“Pantagruel then asked what sorts of people dwelled in that damn’d island.”—Rabelaisiv., chap. lxiv.
“Pantagruel then asked what sorts of people dwelled in that damn’d island.”—Rabelaisiv., chap. lxiv.
“If ever I should betake myself to swearing,” says Sir John Hazlewood in the play, “I shall give very little concern to the fashion of the oath. Odd’s bodikins will do well enough for me, and lack-a-daisy for my wife.” Many other persons have been much of the same mind as this Sir John, and, possessing a certain esteem for the pomp and circumstance of swearing, have been impelled to cherish some curious substitute so that they might still get a little harmless amusement out of the vice. In this way they have contrived so to compound with their consciences as to become swearers in practice without being blasphemers in intention.
The characteristic of this good Hazlewood is his extreme tolerance and neutrality. He is not among the swearers himself, but at a moment of danger he is prepared to join that body, taking service in theranks. To disown allegiance altogether never for a moment coincides with his sense of the becoming. The worthy man is too loyal to the set rules of his acknowledged leaders, to harbour a notion so subversive and dangerous. And in this particular we shall find he has been followed by the greater number not only of his own degree and class but of all orders and conditions.
A circumstance like this would seem to suggest some remarkable underlying motive as accounting for the wonderful omnipotence of swearing. It is possible that an occult virus congenial to its development is so insinuated into the composition of the human mind as to defy the power of ethics wholly to eradicate it. Can it be that the habit owes its existence and source of delight to some soothing and pleasureful qualities which, like the solace of the tobacco-leaf or the balm of the nightshade, the world will not willingly forego?
We are disposed to think that the instinct of swearing is very deeply rooted in the mental constitution. A very little experience of mankind will incline one to the belief that the censors of morals have on the whole done wisely in temporising with this strange humour. Of all the philosophers who of old laid down rules for worldly guidance, Socrates may be trusted to have held at a just appreciation the trips and sallies ofAthenian manhood. And yet even Socrates is understood to have sworn deeply and volubly. Not, however, the Herculean oaths that were resounded in the amphitheatre and at the festivals, but by the names of more despicable objects, by the dog, the caper, and the plane-tree.[7]The philosopher was too well versed in the ways of headstrong humanity to run exactly counter to all the follies inspired by the grape of Chios and Lesbos. On the contrary, he gains his momentary end and creates a lasting remonstrance while seemingly sporting and dallying with the abuse. In like manner, Aristophanes could afford to trifle with the asseverations of his own Athenian audiences. In portraying the wind-paved city of the feathered tribes, he transforms these oaths into the milder shape of “by snares,” “by nets,” “by meshes.” And further to display the ludicrous side of Attic swearing, he records a time when “no man used to swear by gods, but all by birds. And still Lampon swears by the goose when he practises any deceit.”[8]
It would seem almost as if all writers of this indulgent turn had arrived at one perception, namely,that “bad language” is an indispensable element in social life, an element to be only softened by ridicule or perhaps be checked by dissuasion. To seek to suppress it altogether is regarded as futile. The same impression has evidently prevailed among the number of practical philosophers who in everyday life are accustomed to handicap the ebullitions of this impetuous vice. They may place nagging obstacles in the way of its career, and burdens upon its back; but otherwise it is allowed to run its course. By means of an accepted code of rules a kind ofmodus vivendiin this respect is obtained. Thus the conversation that is conceded in a club smoking-room would be intolerable in the boudoir. In some sort men have been permitted the enjoyment of swearing, and that with impunity, provided they did not carry it beyond the prohibited pale. To turn again to ancient Athens for illustration, we find that even children were allowed to swear profanely by the name of Hercules, but with the single restriction that they should do so in the open air. The oath was for some singular reason deemed the especial privilege of young people, and was only thought offensive and visited with punishment when invoked within the curtilage of the dwelling.[9]
It has always seemed to us that vituperative swearing is too closely allied to the passion of animosity to be ever successfully treated apart from the human failing from which it takes its rise. Joy and hatred, terror and surprise must indeed be very old and steadfast emotions in the history of the world; and while we should prefer to find that joy is the more universal of these perceptions, hatred is, we fear, the more historic and the more enduring. Animosity is resolute even in its caprices; it has few facilities for disguise and but little capacity for assumption. The tones and gestures it employs are perfectly unequivocal, and not easily mistaken. For although the vocabulary of hatred has from time to time received handsome embellishment at the hands of ingenious and illustrious haters, its wonted expression must always remain fixed. The keynote is the oath which, in all ages and in all languages, passion seems to generate with but very little assistance.
Among a people who, perhaps unjustly, have been prided for the choiceness of their swearing, the favourite growth and very spoilt-child of animosity is the word of an exceedingly forcible kind. In endeavouring to chronicle the amenities of the British “damn,” we believe we are dealing with a monosyllable possessinga remarkable fund of application. The term has fairly puzzled the ingenuity of continental neighbours to comprehend. Not only has it excited their ridicule, but we are not sure that it has not even stimulated their envy. It has been said by one of the sprightliest of Frenchmen, that a foreigner might conveniently travel through England with the assistance only of this one particle of speech.
