(Vol. vii., p. 632.)
At the place above referred to, MR. KEIGHTLEY puts to me several Queries;
but being resident in the country, I had not an opportunity of seeing
them till the 15th instant, and it took some days to get the information
that would enable me to answer them.
I have now obtained the most ample evidence of the existence, in the
latter part of the last, and the beginning of the present, centuries, of
the existence of a peculiar body of men called the _Fogies_, in Edinburgh
Castle. My informants agree in describing them as old men, dressed in
red coats with apple-green facings, and cocked hats. One says that they
fired the Castle guns; another says that he understood them to be the
keepers, or, as we might say, the warders of the Castle, and that they
were sometimes brought into the town to assist in quelling riots; and
this gentleman's recollection of them goes back to 1784 at least. But the
oldest date I have been able to get is from a much respected friend, the
retired Town Clerk of Edinburgh, who writes to me thus: "I have a most
vivid recollection of the _Castle Foggies_. They were an invalid company,
and my recollection of them goes as far back at least as 1780, when I was
at Stalker's English school in the Lawnmarket."
To the testimony of these still living witnesses, I have to add that of
Dr. Jamieson, who gives the word in his _Dictionary_ as one of common
and well-known use in Scotland in his time, 1759-1808; though he may
have mistaken in supposing it to be exclusively Scottish. It was for his
testimony to this _fact_ that I referred to Dr. Jamieson's _Dictionary_,
and not for his etymology, for I am not so much of a "true Scot" as
to consider him infallible in that department. I have not leisure at
present to search any farther for the word in books, but in the meantime
I presume to think the evidence I have procured of its use in Scotland,
will carry us nearly as far back as MR. KEIGHTLEY'S for its use in
Ireland.
I cannot pretend to much acquaintance with the Swedish language, but
I was quite well aware that that "is what is meant by the mysterious
Su.-G." I was also aware that in the kindred Teutonic tongues the word
runs through the various forms of _vogt_, _fogat_, _phogat_, _voget_,
_voogd_, _fogde_, _foged_, _fogeti_, with the meaning of bailiff,
steward, preses, watchman, guard or protector, tutor, overseer, judge,
mayor, policeman; and I doubt not that _fogie_ belongs to the same
family, though it has lost its tail. MR. KEIGHTLEY does not need to
be told that words frequently degenerate in meaning, falling from the
noblest to the basest, from the purest to the most obscene. Is there then
anything improbable in supposing that a word once applied to the governor
or chief keeper of a castle, came at last to be applied to all, even the
meanest, of his subordinates? Dr. Jamieson asserts that the word _fogde_
in the Su.-G. has actually had that fate; can MR. KEIGHTLEY controvert
him?
As a proof, _quantum valeat_, that the _Castle fogies_ were so called for
some other reason than merely because of their being "old folks," I may
mention that there was in Edinburgh, for more than a century, another
body of veterans, called the Town Guard, or City Guard, maintained by the
magistrates as a sort of military police, or gendarmerie, and finally
disbanded in 1817. This corps was generally recruited from old soldiers;
and during the period of my acquaintance with them (9½ years) they were
all aged, and some of them very old men; yet I never heard the word
_fogies_ applied to them. On the contrary, they were always distinguished
from the fogies by the elegant appellation of the "Toon Rottens," or Town
Rats, as well as by their facings, which were _dark blue_. Some, indeed,
of my younger friends, who remember the "Rats" very well, say they never
heard of the "Fogies" at all; only one of them, who lived when a boy at
the Castle Hill, perhaps about forty years ago, recollects of the word
"fogie" as being then applied to the soldiers of the ordinary veteran or
garrison battalions, with blue facings, that had superseded the fogies in
the keeping of the Castle; but of the veritable apple-green fogies of the
older establishment, he has no remembrance. As my own recollections of
Edinburgh go back to 1808, the fogies, I presume, must have been by that
time extinct, for I never saw any of them, though I frequently heard them
spoken of by those who had seen them.
I may mention also that while "fogie" was in use, and of well understood
application in Scotland, {155} the phrase "old folks," or, to write it
according to our vernacular pronunciation, "auld fo'k," was also, and
continues to be, in general and familiar use; but nobody in Scotland, I
dare say, ever imagined that "the auld fo'k" of his ordinary acquaintance
were just "old fogies," or had anything whatever to do with that peculiar
class of men, properly so called, the keepers of the royal castles. It
is most remarkable, also, that while the corrupt derivative, as MR.
KEIGHTLEY says "old fogie" is, has been almost quite forgotten among us,
having disappeared with the men that bore the name of fogies, the parent
form, as he would have "old folks" or "auld fo'k" to be, should remain
in full vigour and common use, as part of our living speech. In a word,
from all I can learn it would appear that the word "fogie," in its most
general acceptation, means by itself, without the "old," an old soldier;
and that "old fogie" is only a tautological form, arising from ignorance
of its meaning. Be its origin, however, what it may, I have no hesitation
now in expressing my conviction that MR. KEIGHTLEY'S etymology of the
word is utterly groundless.