A Cursory History of Swearing Part 2

The framework of the story dealing with the conversion of La Hire has not been lost upon the writers of the theatre. A _pet.i.te comedie_ well known on the boards of the Theatre Francais as 'Les Jurons de Cadillac,'

is occupied with the sufferings of a naval officer who is constrained by feminine influence to relinquish his customary expletives. "How is it,"

asks La Comtesse, "that you have contracted this horrible habit; you, a scion of an old stock, one of our first Gascon gentlemen?" Cadillac's answer is spirited. "Comtesse, I was brought up by my grandfather, an old sea dog, corbleu! With him I learnt to swear before I learnt to read, and if he has not taught me the language of courts, it is because, sacrebleu! he did not know it. He made me a true sailor, ventre mahon!"

The Comtesse insists that, as a proof of the captain's professions of regard, he should abstain from indulging in this habit for the s.p.a.ce of one single hour. Should the ordeal be successfully pa.s.sed, she consents that he shall receive her hand as his reward. Cadillac is fairly driven to desperation. "Ask of me anything but that!" he exclaims; "only let me swear, or I shall go mad!" Finally he sees no help for it but to accept the challenge, and the audience is detained in a state of amusing suspense while witnessing the contrivances with which the honest captain endeavours to overcome the difficulty. He tampers with the hands of the clock in the hope of abridging the hour of trial, and this ruse being discovered he unworthily seeks safety in sullen silence. "No, no, captain," objects the Comtesse, "unless you converse it is not fair play." His tormentor lures him with all her skill to let slip one of his unpremeditated expletives, and a hundred times the worthy fellow is on the point of giving way. At last, beguiled into a description of one of his most thrilling sea-fights, and with the recollection of the wild scenes of carnage pa.s.sing vividly before his eyes, he is no longer able to maintain composure. He bursts into a volume of his old sea terms, but the lady, moved, as it would seem, by the _elan_ and spirit of the recital, finds it in her heart to be merciful. The play concludes with a modest _sacrebleu_, this time spoken by La Comtesse. It will be seen from the evidence of this performance alone that in ascribing to our nationality a monopoly of energetic language, public report has hardly been discriminating.

Not desiring, however, to turn the tables upon our aspersers, we propose to still further pursue the fortunes of the Britannic s.h.i.+bboleth from when we left it upon the lips of La Pucelle. The aspersion cast upon the English on the Picard battle-fields continued to be handed down in camp story and in rugged _vaux-de-vire_. Neither did it cease to provoke derision and merriment when it had entered into the common parlance of the Paris cabaret, and became the stock property of the Palais Royal farce.[12] The "G.o.ddam" that greeted British officers rollicking through the city of pleasure in the days succeeding Waterloo was the same term of opprobrium that a.s.sailed the English archers at Agincourt and Honfleur.

To what "mute inglorious" satirist we are indebted for this lasting compliment we shall probably never now determine. The word is at least discovered in the collection of Norman ballads subjoined to the 'Vaux-de-Vire' of Master Oliver Ba.s.selin published at Caen, 1821. This work dates from the early part of the sixteenth century, but has reference to the events of the preceding one. It more particularly speaks of Henry V. as dying _par le mal de St. Fiacre_ and of Henry VI.

as ascending the throne. It is the latter monarch who is referred to in these verses as "little King G.o.ddam"--

"Ils out charge l'artillerye sus mer, Force bisquit et chascun ung bydon, Et par la mer jusqu'en Biscaye aller, Pour couronner leur pet.i.t roy G.o.don."

We might search in vain for mention of the expression in English writings of the same period. In France however the epithet is repeated with equal malignancy in the angry verses which Guillaume Cretin was pleased to write upon the 'Battle of the Spurs':

"Cryant: Qui vive aux G.o.dons d'Angleterre.

Seigneurs du sang, barons et chevaliers, Tous seculiers d'ill.u.s.tre parentage, Permettez vous a ses G.o.dons, galliers, Gros G.o.daillers, houspalliers, poullalliers, Prendre palliers au francoys heritaige?"

