DAVY JONES'S LOCKER.
This expression of what may be called nautical slang has now become
almost classic. At all events, everybody knows it; and most people may
be presumed to know that to 'go to Davy Jones's Locker' is equivalent to
'losing the number of your mess,' or, as the Californian miners say,
'passing in your checks.' Being especially a sea-phrase, it means, of
course, to be drowned. But how did the phrase originate? And who was
Davy Jones? These questions must have frequently occurred to many, and
it is worth while seeking an answer to them. There is an explanation for
everything, if one only knows how to look for it.
This saying about Davy Jones is a very old one--so old, that it cannot
possibly have any reference to the famous Paul Jones. In fact, one hears
very often of 'Davy's Locker' without any reference to 'Jones' at all.
Then 'Davy,' again, is a vulgar slang expression for affidavit, but it
is also used in thief-parlance by way of an oath. 'So help me Davy!' is
the slang equivalent for the concluding sentence of the oath
administered in the police-courts with which these gentry are familiar.
It has thus been inferred that 'Davy' is a slang expression of somewhat
blasphemous import; but this is by no means certain.
It is much more likely to be associated with, or to have the same origin
as, the 'Duffy' of the West Indian negroes. Among them Duffy means a
ghost; and in the vocabulary of the gutter it may easily have been taken
as the equivalent of soul. The transition from Duffy to Davy is by no
means difficult.
But how, then, did the vagabond users of 'flash' language get hold of
this word? It is probable enough that it was brought home by the sailors
from the West Indies, and picked up at the docks by the waifs and strays
of our vast vagrant population. On the other hand, it is just as likely
that the West Indian negroes picked up 'Duffy' from our own sailors; and
that, in fact, Duffy is just the nigger contraction of Davy Jones. There
is certainly a very close connection, both in sound and meaning, between
the two expressions.
We must go further back and further away, however, to get to the root of
this matter. And, if we inquire diligently, we shall find our Davy in
the Deva of the Indian mythology. The original Sanskrit meaning of Deva
was 'The Shining One,' but in the operation of what has been called 'the
degradation of Deities' in the Oriental religions, it became synonymous
with our devil. In fact, we owe the word 'devil' to this same Sanskrit
root; and it is noteworthy that while Deva meant the Good Spirit to the
Brahmans, it meant the Evil Spirit to the Parsees. In this root we may
also find the explanation of the gipsy word for God, which, curiously
enough, is Devel.
While it is easy to trace the transition from Deva to the sailor's Davy,
one may note another curious thing. The name of the fabulous Welshman,
Taffy, the thief, is a corruption of Dyved, which, as signifying an evil
spirit, is the Cymric form of Deva. This would almost suggest that the
addition of the apparent surname, Jones, was a Welsh performance. But
this is only an amusing conjecture, not without a certain aptness.
For the origin of Jones we must look to Jonah, who in nautical history
is regarded as the embodiment of malevolence at sea. The prophet Jonah
is not the only one who has been committed to the deep to appease the
storm-fiends, whose anger his presence was supposed to have aroused. It
is easy to account for this from the Bible narrative. 'The mariners were
afraid, and cried every man unto his God. And they said, every one to
his fellow, "Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose
cause this evil is upon us." So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon
Jonah. So they took up Jonah and cast him forth into the sea, and the
sea ceased from her raging.'
The superstition of sailors is proverbial, and to this day they believe
in good or ill luck being brought to a vessel by persons and things. In
olden times there were many sacrifices to this Jonah superstition; and
even in comparatively recent times, Holcroft, the actor, on a voyage to
Scotland, narrowly escaped a watery grave, because the men took him for
'the Jonas.' And to this day 'He's a Jonah' is an expression often
enough heard on ship-board applied to some unwelcome passenger.
Here, then, we have the Sanskrit origin of Davy, and the Biblical origin
of Jones, both words embodying much the same idea to the mind of the
primitive seamen.
But what of the 'locker'?
This, of course, is a familiar piece of ship-furniture which it was not
difficult to transfer to the mythical demon of the deep. Lieutenant
Bassett thought that the locker might be the whale's belly in which
Jonah found refuge; but this is hardly in harmony with the meaning of
the phrase. In the sense in which it is thus used, locker does not mean
a temporary resting-place or submarine harbour of refuge, but a place of
final deposit. It is possible, indeed, to find the origin of the word
locker as here applied in Loki, the personification of evil in the
Scandinavian mythology. Loki, like Deva, was not always an evil spirit,
but he became eventually identified with Satan. He became a flame-demon,
a sort of incarnate spirit of fire.
