Worcester.
[See the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for May, 1815, p. 395., for "A true and
faithfull Narrative of the Death of Master Hambden, who was mortally
wounded at Challgrove Fight, A.D. 1643, and on the 18th of June." From
this narrative we learn, that whilst Hampden was fighting against
Prince Rupert at Chalgrove Field, he was struck with two carbine-balls
in the shoulder, which broke the bone, and terminated fatally.]
* * * * *
Replies.
"PINECE WITH A STINK."
(Vol. viii., pp. 270. 350.)
I would not have meddled with this subject if R. G., getting on a wrong
scent, had not arrived at the very extraordinary conclusion that Bramhall
meant a "pinnace," and an "offensive composition well known to sailors!"
The earliest notice that I have met with of the _pinece_ in an English
work, is in the second part of the _Secrets of Maister Alexis of Piemont_,
translated by W. Warde, Lond. 1568. There I find the following
secrets--worth knowing, too, if effective:
"_Against stinking vermin called Punesies._--If you rub your bedsteede
with squilla stamped with vinaigre, or with the leaves of cedar tree
sodden in oil, you shall never feel punese. Also if you set under the
bed a payle full of water the puneses will not trouble you at all."
Butler, in the first canto of the third part of _Hudibras_, also mentions
it thus:
"And stole his talismanic louse--
His flea, his morpion, and punaise."
If the Querist refers to his French dictionary he will soon discover the
meaning of _morpion_ and _punaise_--the latter without doubt the _pinece_
of Bishop Bramhall. Cotgrave, in his _French-English Dictionary_, London,
1650, defines _punaise_ to be "the noysome and stinking vermin called the
bed punie."
It may be bad taste to dwell any longer on this subject; but as it
illustrates a curious fact in natural history, and as it has been well
said, that whatever the Almighty has thought proper to create is not
beneath the study of mankind, I shall crave a word or two more.
The _pinece_ is not originally a native of this country; and that is the
reason why, so many years after its first appearance in England, it was
known only by a corruption of its French name _punaise_, or its German
appellation _wandlaus_ (wall-louse). Penny, a celebrated physician and
naturalist in the reign of Henry VII., discovered it at Mortlake in rather
a curious manner. Mouffet, in his _Theatrum Insectorum_ (Lond. 1634), thus
relates the story:
"Anno 1503, dum haec Pennio scriptitaret, Mortlacum Tamesin adjacentem
viculum, magna festinatione accersebatur ad duas nobiles, magno metu ex
cimicum vestigiis percussas, et quid nescio contagionis valde veritas.
Tandem recognita, ac bestiolis captis, risu timorem omnem excussat."
Mouffet also tells us that in his time the insect was little known in
England, though very common on the Continent, a circumstance which he
ascribes to the superior cleanliness of the English:
"Munditiem frequentemque lectulorum et culcitrarem lotionem, cum Galli,
Germani, et Itali minus curant, pariunt magis hane pestem, Angli autem
munditei et cultus studiosissimi rarius iis laborant."
Ray, in his _Historia Insectorum_, published in 1710, merely terms it the
_punice_ or wall-louse; indeed, I am not aware that the modern name of the
insect appears in print previous to 1730, when one Southal published _A
Treatise of Buggs_. Southal appears to have been an illiterate person; and
he erroneously ascribes the introduction of the insect into this country to
the large quantities of foreign fir used to rebuild London after the Great
Fire.
The word _bug_, signifying a frightful object or spectre, derived from the
Celtic and the root of _bogie_, bug-aboo, bug-bear--is well known in our
earlier literature. Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton, Beaumont and Fletcher,
Holinshed and many others, use it; and in Matthew's _Bible_, the fifth
verse of the ninety-first psalm is rendered:
"Thou shalt not nede to be afraid of any bugs by night."
Thus we see that a real "terror of the night" in course of time, assumed,
by common consent, the title of the imaginary evil spirit of our ancestors.
One word more. I can see no difficulty in tracing the derivation of the
word _humbug_, without going to Hamburg, Hume of the Bog, or any such
distant sources. In Grose's _Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue_, I find the
word _hum_ signifying deceive. Peter Pindar, too, writes writes:
"Full many a trope from bayonet and drum
He threaten'd but behold! 'twas all a hum."
Now, the rustic who frightens his neighbour with a turnip lanthorn and a
white sheet, or the spirit-rapping medium, who, for a consideration, treats
his verdant client with a communication from the unseen world, most
decidedly humbugs him; that is, hums or deceives him with an imaginary
spirit, or bug.