The uses, or the misuses, of the word would seem to be twofold: first, as an accessory of abuse, and secondly, as an accessory of geniality. In some instances the two qualities are blended. Thus the knights of the road who stopped coaches and filched purses on the heath of Newmarket or Hounslow usually rode off “damning” their victims and advising them to sue the hundred for the injury. Whereat it was customary to remark, in the joking spirit of the age, that the villains showed themselves true men of the law by taking their fee before they gave their advice. Everyone who remembers the eleventh canto of Don Juan will recollect the pugilistic conflict that took place upon that hero’s first arrival at the outskirts of London, a shower of blackguard oaths taking a conspicuous part in the encounter. Juan, weary with travel, has arrived at Shooter’s Hill. He is meditating upon the vastness ofthe city stretched in panorama at his feet. Suddenly his studious occupation is interrupted by the onset of a gang of footpads. In the confusion that ensues, his ignorance of the language places him at a momentary disadvantage. The only English word he is acquainted with being, as he phrases it, “their shibboleth, ‘Goddamn.’” Even this Juan innocently imagines to be a form of salutation, a sort of God-be-with-you, a misconception which the poet professes to think not unnatural—
“... for half English as I am(To my misfortune) never can I sayI heard them wish ‘God with you,’ save that way.”
No stanza of the poem is more replete than this with a vein of painfully sarcastic drollery. The insular failing is elsewhere frequently displayed by the poet in the trying light cast from a misanthrope genius.
But perhaps the severest hit, and not the less severe because tempered with banter and good humour, is that which has been directed from the pen of Beaumarchais.[10]“Diable! c’est une belle langue que l’anglais; il en faut peu pour aller loin; avec Goddam en Angleterre on ne manque de rien ... les Anglais à la vérité,ajoutent par-ci par-là, quelques autres mots en conversant; mais il est bien aisé de voir que Goddam est le fond de la langue.”
The highest point of wit in this direction must be supposed to have been reached when Evariste Parny, a poet of no mean celebrity, produced his “Goddam! poëme en quatre chants, par un French-dog.” This was in the year XII. or, as we now should prefer to call it, 1804.
The countrymen, and in one remarkable instance, a countrywoman of Beaumarchais, have been particularly industrious in fastening this aspersion upon their English neighbours. So long ago as 1429, when the arms of Shrewsbury and Bedford had well-nigh wrested the last jewel from the diadem of France, and a peasant maiden of the Calvados had flung herself into Orleans to stem the tide of the English advance, there likewise came to the aid of the fainting cause a welcome supply of mirth and invective. The Maid of Orleans, inspiriting the beleaguered army by harangue, by entreaty, even by quips and jests, kept them constantly reminded of the insular nickname. Rising from sleep and putting on her armour to direct the memorable assault upon the Tournelles, a soldier of her command ventured to produce a repast of fish, and prayed her to break her fast.“Joan, let us eat this shad-fish before we set out.” The Maid indignantly put aside the proffered gift, “In the name of God,” said she, “it shall not be eaten till supper, by which time we will return by way of the bridge, and I will bring you back a Goddam to eat it with.” How the redoubtable Tournelles was taken by steel and culverin, and how Joan succeeded in bringing back many hundred Goddams, has become matter of history. As to the conclusion of the Maid’s career, there has been opened a wide field of controversy, but one incident in the closing chapter of her life is supported by reliable testimony. While undergoing close imprisonment pending the decision of her fate, two English noblemen, the Earls of Warwick and Stafford, came to visit her in gaol, and would seem to have held out hopes of ransom; Joan, irritated at the specious language of her visitors, retorted on them sharply: “I know you well,” she cried, “you have neither the will nor the power to ransom me. You think when you have slain me, you will conquer France; but that you will never bring about. No! although there were one hundred thousand Goddams in this land more than there are!”[11]
With the assumption of the soldier’s tunic, it did not follow that she adopted the manners of the military fire-eater, or suited herself to the wild talk of camps. The epithet “Goddam” in the mouth of La Pucelle was expressive only of acrimony towards the oppressor, and even assuming it to have been irreverent and ungainly, was not the least in accord with the language that usually distinguished her. So far from condoning the irregularities of military life, Joan seems to have laid her strongest commands upon the soldiery to abstain from oath-taking, and in one instance would appear to have made a convert of an illustrious kind. Stories are told, which we need not here repeat, of the licence in expression of the celebrated La Hire, who may be likened to a Boanerges among swearers. With him the habit was perfectly indispensable. At last Joan came to a compromise. He was to retain to the full his privilege of swearing, provided he referred in his oaths to no other substantive than his marshal’s baton, and thenceforward this sturdy soldier betook himself to this emasculated form of swearing.