There is good reason for believing in this theory of the Scandinavian
origin of the word 'locker' as used in the connection we are
considering. It is to be remembered that, in olden times, death by
drowning was even more dreaded than now, because drowned bodies were
supposed to be debarred from the Resurrection. Going far back, we find
that the sea was the abode of Typhoeus, who, besides being a
hurricane-raising, was also a fire-breathing, demon, and was feared as
the quencher of the sun, who sank at night into his bosom. The legend of
St. Brandan and his burning islands preserved the idea that Hades was
very near to the bottom of the ocean. Thus, then, we may readily
perceive the conception of Loki having his receptacle for drowned
mariners in the bed of the sea. A belief prevailed long into the Middle
Ages that the sea-bottom was the abode of many demons, who lay in wait
for passengers, to drag them down to the infernal depths.
Thus, then, Davy Jones's Locker became, by a mixture of theogonies, 'the
ocean, the deep sea-bottom, the place to which the body was committed,
and to which the souls of the wicked fled.'
This meaning is now somewhat modified. Sailors do not, as Smollett says
they did in his day, regard Davy Jones as the fiend who presides over
all the evil spirits of the deep, and who is seen in various shapes,
warning the devoted wretches of death and woe. In fact, it is not Davy
Jones they think of at all now, but his Locker; for to go to Davy's
Locker is to be lost at sea and to find a watery grave.
There is, however, a curious survival of the personal element still to
be traced in some of the sailors' chanties. Take, for instance, that
remarkable one about 'Burying the Dead Horse,' which still puzzles the
passengers on board the packets sailing to the Antipodes. Without going
into the question of the song and its attendant ceremonies just now,
the following lines may be quoted as bearing on our subject:
'You poor old horse, what brought you here,
After carrying turf for many a year?
From Bantry Bay to Ballyack,
When you fell down and broke your back?
You died from blows and sore abuse,
And were salted down for the sailors' use.
The sailors they the meat despise;
They turned you over and ---- your eyes;
They ate the meat and picked the bones,
And gave the rest to Davy Jones.'
All the offal of a ship is thrown over to Davy Jones--doubtless because
there is nothing else to be done with it.
The favourite demon, if one may use the expression, of British sailors
is now Old Nick, and one may trace his origin even more easily than that
of Davy Jones. We can follow him through Saxon, German, Danish and
Norwegian transitions to one of the names of Odin--Hnickar--for even
All-father Odin shared the fate of his Oriental predecessors, and became
demonized. Others, again, have carried the name Hnickar back still
further to the Egyptian Nika, the serpent of the lower world, 'the
Typhonic enemy of the Sun in his night-journey.'
It is to the same root that we owe the Necken of the Baltic, and the
Nixies--the water-fays--of the German legends. It is to the Norwegian
Noekke, also, that we owe the Wild Huntsman of the Sea, on which the
story of the _Flying Dutchman_ and a host of other legends of demon
vessels and demon mariners are founded.
There is, however, some confusion in the nautical mythology between the
original Old Nick and the popular Saint Nicholas. This saint became the
Christian successor of Neptune, as the protector of seamen. 'This
saintly Poseidon,' says Mr. Conway, 'the patron of fishermen, in time
became associated with the demon whom the British sailor feared if he
feared nothing else. He was also of old the patron of pirates; and
robbers were called "St. Nicholas' clerks."'
It is certainly one of the curiosities of plutology that the patron
saint of children who is still honoured at Christmas as Santa Claus
should be the same as the dreaded Old Nick of the seafarers.
These investigations are extremely interesting, and may lead us far; but
our present purpose is merely to find an explanation of a popular
phrase.
It is more difficult to explain a number of other marine personalities,
who are as lively to-day on shipboard as they were generations ago.
There is, for instance, old Mister Storm-Along, of whom the chanty-man
sings:
'When Stormy died, I dug his grave--
I dug his grave with a silver spade;
I hove him up with an iron crane,
And lowered him down with a golden chain.'
Who was he? And who was the famous Captain Cottington, of whom it is
related, in stentorian tones and with tireless repetition, that:
'Captain Cottington, he went to sea,
Captain Cottington, he went to sea-e-e-e,
Captain Cottington, he went to sea,
Captain Cottington, he went to sea-e!'
Who, also, was 'Uncle Peleg,' of whom a somewhat similarly exhaustive
history is chanted? And, still more, who was the mysterious Reuben
Ranzo, with whose name every fo'cs'le of every outward-bound British or
American ship is constantly resounding?
'Pity Reuben Ranzo--
Ranzo, boys, a Ranzo!
Oh, pity Reuben Ranzo--
Ranzo, boys, a Ranzo!'
He had a remarkable career, this Reuben, according to the song. He was a
tailor by trade; went to school on the Monday, learnt to read on
Tuesday, and by Friday he had thrashed the master. Then he went to sea,
and, after some ignominious experiences, married the captain's daughter,
and became himself the captain of a whaler. But who was he? And how does
he come to exercise such a fascination over all mariners, even unto this
day?
This is one of the mysteries of the ocean. The sea is covered with
mystery, and with phantom shapes. Every ship that sails is peopled with
a crew of dim shadows of the past that none can explain.