A Cursory History of Swearing Part 6

If we mistake not, there is the same improvement soon to be witnessed in every department, in the national life of the nation as well as the private life of the citizen. In part attributable to the politic sway of the Walpole government, in part to the tincture of politeness and good breeding that these polished penmen had striven to disseminate, there is, for a time at least, a marked absence of rancour and strife of tongues.

The fires of the Puritan faction had smouldered out; those of the Jacobite frenzy had hardly had time to rekindle. That spirit of minute controversy which had never ceased to divide both court and city since the days of Martin Mar-prelate was at length at rest. In this somewhat remarkable lull we find very little giving or taking of abuse. So far as social records are a guide, there seems even to be a calm in the usual tempest of swearing.

But towards the middle of the eighteenth century comes the relapse.

Jacobitism had blazed again. The factions were relit. Controversy wagged its tongue as before. Everywhere are evidences of want and misery, of low sedition and of strong drink. The tipsy Duke of c.u.mberland is the hero whose graces we are to admire. The 'Guards' march to Finchley' is the picture which may be trusted to convey a portraiture of the manners of the times. It is precisely at this conjuncture that Parliament enacted the last and most stringent of the measures by which it sought to place an embargo upon swearing. In the use of coa.r.s.e and violent language women competed with the men. In 1756 on the occasion of the memorable trial concerning the fair fame of the Countess of Grosvenor, the letters of this lady were produced and read in court. We have Horace Walpole's authority for saying that the oaths with which they were plentifully besprinkled were far more masculine than they can be said to have been tender. The prince of the blood to whom they were addressed could swear volubly too, and his oaths we may feel a.s.sured were neither masculine nor tender.

We of this generation can scarcely have any adequate notion of what the swearing has been which has prevailed in this country at different periods, and more particularly in the latter part of the reign of George II. So popular and so ungovernable was the habit, that there is hardly any rational means to be found for accounting for it. At this time there lived in an obscure village in Suss.e.x a decent, well-to-do tradesman, whose shop, well stocked with broadcloth and homespun, was a centre of commerce for miles around. He was known to be a thriving man, and seems to have taken a leading part in the administration of parish affairs.

Business was not so burdensome but that he found time to attend at every festive gathering, and to keep a well-written chronicle of his own and his neighbours' doings. This diary has of late years been unearthed, and a very pretty story it has to tell of the _bourgeois_ manner of life towards the meridian of the century.[48] One entry will speak for many of the same character.

"February 5th, 1759.--In the evening I went down to the vestry; there was no business of moment to transact, but oaths and imprecations seemed to resound from all sides of the room. I believe if the penalty were paid a.s.signed by the legislature by every person that swears that const.i.tute our vestry, there would be no need to levy any tax to maintain our poor."

The outbreak must have reached an unprecedented point when we find the president of quarter sessions, Sir John Fielding, alluding to it in the charge to the grand jury delivered at the Guildhall in April, 1763. No language can be stronger than that of Sir John--"I cannot sufficiently lament," he says "that shameful, inexcusable and almost universal practice of profane swearing in our streets; a crime so easy to be punished, and so seldom done, that mankind almost forget it to be an offence, and to our dishonour be it spoken, it is almost peculiar to the English nation."

A state of things like this would seem to have given rise to a singular communication addressed to the 'Gentleman's Magazine.' The writer lays the whole blame upon the clergy; they have offered a direct encouragement to swearing by declaring it a sin. He recommends that divines in future should describe it as a virtue, which, he says, may be as easily done as saying the contrary, and he will answer for the success of the experiment. A clergyman of his acquaintance, continues the writer, had already carried this bit of precept into use. To convince the congregation that swearing was far from being a sin, this gentleman constantly practised it in his own discourses. There might indeed be some doubt here which was the worse, the remedy or the disease.

The imprecations that are so severely censured by Fielding are a totally different thing from the imprecations patronised by Lady Grosvenor, if we are to understand the oaths of the populace to have been the hideous and unsightly objects presented for condemnation to the Middles.e.x jury.

And here we hardly need point out the distinction between swearing when at its earnest, and swearing when at its play. In numberless courts and alleys, in the sinks and hiding-places of a great city, we may be sure there are innumerable spots where oaths and imprecations never for a moment are laid aside. They are as punctual and as regular as the ticking of a clock. No word is uttered that has not its accompaniment of an oath; no bread broken that is not devoured with cursing. For why?