According to an authority that is entitled to credit, a very similar subterfuge would seem to have been attempted at a still earlier period of French history. The courtiers of Louis IX. were wont to indulge in whatmay be described as a very flippant and volatile description of swearing. The indignation of their master, the beloved St. Louis, may of itself have been no inconsiderable punishment, but a still worse one was provided in the statute-book, which prescribed the penalty of branding the tongue with a red-hot iron upon every commission of the offence. The oaths which at this period were the cause of the greatest mortification to the saintly king were thecordieus, thetêtedieus, thepardieusand the numerous offshoots, the effigies of which still survive in the pages of Rabelais and Molière—the “Moyen de Parvenir” and the “Baron de Fœneste”. With the airy nonchalance of practised sophistry, these apologists of swearing conceived a device that to themselves at least proved eminently satisfactory. At this time there was at the palace a pet dog, known by the name of Bleu. To elude the harsh sentence of the law that might for ever deprive these gay swearers of the power of taking oaths, they determine to substitute fordieuthe name of the favourite dog. ThuscordieubecameCORBLEUandtêtedieubecameTÊTEBLEU, and so on throughout the entire series. Unlike the rigid St. Louis, a later French monarch, Henry IV. was himself a notorious offender in this respect. On every occasion of annoyance, he was heard to give utterance to hisfavourite oath “Jarnidieu!” To him once came his confessor, Coton. “Sire,” said the confessor, “it is a great sin to mention the holy name in these terms.” “You are right,” said Henry, “in future I will say ‘Jarnicoton.’”
It is singular to turn for a moment from the extravagant exuberance of a polished French court to find the same device existing in a very different era of the world’s history. The educated Athenian vented his “Mon Dieus” like any Frenchman on the boulevard, and in like manner learned to soften his “Μὰ τὸν θεὸν” to a simple “Μὰ τὸν” in deference to ears polite. Socrates himself, never altogether free from a predilection for jocose forms of swearing, also took the palace dog, so to speak, as his colloquial stalking-horse, and, like the courtiers of St. Louis, sworeνὴ τον κύνα.
The framework of the story dealing with the conversion of La Hire has not been lost upon the writers of the theatre. Apetite comédiewell known on the boards of the Théâtre Français 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 firstGascon 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, sacrébleu! 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 space of one single hour. Should the ordeal be successfully passed, 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 passing 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 theélanand spirit of the recital, finds it in her heart to be merciful. The play concludes with a modestsacrébleu, 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 shibboleth 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 ruggedvaux-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 “Goddam” thatgreeted British officers rollicking through the city of pleasure in the days succeeding Waterloo was the same term of opprobrium that assailed 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 Basselin 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 dyingpar le mal de St. Fiacreand of Henry VI. as ascending the throne. It is the latter monarch who is referred to in these verses as “little King Goddam”—
“Ils out chargé l’artillerye sus mer,Force bisquit et chascun ung bydon,Et par la mer jusqu’en Biscaye aller,Pour couronner leur petit roy godon.”
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 GuillaumeCrétin was pleased to write upon the ‘Battle of the Spurs’:
“Cryant: Qui vive aux Godons d’Angleterre.······Seigneurs du sang, barons et chevaliers,Tous seculiers d’illustre parentage,Permettez vous à ses Godons, galliers,Gros godaillers, houspalliers, poullalliers,Prendre palliers au françoys 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 Goddams,” and that the Portuguese, as soon as they acquire a smattering of the tongue, exclaim, “How do you do, Jack? damn 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 shores at least, very generally indulged in. Either the tall soldiers who accompaniedHenry 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 verbdamnohave probably obscured the true derivation of the word. For its real parentage we must have recourse to the Latindominusordominawhich produced the Gallicdame. This again was used equally to denote a potentate of either sex, until at last we find the interjectiondame!applied in the same sense asSeigneur!or our ownLord!When, therefore, we go still further, and meet withdame 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 theirdame!ordame 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 amusement that was displayed by laughter-loving Frenchmen, who twitted the invader in that he was unable to pronounce the irrepressibleDieu, 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 shibboleth is rather more of a shibboleth 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:—“God damn me!that’s as much as to say, God 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 passage 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, domen swear devoutly by the cross and mass, or by such innocent oaths as the pyx or the mousefoot. Now they invite damnation as their pledge of sincerity. “Goddamn-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 amusement 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 aroarer. As was usual in these performances, the characters pass 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 assumption by Feesimple of one of the roysterers’ private and particular oaths. In an ill-omened moment he has presumed to exclaim, “Damn 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, damn me is mine; I am known by it all the town o’er. D’ye hear?”
Feesimple, although disposed to contest the other’s title, 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 assertion. 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 damn” is indicative of about the utmost possible amount of unconcern. It would be in vain to seek for any object more intrinsically inconsiderable withwhich to liken a condition of indifference. Anstey seizes upon it in his ‘Bath Guide’:—
“Absurd as I am,I don’t care a damnEither for you or your valet-de-sham.”
But curiously enough this figure of speech was originally as independent of the “shibboleth” as we have seen that was of the classic “damno.” There is in India a piece of money of the minutest value, which is known as adam. 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 circumstance for which the Indian experiences of the victor of Assaye 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 thewordcurseis 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 passing 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.
