attention has been awakened to them, are so self-evident as those which
names preserve; although, without this calling of the attention to them,
the most broad and obvious of these foot-prints which the past time has
left may continue to escape our observation to the end of our lives.
Leibnitz tells us, and one can quite understand, the delight with which
a great German Emperor, Maximilian I., discovered that 'Habsburg,' or
'Hapsburg,' the ancestral name of his house, really had a meaning, one
moreover full of vigour and poetry. This he did, when he heard it by
accident on the lips of a Swiss peasant, no longer cut short and thus
disguised, but in its original fulness, 'Habichtsburg,' or 'Hawk's-
Tower,' being no doubt the name of the castle which was the cradle of
his race. [Footnote: _Opp._ vol. vi. pt. 2. p. 20.] Of all the thousands
of Englishmen who are aware that Angles and Saxons established
themselves in this island, and that we are in the main descended from
them, it would be curious to know how many have realized to themselves
a fact so obvious as that this 'England' means 'Angle-land,' or that in
the names 'Essex,' 'Sussex,' and 'Middlesex,' we preserve a record of
East Saxons, South Saxons, and Middle Saxons, who occupied those
several portions of the land; or that 'Norfolk' and 'Suffolk' are two
broad divisions of 'northern' and 'southern folk,' into which the East
Anglian kingdom was divided. 'Cornwall' does not bear its origin quite
so plainly upon its front, or tell its story so that every one who runs
may read. At the same time its secret is not hard to attain to. As the
Teutonic immigrants advanced, such of the British population as were
not either destroyed or absorbed by them retreated, as we all have
learned, into Wales and Cornwall, that is, till they could retreat no
further. The fact is evidently preserved in the name of 'Wales', which
means properly 'The foreigners,'--the nations of Teutonic blood calling
all bordering tribes by this name. But though not quite so apparent on
the surface, this fact is also preserved in 'Cornwall', written
formerly 'Cornwales', or the land inhabited by the Welsh of the Corn or
Horn. The chroniclers uniformly speak of North Wales and Corn-Wales.
[Footnote: See _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, year 997, where mention is made
of the _Cornwealas_, the Cornish people.] These Angles, Saxons, and
Britons or Welshmen, about whom our pupils may be reading, will be to
them more like actual men of flesh and blood, who indeed trod this same
soil which we are treading now, when we can thus point to traces
surviving to the present day, which they have left behind them, and
which England, as long as it is England, will retain.
The Danes too have left their marks on the land. We all probably, more
or less, are aware how much Danish blood runs in English veins; what
large colonies from Scandinavia (for as many may have come from Norway
as from modern Denmark), settled in some parts of this island. It will
be interesting to show that the limits of this Danish settlement and
occupation may even now be confidently traced by the constant
recurrence in all such districts of the names of towns and villages
ending in 'by,' which signified in their language a dwelling or single
village; as Nether_by_, Apple_by_, Der_by_, Whit_by_, Rug_by_. Thus if
you examine closely a map of Lincolnshire, one of the chief seats of
the Danish settlement, you will find one hundred, or well nigh a fourth
part, of the towns and villages to have this ending, the whole coast
being studded with them--they lie nearly as close to one another as in
Sleswick itself; [Footnote: Pott, _Etym. Forsch._ vol. ii. pt. 2,
p.1172] while here in Hampshire 'by' as such a termination, is utterly
unknown. Or again, draw a line transversely through England from
Canterbury by London to Chester, the line, that is, of the great Roman
road, called Watling Street, and north of this six hundred instances of
the occurrence of the same termination may be found, while to the south
there are almost none. 'Thorpe,' equivalent to the German 'dorf' as
Bishops_thorpe_, Al_thorp_, tells the same tale of a Norse occupation
of the soil; and the terminations, somewhat rarer, of 'thwaite,'
'haugh,' 'garth,' 'ness,' do the same no less. On the other hand, where,
as in this south of England, the 'hams' abound (the word is identical
with our 'home'), as Bucking_ham_, Eg_ham_, Shore_ham_, there you may
be sure that not Norsemen but West Germans took possession of the soil.