Human nature is at all times bent upon possessing, and upon increasing what it has acquired. The very act of producing is sufficient to uphold the equilibrium of the mental frame. But this same nature, when pinched and starved, becomes a perfect storehouse of enmity and ill-feeling.

Among the denizens of these holes and crannies humanity has been driven very hard. It has been crushed and bruised to a point beyond endurance.

The possibility of possessing is very faint, that of enjoying still more remote. No graceful thing--no pleasant thing, can readily come to its hand. Yet there is one chattel they _can_ possess when every stick and stone is denied them. They can be tenacious of their swearing. See how manifestly useful a thing it is! It can give a man an eloquence where none would otherwise belong to him. It can set him up with a semblance of bodily strength, when otherwise he would be puny and fragile. He can a.s.sail authorities, and they dare not answer. He can drown down the voice of missionaries, and they are halting in reproval. There are beings so dejected--so penurious--that this swearing const.i.tutes their whole store of worldly opulence. They know it too, in a fashion, although it has never been told them and they themselves are incapable of the telling.

So much for swearing when in grim earnest; how are we to account for it in its transition to sport and play? Unless we are greatly mistaken, there has entered into its composition a spirit of broad humour which has, in a manner, rendered it attractive, if not positively amusing.

Were we to put the whole body of bad language to a judicial trial, we should in fairness be compelled to admit the extenuating circ.u.mstance of a time-expired claim to the mock-heroic and the ludicrous. It certainly does not sparkle now, but it must have come of a witty stock, and have boasted a mirth-provoking pedigree. To have rendered itself so particularly palatable as it has done, like many other kinds of verbal folly, it can only have taken its rise in a perverted spirit of merriment.

To apply words, and more especially adjectives, in an unwonted and unusual sense is one of the arts which go a long way to make conversation agreeable. To do this with taste, and without corrupting or annihilating the meaning of the word, demands a certain amount of literary skill. To do so at any price frequently demands skill, and is always fraught with consequences of some kind to the listener. Most of these perversions of highly respectable words have now become so trite that they pa.s.s unchallenged. The verb "to bag," for instance, is in jocular use for implying a petty appropriation of property. It must of course at some time have been forcibly wrested from the language of sportsmen, and no doubt with this circ.u.mstance secretly underlying it, has been productive, and will be again, of general good-humour. Such another _tour de phrase_ is met with in the verb "to charter." This originally had reference to the hiring of a ship; but when we hear of chartering a fly, or chartering a stretcher, there certainly arises an odd sense of the incongruous. We are far from saying that the merriment in these cases is acute, but we contend that this kind of pleasantry is at the bottom of every phrase or catchword obtaining universal acceptance.

Examples might be multiplied of this wanton abduction of words. The not very polite expression "the damage," as signifying the cost of any article of purchase, is one which upon frequent repet.i.tion may fail to strike the mind as containing any element of humour. But recollecting the wide region the imagination has to traverse in order to connect the idea of detriment with the idea of price, we are disposed to allow that this mental circuit is enlivened with some shreds of grotesque imagery.

Indeed, a large and by no means contemptible portion of the world have derived a high degree of enjoyment from the simple confusion and dislocation of terms. Nothing is more frequent than to find a catch-word ostensibly of no kind of intelligence being exchanged by delighted youths across half the desks and counters of the metropolis. The flippant use of oaths is so far practically explained; the colloquial habit of imputing to unoffending objects a condition of d.a.m.nation pa.s.sing in the light of a fairly respectable joke. Joke indeed there is none, but it is the popular repute or suspicion of a jest that exercises this fascination. It is noticeable that a provincial audience witnessing one of Colman's or Sheridan's comedies is more genuinely amused by the "zounds" and "dammes" uttered in provoking situations by testy speakers, than by all the polish of epigram and dialogue.

As further ill.u.s.trating this latent element of humour, which has helped to perpetuate the practice of purposeless swearing, we may be permitted to refer to an occurrence that befell us when, some number of years ago, we happened to be taking a humble part in a legal inquiry at a county a.s.sizes. The case was one in which, let us say, Moribundus was plaintiff, and the Juggernaut Railway Company were defendants. It is not necessary to refer to the business of the dispute further than to say that the plaintiff had been shattered almost beyond recovery, and that our province it was to help to prove to demonstration the utter untrustworthiness of the story relied upon by Moribundus. The repast that succeeded the inquiry more nearly concerns us; the lawyers, the London doctor, and the local pract.i.tioner having agreed thus to celebrate the evening. We do not recollect that the company were at all disposed to fraternity, as a degree of professional acrimony seemed to preside at that feast. In the course of dinner, one of the party, looking round the board, happens to inquire, "Where's the d.a.m.ned mustard?" No particular notice is taken of this remark, until presently one of the legal gentlemen solemnly observes, "Where's the d.a.m.ned salt?"