The aspersion however did not always rest with Frenchmen. Lord Hailes, in a criticism written about the year 1770, incidentally gives it as his experience that in Holland the children when they espy any English people say, "There come the G.o.ddams," and that the Portuguese, as soon as they acquire a smattering of the tongue, exclaim, "How do you do, Jack? d.a.m.n you!"[13]

We have attentively considered the tone of contemporary English writings to ascertain whether by a hazard the nickname was appropriately bestowed. In the result we have not been able to discover anything to lead to the supposition that this particular form of speech was, upon these sh.o.r.es at least, very generally indulged in. Either the tall soldiers who accompanied Henry of Monmouth to the wars were so stimulated by the unaccustomed juice of the grape as to then and there originate this vigorous epithet, unspoken at home, or else there was little or no justification for the taunting expression. We are inclined to think that the former surmise is approximately correct. The habit was not an Englishman's but a soldier's vice, and when the foreign troubles were at an end it may very well have been drafted back to this country with the rest of the fighting contingent.

Although in its usage it is now considered essentially British, there is no reason to impute to it any other than an etymology decidedly French.

Its similarity with the numerous derivatives of the verb _d.a.m.no_ have probably obscured the true derivation of the word. For its real parentage we must have recourse to the Latin _dominus_ or _domina_ which produced the Gallic _dame_. This again was used equally to denote a potentate of either s.e.x, until at last we find the interjection _dame!_ applied in the same sense as _Seigneur!_ or our own _Lord!_ When, therefore, we go still further, and meet with _dame Dieu!_ occurring frequently in ancient texts we are helped at once to the source of our adopted expletive. By one of those combinations so often to be found where there is a confusion or admixture of tongues, the English soldiery rendered their _dame!_ or _dame Dieu!_ in the way we have seen, and a hybrid term was thus produced which has not even yet been found waning in popularity. The derivation we have here suggested is sufficient of itself to account for the amus.e.m.e.nt that was displayed by laughter-loving Frenchmen, who twitted the invader in that he was unable to p.r.o.nounce the irrepressible _Dieu_, and was forced to anglicise it to fit it to the remainder of the oath. It will be perceived that, taking this view of the case, the British s.h.i.+bboleth is rather more of a s.h.i.+bboleth than has previously been supposed.

It is true that in a scarce work we find it is recorded that the expression originated with Richard III., but this is easily confuted by the examples we have given. The 'Comedy of Errors' contains one isolated allusion to it:--"_G.o.d d.a.m.n me!_ that's as much as to say, G.o.d make me a light wench." Here the term is dearly interpolated as a kind of newly-coined catchword. We suspect that the true era of the oath being absorbed into common speech is indicated by a pa.s.sage in the epigrams of Sir John Harrington. This work, which appeared in 1613, is much concerned at the abusive element that had at that time entered into English conversation. No longer, says Sir John, do men swear devoutly by the cross and ma.s.s, or by such innocent oaths as the pyx or the mousefoot. Now they invite d.a.m.nation as their pledge of sincerity.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n-me," he repines, had then become the customary oath. This appears to us to be the first intimation of the fact that we find in English literature.[14]

Neither was amus.e.m.e.nt neglected to be created out of this new word-sally. In one of the comedies which throw so much light upon the manners of the time, a piece called 'Amends for Ladies,' from the pen of Nat Field, we are introduced among a so-called society of roarers. The experiment had been already tried by Thomas Middleton, who, in his 'Faire Quarrel,' had initiated his audience into the exercises of a pretended roaring-school. The notion was simply that the young idlers about town met together to acquire perfection in the arts of bombast and exaggeration. In the former production, a Lord Feesimple is supposed to be enjoying the coveted distinction of being drilled into becoming a roarer. As was usual in these performances, the characters pa.s.s from one insolence to another, until at last swords are drawn and general uproar prevails. But what upon the present occasion has given rise to the misunderstanding, is the unlucky a.s.sumption by Feesimple of one of the roysterers' private and particular oaths. In an ill-omened moment he has presumed to exclaim, "d.a.m.n me!" whereupon a certain Tearchaps who has been noticeable through the play as the improprietor of the term, very loudly objects--"Use your own words, d.a.m.n me is mine; I am known by it all the town o'er. D'ye hear?"

Feesimple, although disposed to contest the other's t.i.tle, is happily brought to order by the timely interference of one Welltried, whose knowledge of such matters enables him to bear out the truth of the a.s.sertion. This play, produced in 1618 and acted upon the stage of the Blackfriars, tallies in substance with Harrington's verses produced in the earlier year.

Allied to this expression is a phrase which may even be said to have a kind of literary merit. "Don't care a d.a.m.n" is indicative of about the utmost possible amount of unconcern. It would be in vain to seek for any object more intrinsically inconsiderable with which to liken a condition of indifference. Anstey seizes upon it in his 'Bath Guide':--

"Absurd as I am, I don't care a d.a.m.n Either for you or your valet-de-sham."