'Worth,' or 'worthy,' tells the same story, as Bos_worth_,
Kings_worthy_; [Footnote: See Sweet's _Oldest English Texts_ (index).]
the 'stokes' in like manner, as Basing_stoke_, Itchen_stoke_, are Saxon,
being (as some suppose) places _stock_aded, with stocks or piles for
defence. You are yourselves learning, or hereafter you may be teaching
others, the names and number of the English counties or shires. What a
dull routine task for them and for you this may be, supplying no food
for the intellect, no points of attachment for any of its higher powers
to take hold of! And yet in these two little words, 'shire' and
'county,' if you would make them render up even a small part of their
treasure, what lessons of English history are contained! One who knows
the origin of these names, and how we come to possess such a double
nomenclature, looks far into the social condition of England in that
period when the strong foundations of all that has since made England
glorious and great were being laid; by aid of these words may detect
links which bind its present to its remotest past; for of lands as of
persons it may be said, 'the child is father of the man,' 'Shire' is
connected with 'shear,' 'share,' and is properly a portion 'shered' or
'shorn' off. [Footnote: It must be confessed that there are insuperable
difficulties in the way of connecting Anglo-Saxon _scir_ with the verb
_sceron_, to shear, and of explaining it as equivalent to 'shorn off.'
The derivation of 'shire' has not yet been ascertained.] When a Saxon
king would create an earl, it did not lie in men's thoughts, accustomed
as they were to deal with realities, that such could be a merely
titular creation, or exist without territorial jurisdiction; and a
'share' or 'shire' was assigned him to govern, which also gave him his
title. But at the Conquest this Saxon officer was displaced by a Norman,
the 'earl' by the 'count'--this title of 'count,' borrowed from the
later Roman empire, meaning originally 'companion' (comes), one who had
the honour of being closest companion to his leader; and the 'shire'
was now the 'county' (comitatus), as governed by this 'comes.' In that
singular and inexplicable fortune of words, which causes some to
disappear and die out under the circumstances apparently most
favourable for life, others to hold their ground when all seemed
against them, 'count' has disappeared from the titles of English
nobility, while 'earl' has recovered its place; although in evidence of
the essential identity of the two titles, or offices rather, the wife
of the earl is entitled a 'countess'; and in further memorial of these
great changes that so long ago came over our land, the two names
'shire' and 'county' equally survive as in the main interchangeable
words in our mouths.
A large part of England, all that portion of it which the Saxons
occupied, is divided into 'hundreds'. Have you ever asked yourselves
what this division means, for something it must mean? The 'hundred' is
supposed to have been originally a group or settlement of one hundred
free families of Saxon incomers. If this was so, we have at once an
explanation of the strange disproportion between the area of the
'hundred' in the southern and in the more northern counties--the
average number of square miles in a 'hundred' of Sussex or Kent being
about four and twenty; of Lancashire more than three hundred. The Saxon
population would naturally be far the densest in the earlier
settlements of the east and south, while more to west and north their
tenure would be one rather of conquest than of colonization, and the
free families much fewer and more scattered. [Footnote: Kemble, _The
Saxons in England_, vol. i. p. 420; Stubbs, _Constitutional History of
England,_ p. 98.] But further you have noticed, I dare say, the
exceptional fact that the county of Sussex, besides the division into
hundreds, is divided also into six 'rapes'; thus the 'rape' of Bramber
and so on. [This 'rape' is connected by Lappenberg, ii. 405 (1881),
with the Icel. _hreppr_, which according to the Grágás was a district
in which twenty or more peasants maintained one poor person].
Let us a little consider, in conclusion, how we may usefully bring our
etymologies and other notices of words to bear on the religious
teaching which we would impart in our schools. To do this with much
profit we must often deal with words as the Queen does with the gold
and silver coin of the realm. When this has been current long, and by
often passing from man to man, with perhaps occasional clipping in
dishonest hands, has lost not only the clear brightness, the well-
defined sharpness of outline, but much of the weight and intrinsic
value which it had when first issued from the royal mint, it is the
sovereign's prerogative to recall it, and issue it anew, with the royal
image stamped on it afresh, bright and sharp, weighty and full, as at
first. Now to a process such as this the true mint-masters of language,
and all of us may be such, will often submit the words which they use.
Where use and custom have worn away their significance, we too may
recall and issue them afresh. With how many it has thus fared!--for
example, with one which will be often in your mouths. You speak of the
'lessons' of the day; but what is 'lessons' here for most of us save a
lazy synonym for the morning and evening chapters appointed to be read
in church? But realize what the Church intended in calling these
chapters by this name; namely, that they should be the daily
instruction of her children; listen to them yourselves as such; lead
your scholars to regard them as such, and in this use of 'lessons' what
a lesson for every one of us there may be! [Footnote: [Still
etymologically _lessons_ mean simply 'readings, the word representing
French _leçons_ = Latin _lectiones_.]] 'Bible' itself, while we not
irreverently use it, may yet be no more to us than the verbal sign by
which we designate the written Word of God. Keep in mind that it
properly means 'the book' and nothing more; that once it could be
employed of any book (in Chaucer it is so), and what matter of thought
and reflection lies in this our present restriction of 'bible' to one
book, to the exclusion of all others! So strong has been the sense of
Holy Scripture being '_the_ Book,' the worthiest and best, that book
which explains all other books, standing up in their midst,--like
Joseph's kingly sheaf, to which all the other sheaves did obeisance,--
that this name of 'Bible' or 'Book' has been restrained to it alone:
just as 'Scripture' means no more than 'writing'; but this inspired
Writing has been acknowledged so far above all other writings, that
this name also it has obtained as exclusively its own.