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 “damns” and “goddams” 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 assumption 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 thanthis period of facile illustration. Examples can be quoted of the occurrence of the word dog, ordogue, as a malediction similar to that of “goddam,” 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 classes 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 plutôt 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 vernacularthe 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 class 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 tempsindicates weather of a most deplorable description;quel chien d’auteur, an author whose stupidity is exasperating. The oath ofJarnichien!passed for a term of the very darkest complexion; while insacré 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 tesseræ. The tali had four even surfaces, the tesseræ 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 tesseræ were usually knuckle-bones of an animal, frequently thegazelle; the uneven ends being planed smooth in the case of the tesseræ, 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 tesseræ 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 tesseræ 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 theunio, the side of six as thesenio; while the name by which the throw of four aces was chiefly distinguished among the gamesters of antiquity was thecaniculaorcanis.
“Jure etenim id summum quid dexter senio ferretScire erat in voto, damnosa canicula quantumRaderet.”Persius, Sat.iii.
The deduction has been drawn that the player, baulked in his luck, and turning angrily upon the pronedice as they disclosed the four upturned aces, sought passing relief by hurling at them an insensate malediction. In this way, after a long interval and by a slow process of development, thedamnosa caniculaof the Roman gamester is said to have become, or more strictly to be represented by, thesacré chienof a nearer civilisation.
The force of association 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 inthe vernacular tongue with whatever is the most ignoble 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 haveverba caninaas 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 classical. 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 asseveration. 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 superstition and mysticism attaching to this animal are brought stillcloser home by a passage 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 goddess 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 circumstance 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 Hellenic people may be said to have been eminently a swearing people. The character had so persistently clung to them, and was descended fromso 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 pass 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 beaccounted 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 sanctity of the deliberative oath, but the minds of heathen votaries must have been strongly biassed by an acquaintance with instances of light swearing in the gods 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,μα την τετρακτον. 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 illustrious 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 assumed as a foil to the irreverent mention of the gods 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 hell is the keeper Cerberus?” and Plutarch is also found to comment on the oath, “those that worship the dog have a certain sacred meaning that must not be revealed; in the more remote and ancient times the dog hadthehighest 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 gods. 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 thestage, 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 gods, he is at once interrupted by Socrates in the basket, who reminds him that the gods 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 circumstance 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 minæ lent for the purchase of a dapple-grey horse, he is ready to swear any number of oaths “by the gods” 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 theloan 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 gods?” screams the creditor.
“What gods?” asks Strepsiades.
“Jupiter, Mercury, and Neptune.”
“Yes, by Jupiter!” rejoins Strepsiades, “and would pay down, too, a three-obol piece besides to swear by them.”
It must have been a sorry spectacle to have beheld Socrates in the midst of an Athenian audience solemnly witnessing this masterpiece of buffoonery, and a still sadder one to those whose feeling was still enlisted upon the side of the moribund system of oath-taking.
One singular instance of whimsicality in the ancient practice of swearing must not be allowed to pass unnoticed. The Levantine merchants trading with the port of Rhodes had familiarized Athenian households with a most excellent description of cabbage. The herb was only to be found in its highest perfection upon the southern coasts of the Mediterranean. This Rhodian cabbage had a mellower flavour than that indigenous to the Troad, and was, moreover, prized by all Atheniantopers as the surest antidote to the effects of drink. No supper-table would have been perfect without some preparation of this delicacy, and the gay revellers knew, or in any case imagined, that with this nostrum close at hand the choicest Chian or Lesbian vintages might safely be defied. Hence it was that the very name of so precious a vegetable came to be held in estimation, until it was customary to say that if it were permitted to blaspheme without offending the gods, it would be by mention of the Rhodian cabbage.[19]The lover in a fragment of the lost poet Ananius invokes it solemnly in evidence of his attachment, and there is found a suggestion in the iambics of Hipponax of the vegetable having even entered into the mythology—
“He, falling down, worshipped the seven-leaved cabbage,To which, before she drank the poisoned draught,Pandora brought a cake at Thargelia.”
This oath by the cabbage became in time the favourite expletive of Ionia, and having winged its way westwards, still lingers in the shape of the exclamationCavolo!as a popular phrase of modern Italy.
Specific forms of swearing were in a great measurelocalised in the ancient world. As the Thebans swore by Osiris, the Ionians by the cabbage and the colewort, so also in Athens Minerva formed the staple of the national oaths. No Roman citizen was heard to swear by Castor. Why there should have been this denial upon the part of those who swore freely by Pollux is not easily explained. But while the Roman women were loud in the use of “Mecastor”—the affixmebeing supplied to adapt the name to swearing purposes, the men abjured that oath as scrupulously as the women in their turn ignored the expression “Mehercule.”[20]Hercules himself, so the story went, was known to swear but one oath in the whole course of his life. In recognition of such singular forbearance, the Roman children were instructed never to make light use of his sacred name. The prohibition, however, extended no farther than the four walls and curtilage of the dwelling, and they were free to make what use they liked of it out of doors.
