_Alarm._--It is in favour of the derivation _‡ l'arme_ that the Italian
is _allarme_; some dictionaries even have _dare all'arme_, with the
apostrophe, for to give alarm. It is against it that the German word
_L‰rm_ is used precisely as the English _alarm_. Your correspondent CH.
thinks the French derivation suspiciously ingenious: here I must differ;
I think it suspiciously obvious. I will give him a suggestion which I
think really suspiciously ingenious: in fact, had not the opportunity
occurred for illustrating ingenuity, I should not have ventured it. May
it not be that _alarme_ and _allarme_ is formed in the obvious way, as
_to arms_; while _alarum_ and _L‰rm_ wholly unconnected with them? May
it not sometimes happen that, by coincidence, the same sounds and
meanings go together in different languages without community of origin?
Is it not possible that _larum_ and _L‰rm_ are imitations of the stroke
and subsequent resonance of a large bell? Denoting the continued sound
of _m_ by _m-m-m_, I think that _lrm-m-m-lrm-m-m-lrm-m-m_ &c., is as
good an imitation of a large bell at some distance as letters can make.
And in the old English use of the word, the alarum refers more often to
a bell than to any thing else.
The introduction of the military word into English can be traced, as to
time, with a certain probability. In 1579, Thomas Digges published his
_Arithmeticall Militare Treatise named Stratioticos_, which he informs
us is mainly the writing of his father, Leonard Digges. At page 170. the
father seems to finish with "and so I mean to finishe this treatise:"
while the son, as we must suppose, adds p. 171. and what follows. In the
father's part the word _alarm_ is not mentioned, that I can find. If it
occurred anywhere, it would be in describing the duties of the
_scout-master_; but here we have nothing but _warning_ and _surprise_,
never _alarm_. But in the son's appendix, the word _alarme_ does occur
twice in one page (173.). It also occurs in the body of the _second_
edition of the book, when of course it is the son who inserts it. We may
say then, that, in all probability, the military technical term was
introduced in the third quarter of the sixteenth century. This, I
suspect, is too late to allow us to suppose that the vernacular force
which Shakspeare takes it to have, could have been gained for it by the
time he wrote.
The second edition was published in 1590; about this time the spelling
of the English language made a very rapid approach to its present form.
This is seen to a remarkable extent in the two editions of the
_Stratioticos_; in the first, the commanding officer of a regiment is
always _corronel_, in the second _collonel_. But the most striking
instance I now remember, is the following. In the first edition of
Robert Recorde's _Castle of Knowledge_ (1556) occurs the following
tetrastich:--
"If reasons reache transcende the skye,
Why shoulde it then to earthe be bounde?
The witte is wronged and leadde awrye,
If mynde be maried to the grounde."
In the second edition (1596) the above is spelt as we should now do it,
except in having _skie_ and _awrie_.