_Old Fogies_ (Vol. viii., p. 154.).--There may be too much of even a
good thing, and I wish some of the writers in "N. & Q." would study
compression a little. A short paragraph which I wrote, more in jest than
earnest, on the above phrase, has drawn down on me no less than two
columns from J. L. But this comes of meddling with Scotland.
One might fancy that J. L. was the Irish, not the Scottish advocate, for
he proves the prior claim of Scotland by showing that the word which I
had stated to have been in use in Dublin in the first half of the last
century, was known in Edinburgh in the last half of it. He must also
excuse my saying that he does not seem ever to have studied etymology,
one of the rules of which is, that if a probable origin of a word can be
found in the language to which it belongs, we should not seek elsewhere.
Now _fogie_ (i.e. _folkie_, the Dutch _volkje_) comes as surely from
_folk_, as _lassie_ from _lass_, or any other diminutive from its
primitive. I now have done with the subject.