An instance of oaths being subjected to the like whimsical conditions is noticeable in the domestic manners of Old Germany. We gather from the popular mediæval satire, the ‘Ship of Fools,’ that acode of rules had been formulated regulating the propriety of swearing. Society in this case would seem to have formed its precedents of oath-taking, and to have withheld its sanction from any others than its own. There was a time in Germany it appears when a man adopted an oath as deliberately as he might take to a trade, it being only necessary, to bring it within the licensed pale, that it should be derived from the symbols of his own or his father’s occupation. The particular merit of this system was that while it partook of all the abandonment and conferred all the enjoyment of swearing, it was practically no swearing at all. When, in an outburst of passion, the grazier called out upon his beeves, or the smith invoked his anvil or his sledge, all the advantages of swearing, whatever they may be held to be, had been accomplished, and that without prudery being ruffled or innocence shocked. In fact the needs of society had invented a kind of stalking-horse for blasphemy, and the Bob Acreses and Captain Absolutes of that day must have found themselves cruelly hoodwinked by the inanimate effigy of swearing.
But while northern nations were conspicuous for the substantial and ponderous nature of their oaths, the Roman yielded to none in the multiform versatility ofhis adjurations. Caligula owned a horse that he not only treated as a fellow-being and brought to meals at his table, but whose name served him wherewith to pronounce his accustomed oaths. The same emperor is reported to have put to death a Roman citizen who refused to swear by his “imperial genius.” Another of the oaths prescribed by command of Caligula was “per numen Drusillæ.” This wretched woman he constrained his subjects to worship as a divinity. To explain this partiality for the use of these absurd if not impious oaths, it would seem that a tradition had been circulated, ascribing the duration of his own lifetime to the period during which the oath should pass current. Any attack of illness that happened to the emperor was directly attributed to the waning popularity of the oath. Nor was the doctrine strange to many of the nationalities over which the Roman sway extended. We have it distinctly occurring among the Scythians,[21]and it has more recently been noticed by travellers as existing among half-barbarous tribes. The oath itself was probably a development of the affirmation that has been used more than any other in the history of the world. Thelifeor theheadof the ruler of the chieftribesman, or of the spiritual prophet, has invariably furnished the true standard of affirmation. But even as a mere domestic oath, theheadof the goodman of the house seems to have been permitted a degree of solemnity—
“Per caput hoc juro, per quod pater ante solebat.”Virgil, Æn. ix. 300.
“He swore by the wound in Jesu’s side.”—Coleridge, ‘Christabel.’
We may now turn our backs upon the luxuriant and fanciful swearing of the ancient world and pursue our researches into one other division of the subject that gives rise to more serious reflections. The diversions of the Roman and the Greek in the way of imprecation seem to have been mostly intended in good part, and to have been productive of little theological odium. But there is a body of swearing that has diffused itself through Christian countries which is the very reverse of sportive, and has undeniably provoked the strongest feelings of aversion. The abuse to which we allude consisted mainly in the indiscriminate use of popular oaths that selected the limbs and members of Christ as the paraphernalia of swearing. There does not appear at the present day any great irreverence in the exclamation, “S’light,” or “S’lid,” or “Bodikins,” as, happily, the wave of impiety that brought them has long since broken and passed away. Indeed, as theynow occur in the pages of sixteenth century writings, they only strike the modern reader in the light of so many interruptions from the text. But we shall find as we pursue the inquiry further, that there was a great deal of meaning wrapped up in these expletives, and that they played a by no means unimportant part in the workings of the mediæval understanding.
Whatever may have been the malignities laid to the charge of the later middle ages, it is certain that the Englishman was on the whole of a reverential type. The pious moralist who laboured in those times was so far assisted by an utter absence of captious criticism to honeycomb his teaching, and by the solid sense of appreciation that was wont to fill the minds of his listeners. He was practised, moreover, in the exercise of two potent influences that he was ever ready to exert. The one may be said to have had its root in his hearers’ fund of ready sympathy, the other in their ghostly apprehension of horror and dread. It is not at all surprising that in later times we should find an opaqueness to have obscured the clear crystal of these subtle perceptions, for fear and pity have no longer the same ascendancy in a busy world. But at a period more piously illiterate, things of this shadowy nature were linked very closely to objects of a material kind.A long process of reasoning could then be saved by reference to some obscure picture of monkish fancy. And so, in the glooms and twilights of mediæval life, the moralist might insure speedy victory by overwhelming men’s intellects by an appeal to the formidable images of terror and compassion.