But curiously enough this figure of speech was originally as independent of the "s.h.i.+bboleth" as we have seen that was of the cla.s.sic "d.a.m.no."

There is in India a piece of money of the minutest value, which is known as a _dam_. The phrase, therefore, so far from originating in a fanciful comparison, really does nothing more than announce a prosaic fact. It has been said that the expression was occasionally used by the "great Duke," a circ.u.mstance for which the Indian experiences of the victor of a.s.saye has been held sufficient to account. Mr. Trevelyan, indeed, in his 'Life of Lord Macaulay' (ii. 257) states positively that the Duke of Wellington invented this oath.

Etymology, which has thus brushed away what one might have taken to be a thoroughly characteristic expression, also supplies a matter-of-fact explanation for another modification of the phrase. "Don't care a curse," or "Not worth a curse," we might fondly imagine to possess something of poetic imagery. The learned in derivations undeceive us.

They say that the word _curse_ is here identical with the plant "cress." In that sense, "not worth a curse" will be found in Piers Ploughman's Vision, the remarkable work of the fourteenth century.

Since the days when City madams and Fleet Street apprentices flocked round the dusty scaffold of the Blackfriars play-house, and laughed and rallied one another, or possibly took pa.s.sing umbrage at the satire that was being levelled at this newly-nurtured word, what a remarkable, what an astounding ascendancy has it not enjoyed? No mint has ever issued its metal more swiftly than has this exchequer of bad language, or given it a more unmistakable impression. And yet there is nothing healthful, nothing good in it. From the disorders which first environed it, it has never yet recovered. It lives only by disease and unhealthiness, and when it has rid itself of disease and unhealthiness it will die.

CHAPTER IV.

WHICH GIVES A DOG A BAD NAME.

We have already adverted to that foreign and slanderous tradition which lays all the grosser sins of vituperation at the Englishman's door. It has been seen how the "d.a.m.ns" and "G.o.ddams" of a marauding soldiery, though scattered upon the winds of many centuries ago, have continued to be held up in judgment against the English-speaking race. There remains to be noticed one other item of continental asperity that has enjoyed in its day a full measure of approbation owing to the delightful a.s.sumption that it savoured of perfidious Britain.

Parisian caricaturists have always affected to believe that the inhabitants of these islands are usually accompanied in their travels abroad by some member of the canine species. The British bull-dog has figured again and again in pictorial skits that are supposed to represent the idiosyncrasies of the travelling Englishman. But the notion may very well be of older date than this period of facile ill.u.s.tration. Examples can be quoted of the occurrence of the word dog, or _dogue_, as a malediction similar to that of "G.o.ddam," and at a date nearly as distant.[15] There can be little doubt as to the inspired origin of the phrase. So grateful is the demon of animosity for every new-shaped weapon of attack, that in course of time it came to be levelled indifferently at any object whether insular or otherwise that it happened to be the speaker's intention to abuse. The inoffensive word was the more readily adopted by the cla.s.ses who had least notion of its signification. As Dr. Johnson, when he wished to get the better of a fishwife in a wordy encounter, would call her a parallelogram or a hypothenuse, so the Seine boatmen and the market-women of the Halles would denounce their antagonist as a "_dogue_." "Je laisserais plutot ma roupille en gage," exclaims one of the characters in the farce of 'Piarot et Janin,'[16] "que de te laisser payer mon quartier. La dogue!

tu ne me connais pas."

What actual necessity can there have been for so invidiously employing an imported word, when the French equivalent was already firmly established as a particle of abuse? Although in our own vernacular the epithet "dog!" is seldom to be met with outside the histories of Miss Porter or of Mr. James, elsewhere the Gallic "chien!" has always been in brisk demand. Both before and since the composition of 'Piarot and Janin,' has it been customary among a numerous cla.s.s to grind it in the teeth of persons who have been the cause of annoyance or affront. In conjunction also with other substantives, it has served as a powerful degree of comparison and denotes a superlative expression of contempt.

In the most polite language, _quel chien de temps_ indicates weather of a most deplorable description; _quel chien d'auteur_, an author whose stupidity is exasperating. The oath of _Jarnichien!_ pa.s.sed for a term of the very darkest complexion; while in _sacre chien_, we have an expletive as forcible as any that a Frenchman can utter.

The Romans of old are said to have played with two sorts of dice, the tali and the tesserae. The tali had four even surfaces, the tesserae six.

