Whilst on the subject of the mistletoe, I cannot forbear to mark the
coincidences that run through the popular notions of a country in all
ages. Pliny, in his very exact account of the druidical rites, tells us,
when the archdruid mounted the oak to cut the sacred parasite with a
golden pruning-hook, two other priests stood below to catch it in a
white linen cloth, extremely cautious lest it should fall to earth. One
is almost tempted to fancy that Shakspeare was describing a similar
scene when he makes Hecate say
"Upon the corner of the moon,
There hangs a vap'rous drop profound,
I'll catch it ere it come to ground."
In a very excellent note to Dr. Giles' translation of Richard of
Cirencester, p. 432., he adduces the opinion of Dr. Daubeny, of Oxford,
that as the mistletoe is now so rarely found in Europe on oaks, it had
been exterminated with the other druidical rites on the introduction of
Christianity. I am not sufficiently botanist to determine how far it is
possible to destroy the natural habitat of a plant propagated by
extrinsic means, and should be more inclined to account for the
difference then and now by supposing that the Druids may have known the
secret of inoculating a desirable oak with the seeds where birds had not
done so, and practised it when necessary.
P.S. Since writing the above, I recollect that the Latin verse,
"_Ad viscum Druidæ_: Druidæ clamare solebant,"
is frequently quoted from Ovid, sometimes, and that recently, specifying
the Fasti. I need not tell you that it is not to be found there, and I
wish to inquire if any of the numerous readers of your valuable
publication can say where I can meet with it; if classical, it is
another remarkable evidence of the endurance of popular customs to the
present day. In the following quotation from Keyssler's Treatise _de
Visco_, the Anklopferleinstag would be also a noisy demonstration dating
from druidical times, at a period of the year not far removed from the
beginning of November.
"In superiori Germaniæ parte, Marchionatu Onolsbacensi
comprehensa, cujus inolæ plurimas Gentilismi reliquias retinent,
regio ipsa multis Druidum vestigiis abundat, tempore adventus
Christi, sive media Hyeme (am Anklopferleinstag), vulgus per
vias et pagos currit malleisque pulsat fores et fenestras
indesinenter clamans _Gutheyl! Gutheyl!_ Quod quidem non salutem
per Christi adventum partam indicat, quasi diceres: Gut Heyl;
bona salus; multo minus fictitam Sanctam Günthildem, quam
rustici illius tractus miris fabulis ac nugis celebrant, sed
nomen ipsum visci est." {164}
The present popular and only German name of the mistletoe, the parent of
our English denomination, is _Mistel_, which is evidently only
_Meist-heyl_ (most heal, or healing), the superlative of the above
_Gut-heyl_, and both wonderfully agreeing with the name which Pliny says
it bore in his time, _Omnia sanans_.
William Bell, Ph.D.
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