The pre-Reformation Englishman, stricken and toil-worn, having no hope save in forbearance from the skies, and no consolation but in the repose of the ale-house, could yet be awed and subdued by the apprehension of some priest-directed shape of ghostly terrorism. Above all, he had been made to grasp a sentiment, which, slightly as it can be treated in a secular work, may be said to have left no adequate imprint upon the Protestant world. By dint of the monastic teaching, he had been brought to entertain a keen personal realisation of the actual sufferings of Christ. The fact is self-evident from every fragment of contemporaneous literature intended to react upon the fears and sympathies of uncultivated men. It was the constant presentment of the notion of the divine agony, the daily calling to remembrance of the thorns, the nails, and the hyssop, that was relied upon to keep alive in those poor agued souls some struggling flame of spiritual vitality. And so surely was the spark wont to kindle, and soreverently was the similitude of these priestly images treasured up, that they formed the mainstay of the ploughman’s faith, the sum total of the poor man’s theology.
From this cause it arose, as there is now every reason to suspect, that the country was at one time inundated with a torrent of the most acrid and rasping blasphemy. It would not be difficult to trace the relative connection between the luxuriance of oath-taking and the various forms of religion under which oath-taking has successively flourished. It could be shown that the swearing of most Catholic states is of greater fertility, and displays a readier fund of invention than that of countries brought under the reformed faith. The more religion appeals to the senses, the more fecund has been the vocabulary of oaths. The more it has been made the subject of illustration and imagery, the more finished and ornate have been the comminations in use. A priest-ridden nation, such as the Spanish or Italian, has always been eminent for its proficiency in blasphemy; and as part of the argument it may not be out of place to mention the instance of the hedge-parson in the ‘Fortunes of Nigel,’ who, by reason of his superior knowledge of divinity, could swear with greater volubility than any of his associates.
Thus it was that, labouring under the ban of priestly exaction, and confronted on all sides by the ghostly emblems of wrath and condemnation, there descended upon England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a torrent of the hardest and direst of verbal abuse. Not mere words of intemperate anger came bubbling to the surface, but sullen and defiant blasphemies, execrations that proclaimed open warfare with authority and a lasting separation from everything that was tender in men’s faith. Imprecations were contrived from every incident in the narrative of the Crucifixion. The limbs and members of the slain Christ were made the vehicle of revolting profanation. The didactic writers of the time, no less than epic poets and sprightly versifiers, give full testimony to the prevalency of the offence. The laureate, Stephen Hawes, Lydgate, Chaucer and the “moral Gower,” all are alike loud in their expression of horror and renunciation. Among the later writers replete with instances of the scandal is the epigrammatist, Robert Crowley, who enumerates a lengthy catalogue of expletives current in his day. Although by the time Crowley appeared upon the scene the language of blasphemy had become a little softened by the admixture of rather more innocent particles, as “by cock and pye,” or “bythe cross of the mousefoot,” the author still finds it necessary to record a set of hard, grating oaths pronounced by the “hands,” the “feet,” and the “flesh” of Christ.
To refer, for instance, to the use of the one word “zounds!” This strikes us now-a-days as anything but a very solemn or a very momentous form of adjuration. But in unreformed England—the England that still adored theGenetrix incorrupta, and had earned among the devout the title of Our Lady’s Dower, it was absolutely impossible to surpass in blasphemy the hideous import that had been imparted to the user of the word. It was in fact nothing else than a rebellious and mutinous rendering of the once sacred oath taken by the wounds of the Redeemer. There are few who can probably now realise the conspicuous place then occupied in the Catholic worship by the legends relating to the five several incisions in the body of Christ. The monkish representations of the wounds were depicted in countless rosaries and Books of Hours. Confraternities were formed in the Church for their greater veneration. There were occasions when papal absolution was specially extended to those worshippers who paid their devotions to the wound in the side of Christ. The so-called measurement of them was even preserved infamilies, and was reputed to be a charm.[22]In the great northern insurrection of 1536, known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, the Five Wounds was the badge under which York and Lincoln farmers marched to avenge the spoliation of the monasteries. Such was the oath in the days of the last King Henry. Its more modern application scarcely requires illustration, but if any such were needed, we might find it in the villainous lines which Lord Byron wrote in connection with a certain trip on board theLisbonpacket.
To the present hour, in Italy, the popular oaths are in close alliance with the Romanist faith. The ordinary exclamation “Per l’ostia” is the equivalent of “God’s bread!” that so long did duty in England of the pre-Reformation era. A modern traveller has noticed how distinct an impress has been set upon Italian swearing by the particular notions of heavenly beings that are inculcated by the national creed. A workman in an art-studio was heard vociferating in such terms as “Per Christo,” “Per sangue di Christo,” “Per maladetto sangue di Christo,” whereupon the following conversation occurred:—
“Do you forget who Christ is, that you thus blaspheme Him?”
“Bah!” replied the man, “I am not afraid of Him.”
“Who, then, do you fear?”
“I’m afraid of the Madonna, and not of Him.”