On opposite faces of the four-sided figure were marked respectively the numbers one and six, the numbers three and four appearing respectively on the other surfaces. The tessera, or six-sided figure, bore on its additional faces the numbers two and five. Both tali and tesserae were usually knuckle-bones of an animal, frequently the gazelle; the uneven ends being planed smooth in the case of the tesserae, while for the tali they were left in their natural condition. The game admitted of various rules and of various degrees of skill, and it would seem that the more ancient Greek sculptures represent the children and maidens of Athens manipulating the tesserae in much the same manner as school-boys still play at the game of knuckle-bones. But whatever element of dexterity may have originally pervaded the pastime, it was very rapidly dispelled, and both tali and tesserae became, as they have since remained, the instruments of wagering and gain. The best throw, called the Venus, only happened when each of the upturned surfaces presented different units.

The worst throw was when the four pieces exposed the same number on each, and that number an ace. This single pip was technically known as the _unio_, the side of six as the _senio_; while the name by which the throw of four aces was chiefly distinguished among the gamesters of antiquity was the _canicula_ or _canis_.

"Jure etenim id summum quid dexter senio ferret Scire erat in voto, d.a.m.nosa canicula quantum Raderet." _Persius, Sat._ iii.

The deduction has been drawn that the player, baulked in his luck, and turning angrily upon the p.r.o.ne dice as they disclosed the four upturned aces, sought pa.s.sing relief by hurling at them an insensate malediction.

In this way, after a long interval and by a slow process of development, the _d.a.m.nosa canicula_ of the Roman gamester is said to have become, or more strictly to be represented by, the _sacre chien_ of a nearer civilisation.

The force of a.s.sociation has so indelibly connected the mention of this animal with whatever is inferior or contemptuous, that there is at first no room for surprise at finding it used in its present application. So imperceptibly has this turn of thought entered into our habits of mind, that, without further inquiry, such an application would appear perfectly natural and proportionable. But upon the very slightest reflection a sense of inappropriateness cannot fail to be forced upon us. Surely the nomenclature of the animal world is sufficiently varied as to admit of the dishonour done to it being more equally divided. One would expect to find the members of the canine family at the least no more than sharers in the distinction in common with other creatures of the brute world. But no such equal distribution would appear to prevail.

The question therefore that remains is, how it is that the name of the most sagacious of animals should be universally identified in the vernacular tongue with whatever is the most ign.o.ble and despicable of its kind? The wild rose is called the dog-rose, the scentless violet the dog-violet; bad Latin is termed dog-Latin; and in Ovid we have _verba canina_ as denoting abusive conversation.

Although the author of Gallus goes the length of saying that among the ancients the names of the lower animals were seldom heard as particles of abuse, the opprobrious application of the name of the dog will be found to be most cla.s.sical. The use made of the word in the conversation of ancient Greece should be in easy recollection, bringing down as it did upon the Athenian people the accusation of being their popular oath of a.s.severation. Socrates, we are to believe, rarely used in his swearing any other form of expression. "By the dog! Polus," he is made to exclaim in Plato's 'Gorgias,' "I am really in doubt each time you speak whether you are stating your own views or are asking my opinion."[17]

When, therefore, we find in the twelfth century an archbishop of Juvavia interdicting his countrymen from ratifying their treaties with an oath taken by the dog, we gain some insight into the portent of the canine oath of Thebes and Athens. The superst.i.tion and mysticism attaching to this animal are brought still closer home by a pa.s.sage from De Joinville, which mentions the sacrificing of a living dog as a Byzantine method of confirming an obligation. Moreover, on the coins of Syracuse the dog as the emblem of constancy is represented in company with the G.o.ddess Diana. That a sacrificial ceremony, barbarous at once and ineffectual, should have received any countenance among a people of culture, is only in accordance with the view expressed at an earlier part of these pages, that the progress of true civilisation may be clearly traced by comparing the relative values of the veracity. The cities of Greece were full of straw-shoes, men who distinguished their calling by a straw at their feet, and who were ready at the bid of a suitor to give the lightest evidence for the heaviest fee. Confidence had little place among a nation far too volatile and specious to be able to rely upon any system of reciprocal good faith. From this circ.u.mstance it was that the Greeks earned for themselves the repute of being the least trustworthy of all the untruthful nations of antiquity. In such a community the fragile safeguard of an oath is, from sheer helplessness, the more rigorously demanded. The h.e.l.lenic people may be said to have been eminently a swearing people. The character had so persistently clung to them, and was descended from so remote an antiquity, that Juvenal, in the Sixth Satire, can only refer their immunity from swearing to the period when innocence was said to have prevailed upon earth and before Jupiter had begun to let his beard grow.

