Paternoster Row.
_Huggins and Muggins_ (Vol. viii., p. 341.).--In the edition of Mallet's
_Northern Antiquities_, edited by J. A. Blackwell, Esq., and published by
Bohn (_Antiquarian Library_, 1847), the following conjectural etymology of
the words Huggins and Muggins is given by the editor in a note on the word
_Muninn_, in the glossary to the Prose Edda:
"We cannot refrain for once from noticing the curious coincidence
between the names of Odin's ravens, Hugin and Munin--Mind and
Memory--and those of two personages who figure so often in our comic
literature as Messrs. Huggins and Muggins. _Huggins_, like _Hugh_,
appears to have the same root as _Hugin_, viz. _hugr_, mind, spirit;
and as Mr. Muggins is as invariably associated with Mr. Huggins, as one
of Odin's ravens was with the other (as mind is with memory), the name
may originally have been written _Munnins_, and _nn_ changed into _gg_
for the sake of euphony. Should this _conjecture_, for it is nothing
else, be well founded, one of the most poetical ideas in the whole
range of mythology would, in this plodding, practical, spilling-jenny
age of ours, have thus undergone a most singular metamorphosis."