The fact was that the Mother of God was the sole being the mind was brought to esteem with feelings of veneration. Christ was only thebambino, or infant in arms, and nothing more.[23]
The state of feeling that still prevails in Italy should go far to explain the presence in pre-Reformation England of this widely-spread body of irreverent swearing. With the Reformation, however, the contagion was shortly to abate. The severer authors at the close of the sixteenth century do not have to complain so bitterly of these jarring elements of vituperation. In the literature of the stage there is a marked improvement: in none but the earlier of theElizabethan comedies do the characters accentuate their meaning by reference to the grossest description of blasphemy. When expletives occur they are generally in the spirit of derision and lampoon. As the writings of the stage grew more robust, the custom altogether wore away. It may, indeed, be held that the subversion of the Catholic religion was mainly, if not entirely, accountable for the change. There is certainly a marked distinction between the oaths of the outgoing and incoming creeds. But if we have been finally spared from the ravages of the infection, we may attribute our deliverance to that reserve of reverence of which we have spoken as possessed by English laymen, and to the pious devices that were practised upon it by the inferior orders of preachers.
The position they chose to assume in combating this “fine old gentlemanly vice” is a singular feature in its history. Their method was to associate the practice of swearing with the notion of actual bodily pain being occasioned to the Saviour. They made it appear that Christ in person was put to extreme physical agony on every occasion of its committal. Not alone did they assert the wantonness and hardihood of so directly incurring the Divine displeasure, but they raised the most piteous appeal to the compassion ofthese benighted swearers. It was daily proclaimed from their pulpits that the profanity in this one respect of professedly Christian men had worked a sharper and more agonising martyrdom than that formerly designed by the Jews themselves. In countless broadsheets, no less than by pictorial illustration, the wounds of Christ were portrayed as hourly re-opened, and the sufferings of Golgotha renewed from day to day. The doctrine gained additional credit when transferred from the hands of monkish authors and embraced by popular and captivating pens. Stephen Hawes, own poet to carpet-knights and buckram soldiery, brought home conviction to a class of offenders that a whole consistory would not have succeeded in convincing. In a rhyming pamphlet, prefaced by a figure of the bleeding Christ, Hawes depicts with awful realism those sufferings which, as he believed, were being actually and bodily inflicted.[24]The author of ‘Bel Amour’ describes the feet and hands of Christ as literally pierced anew, and every member torn and lacerated by reason of the imprecations of unheeding Christians.
At this time of day it might be difficult to ascertain with any certainty the origin of this forced view of the iniquity of swearing. So far as concerns printedliterature, we discover it for the first time in the doggerel of the poet Hawes, but it is none the less traceable to that encyclopædic work of the thirteenth century, the ‘Miroir du Monde.’ This takes us to the year 1279, and instances could be furnished showing its regular passage through the next three centuries, until the monkish notion is at last surrendered and delivered over to the cleansing fires of the Reformation. The last of the English authors who seems to have seriously advanced the theory is to be found in the rigid disciple of asceticism, Thomas Becon.
Becon was a man who, throughout a devout and severe life, had set himself sternly to the task of rebuking the immoderate lawlessness of the orders among which he lived. The rustic usage of collecting round the village tavern to celebrate the Sabbath in sport and holiday was one particularly repellant to the mind of Becon, and held by him to be the mainspring of all the evils that ravaged the country-side. The fore part of the day having been devoted to the services of the Church, it was usual for a time of high festival to succeed the morning’s austerities. Noon discovered all the grown men of the village assembled round the vintner’s door and partaking of the ale-house hospitalities. Here feats of rude strength were performed,wrestlers practised their throws, and sturdy fellows played bouts at quarter-staff. Foot-races were run upon the greensward for wholesome wagers of barley-cake, and games of hazard were conducted under the shelter of the ivy-bush at the publican’s threshold. Bets were staked, dice were rattled, and yokels learned to place the dues of the harvest-field upon the fortunes of the winning or losing colour. When, therefore, after earnest and fruitless entreaty, the good Becon rushed into print and produced his learned ‘Invective,’ he did not omit to visit with uncompromising censure the chartered licence of this Sunday festival.
The riot and pastime that on every seventh day had been wont to disturb the quietude of rustic life appeared to our reformer as a direct encouragement to the practice of swearing, and in fact as constituting so many training-schools for the cultivation of this unwelcome accomplishment. In the hope of rendering the habit positively forbidding to the more impressionable among his readers, he reminds them how the body of the Saviour is actually torn and mangled by reason of the imprecations hurled at him in these country sports. Oaths, he deplores, were then used in every matter of chopping and changing, of bargaining and selling,and he groans to think how the “dicer” will swear rather than passively submit to the loss of a single cast, the “carder will tear God in pieces rather than lose the profit of an ace.”