But while Greek and Roman riveted oath upon oath and laid ceremony upon ceremony, to accomplish that simple understanding which should be effected by the mere parole of right-thinking men, there is no evidence to show that swearing was carried to the precise point to which it has been brought among ourselves. That at the lightest stir of the emotions they were ready to apostrophise the ruling divinities as well as the shapes of field and flood, of earth and air, must pa.s.s as uncontradicted,[18] but never do they appear, as in the modern world, to have forged their poetic oaths into weapons of malevolence and hurt.

There would seem to have been no actual counterpart in these languages to the vituperative swearing of modern days. The difference in this respect is somewhat singular, but it may readily be accounted for. With the ancients, oaths were employed in guarding as efficiently as they could the public conscience and the public security. With the moderns they have been for the most part released from this unstable duty, and accordingly, with untrammelled energy and ungovernable vigour, they have entered upon a system of privateering upon their own account.

Not only had the ancient mythology to struggle against the constant infraction of the sanct.i.ty of the deliberative oath, but the minds of heathen votaries must have been strongly bia.s.sed by an acquaintance with instances of light swearing in the G.o.ds themselves. To render the practice the less capricious and incontinent, a notion of an individual property or trade-mark in oaths came to be perceptibly encouraged. The specific appropriation of some distinctive oath raised the presumption that it implied an unequivocal pledge of sincerity. In this way Zeno, the founder of the Stoics, swore continually "by the caper." Pythagoras, we are told, was accustomed to swear by the number four, [Greek: ma ten tetrakton]. This numeral came to be regarded in consequence as symbolical of the divinity, and the Pythagorean school gravely inculcated it as a point of morals to abstain from intruding upon so ill.u.s.trious an example.

Besides the oath of Socrates, "by the dog," he is reported to have sworn variously by the goose and by the plane-tree. Those who argue in favour of the piety of the philosopher, explain that the habit was a.s.sumed as a foil to the irreverent mention of the G.o.ds that was then so universal.

Lucian attaches an intelligible meaning to these flippant expletives, and represents Socrates as justifying their use. "Are you not aware," he is presumed to reason, "that the dog is the Anubis of Egypt, the Sirius of the skies; and in h.e.l.l is the keeper Cerberus?" and Plutarch is also found to comment on the oath, "those that wors.h.i.+p the dog have a certain sacred meaning that must not be revealed; in the more remote and ancient times the dog had the highest honours paid to him in Egypt." In the copiousness of the ancient swearing the notion of an oath accommodated itself to all the varieties of monstrous G.o.ds. The divinities Isis and Osiris were invoked in witness of a sacred pledge no less than the garlic, the leek, and the onion, and indeed every other deity which, as was said by the Roman satirist, grew and flourished in the market-gardens of Alexandria.

We are admitted to a just appreciation of the levity of Athenian swearing through the medium of one of the most remarkable performances ever placed upon the stage, whether of the modern or the ancient world.

When, returning from an expedition, Socrates repaired to the theatre to witness Aristophanes' comedy 'The Clouds,' he found himself portrayed upon the scene as the central figure of the drama. He was even represented swung up in a basket in his own thinking-shop and giving utterance to innumerable heresies and follies. When Strepsiades offers to swear by the G.o.ds, he is at once interrupted by Socrates in the basket, who reminds him that the G.o.ds are not current coin in his system of philosophy. "By what then do you swear?" asks Strepsiades; "by the iron money, as they do at Byzantium?" Unhappily the query remained unanswered.

The result, however, of the Socratic influence is intended to be shown by the circ.u.mstance of Strepsiades subsequently swearing "by the mist!"

and reproaching his son for taking oaths in the name of a deity of the outside world. Presently, on being importuned by a creditor for the return of twelve minae lent for the purchase of a dapple-grey horse, he is ready to swear any number of oaths "by the G.o.ds" that he is innocent of the debt. His opinions have in the course of this short dialogue undergone alteration. He feels justified in ridding himself of his obligation to repay the loan by making use of declarations which the philosopher has argued are no longer of any consequence.

"And will you be willing to deny it upon oath of the G.o.ds?" screams the creditor.

"What G.o.ds?" asks Strepsiades.

"Jupiter, Mercury, and Neptune."