Again, something may be learned from knowing that the 'surname,' as
distinguished from the 'Christian' name, is the name over and above,
not 'sire'-name, or name received from the father, as some explain, but
'sur'-name (super nomen). There was never, that is, a time when every
baptized man had not a Christian name, the recognition of his personal
standing before God; while the surname, the name expressing his
relation, not to the kingdom of God, but to a worldly society, is of
much later growth, super-added to the other, as the word itself
declares. What a lesson at once in the growing up of a human society,
and in the contrast between it and the heavenly Society of the Church,
might be appended to this explanation! There was a period when only a
few had surnames; had, that is, any significance in the order of things
temporal; while the Christian name from the first was the possession of
every baptized man. All this might be brought usefully to bear on your
exposition of the first words in the Catechism.
There are long words from the Latin which, desire as we may to use all
plainness of speech, we cannot do without, nor find their adequate
substitutes in homelier parts of our language; words which must always
remain the vehicles of much of that truth whereby we live. Now in
explaining these, make it your rule always to start, where you can,
from the derivation, and to return to that as often as you can. Thus
you wish to explain 'revelation.' How much will be gained if you can
attach some distinct image to the word, one to which your scholars, as
often as they hear it, may mentally recur. Nor is this difficult. God's
'revelation' of Himself is a drawing back of the veil or curtain which
concealed Him from men; not man finding out God, but God discovering
Himself to man; all which is contained in the word. Or you wish to
explain 'absolution.' Many will know that it has something to do with
the pardon of sins; but how much more accurately will they know this,
when they know that 'to absolve' means 'to loosen from': God's
'absolution' of men being his releasing of them from the bands of those
sins with which they were bound. Here every one will connect a distinct
image with the word, such as will always come to his help when he would
realize what its precise meaning may be. That which was done for
Lazarus naturally, the Lord exclaiming, 'Loose him, and let him go,'
the same is done spiritually for us, when we receive the 'absolution'
of our sins.
Tell your scholars that 'atonement' means 'at-one-ment'--the setting at
one of those who were at twain before, namely God and man, and they
will attach to 'atonement' a definite meaning, which perhaps in no way
else it would have possessed for them; and, starting from this point,
you may muster the passages in Scripture which describe the sinner's
state as one of separation, estrangement, alienation, from God, the
Christian's state as one in which he walks together with God, because
the two have been set 'at one.' Or you have to deal with the following,
'to redeem,' 'Redeemer,' 'redemption.' Lose not yourselves in vague
generalities, but fasten on the central point of these, that they imply
a 'buying,' and not this merely, but a 'buying back'; and then connect
with them, so explained, the whole circle of statements in Scripture
which rest on this image, which speak of sin as a slavery, of sinners
as bondsmen of Satan, of Christ's blood as a ransom, of the Christian
as one restored to his liberty.
Many words more suggest themselves; I will not urge more than one; but
that one, because in it is a lesson more for ourselves than for others,
and with such I would fain bring these lectures to a close. How solemn
a truth we express when we name our work in this world our 'vocation,'
or, which is the same in homelier Anglo-Saxon, our 'calling.' What a
calming, elevating, ennobling view of the tasks appointed us in this
world, this word gives us. We did not come to our work by accident; we
did not choose it for ourselves; but, in the midst of much which may
wear the appearance of accident and self-choosing, came to it by God's
leading and appointment. How will this consideration help us to
appreciate justly the dignity of our work, though it were far humbler
work, even in the eyes of men, than that of any one of us here present!
What an assistance in calming unsettled thoughts and desires, such as
would make us wish to be something else than that which we are! What a
source of confidence, when we are tempted to lose heart, and to doubt
whether we shall carry through our work with any blessing or profit to
ourselves or to others! It is our 'vocation,' not our choosing but our
'calling'; and He who 'called' us to it, will, if only we will ask Him,
fit us for it, and strengthen us in it.
End of Project Gutenberg's On the Study of Words, by Richard C Trench