It is a feature that must be very palpable to the student of incipient literature, that when once an original and daring notion was fairly launched upon the world, it was not allowed to founder for want of repetition. The peculiar mode of thought which we have ventured to ascribe to the ‘Miroir du Monde’ in the thirteenth century, could boast a long line of exponents in the interval that closed with Thomas Becon. The writer to whose industry, rather than invention, English laymen were indebted for their acquaintance with this painful doctrine was a certain Dan Michael, described as a brother of the Cloister of Saint Austin. This person has produced a didactic treatise based upon the model of the famous ‘Miroir,’ an original from which no writer at that time felt himself justified in departing. With the subject of swearing he deals in a way that is highly painstaking. Not to mention the intricate distinctions which he treats under these several heads, we find that he has grouped the offences of the tongue into no less than eight cardinal divisions. It may be curious to recordthe titles as our author enumerates them, notwithstanding that it is scarcely to our purpose to follow him through the niceties he has created. The branches of the subject, according to his classification, would therefore seem to be: “ydelnesse,” “yelpinge,” “bloudynge,” “todiazinge,” “stryfinge,” “grochynge,” “wyþstondinge,” and lastly “blasfemye.” So far as we have mastered the system of Dan Michael we are driven to the conclusion that the practice of swearing, as understood in the Cloister of Saint Austin, was, save for the outward distinction of dress, much the same as prevails in the later world. “For there are some,” says he of the cloister, “so evil taught that they are able to say nothing without swearing. Some swear as if smitten with sudden pain. Others swear by the sun, the moon, by the head, or by their father’s soul.”
Minute as is Dan Michael in his treatment of the subject of abuse, his elaborations are possibly surpassed by the next competitor for moralistic fame. Robert of Brunné, who produced a similar work in the year 1303, availed himself largely of the other’s labours, while he enriched his collections with recitals of wrong-doing from his own exclusive stores. From the “Handlyng Sinne,” as the production is called, one may gatherconsiderable insight into the state of prejudice existing at the time. The neighbours tell one another good stories in church time, and inquire during the sermon where they can get the best ale. The monks have become so luxurious that they refuse to shave their heads and have commenced to array themselves in fine clothes. The king’s courts are crowded with supplicating suitors, craving for redress from the extortions of trustees and executors, and yielding themselves victims to the falsity of the men of law. Swearing, at that time, would seem to be no longer the prerogative of laymen, but even to have become the privilege of learned clerks.
To depict what, from this author’s point of view, were the fruits and consequences of blasphemy, Brunné enters into a narrative describing the Mother of God presenting the bleeding Jesus to the gaze of the rich man Dives. The latter inquires the reason for the Child being gashed with wounds. In reply the Virgin points out in terms of keen resentment the injuries inflicted upon the Infant by the swearing of Dives and his associates. The doctrine of the ‘Miroir’ is then introduced in full to demonstrate the infamy and inhumanity of the practice, the whole concluding with a promise of repentance on the part of the sinful man.This fable is only one among many others that were narrated with a view to curbing the propensities of blaspheming swearers. The work that contains it met with general circulation at the commencement of the fourteenth century, but that the spread of the iniquity was not sensibly abated we may infer from other sources of information we have mentioned.[25]In 1544, the evil was set forth in the light of a national grievance, and was paraded in a broadsheet published in that year entitled a “Supplycacion to Kynge Henry the Eyght.”
Such, then, was the ponderous metal that passed current as the swearing of pre-Reformation England. These verbal projectiles were sometimes moulded,however, of a lighter calibre, and when employed in the talk of priests or women, were so nicely rounded off as to incur little of theological displeasure. Chaucer’s people, in particular, are very punctilious in the propriety of their oaths; good Sir Thopas swearing mildly “by ale and bread,” and Madame Eglantine naming holy Saint Eligius as the patron of her vows—
“There was also a nonne, a prioresse,That of hire smyling was ful symple and coy,Hire grettest oath was but by St. Eloy.”
In much the same way did princes and dignitaries of the land single out some swearing cognizance that might befriend them in the everlasting conflict between lies and honesty. Edward I. sanctified his oaths by the mention of a brace of milk-white swans, and whoever will consult St. Palaye will find that the peacock and the pheasant entered largely into the codes of chivalry as bearing witness to the truth of a statement. Edward III. followed the lead of his grandsire in the selection of his gage of testimony. At the festival held in 1349 to celebrate the creation of the Order of the Garter, his cognizance was the swan, adorned, moreover, with the swearing motto: “Haye! Haye! the Whyte Swan! by Godde’s soule I am thy man.”
The tradition that St. Paul was the saint thatRichard III. was wont to conjure with, has found expression in the tragedy of Shakespeare. Faithful to the popular notions of the usurper’s characteristic, this form of oath has been placed upon Gloucester’s lips at each impassioned outburst. Henry V., in his wooing of Katherine, gallantly invokes St. Denis to aid him in his attempts at love-making. But the chronicler who seems positively to have had an affection for the oaths the memory of which he is recalling, is the historian Brantôme. Upon this unimpeachable testimony we learn that the oath of Louis XI. waspar la Pâque Dieu, an affirmation that Scott avails himself of in his portraiture of that monarch in ‘Quentin Durward.’ This was succeeded by thejour de Dieuof Charles VIII.; by thediable m’emporteof Louis XII., and thefoi de gentilhommeof Francis I. Among the Gascon oaths of Henry IV. the most usual wasventre Saint Gris. As for Charles IX., adds Brantôme, he swore in all fashions, and always like a sergeant who was leading a man to be hanged.[26]