We do not attempt to explain it, but a sudden sense of the ludicrous instantly overcame the men of law and medicine a.s.sembled at the _Fleece_. This incongruous and perfectly irrelevant joinder of words, while it revealed the source from which amus.e.m.e.nt was supposed to flow, was at the same time a potent satire upon the practice of a disreputable art. It was taking the name of swearing itself in vain. It subst.i.tuted for any closer argument the incisive logic of ridicule.

It occurs to us to notice that Shakespeare, who was certainly alive to the hidden springs of swearing, has conceived the notion of winging much the same folly with a precisely similar shaft. It had been the fashion among the gay Ephesians of Eastcheap, during Elizabeth's reign, to swear by their honour. "Where learnt you that oath, fool?" asks Rosalind. "Of a certain knight," returns Touchstone, "who swore by his honour they were good pancakes."

With these examples of compromise before us, it becomes almost a matter for regret that there should remain so large a body of protectionists whose resentment at anything savouring of an oath is perhaps one of the surest means of perpetuating swearing. Among the severest codes devised to check the progress of the vice was that designed by the Puritan settlers in Connecticut and Rhode Island. These Blue Laws, as they were called, aimed at establishing an almost theocratic form of government.

Adopting the polity of Great Britain as a standpoint, these enactments went considerably further and sought to remodel that system upon the basis of the severest of Jewish ordinances. Among offences to which the Puritan mind would seem to have been especially averse are to be numbered those of swearing and tobacco-smoking. In the case of the latter, however, retribution was only visited upon the after-generation of smokers. People who had already acquired the habit were free to continue in it for the days of their life. In the case of swearing, needless to say, no such licence was extended, convicted swearers being liable to be dealt with according to the gravity of the offence. The penalty seems to have been rated in some instances as low as a fine of five shillings, and to have amounted in others to the punishment of death.

In all countries enactments have been levelled against the excesses of e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, but the true instruments for keeping them in bounds, a.s.suming there to be an actual necessity for such treatment, has been shown to be the voice of ridicule and the keen banter of satire.

Moralists of the pattern of the law-givers of Connecticut would probably be found to take exception to the oaths of Bobadil, and would condemn 'Every Man in his Humour' as a licentious work. It does not however need argument to show that the mere fact of the redoubted Bobadil taking credit to himself for his freaks with the fourth commandment, forms one of the strongest inducements to respect that prohibition. But in view of any latent admiration being lurking in any portion of his auditory, Jonson has contrived a foil in the person of Master Stephen. This is a vain-glorious, empty parasite, whose clumsy imitation of the Captain is certainly calculated to put his hearers out of all sympathy with his model. So captivated is this apt disciple with Bobadil's string of expletives, that he is found anxiously inquiring whether he also may swear _en militaire_. "Certainly," says the sagacious Well-bred, "if, as I remember, your name is entered in the Artillery Garden."

Bobadil "swore the legiblest of any man christened." The field, however, has not been suffered to be left without compet.i.tors. To see how persistent has been the struggle for reputation in the matter as well as manner of swearing, we have only to turn to the well-known dialogue in Sheridan's comedy:

"_Absolute._ But pray, Bob, I observe you have got an odd kind of a new method of swearing.

"_Acres._ Ha! ha! you've taken notice of it--'tis genteel, isn't it? I didn't invent it myself though, but a commander in our militia, a great scholar I a.s.sure you, says that there is no meaning in the common oaths, and that nothing but their antiquity makes them respectable; because, he says, the ancients would never stick to an oath or two, but would say, By Jove! or by Bacchus!--by Mars! or by Pallas! according to the sentiment, so that to swear with propriety, says my little major, the oath should be an echo of the sense; and this we call the oath referential, or sentimental swearing--ha! ha! 'tis genteel, isn't it?

"_Absolute._ Very genteel, and very new, indeed!--and I daresay will supplant all other figures of imprecation.

"_Acres._ Ay, ay, the best terms will grow obsolete. d.a.m.ns have had their day."[49]

We are not aware whether it has been noticed how closely this pa.s.sage is foreshadowed by dialogue occurring in a much earlier play. Both turn upon the notion of a species of property being acquired in set forms of swearing. The play in question is from the pen of Richard Brome, and is further useful to our purpose as showing that this eccentricity had not abated in the interval that elapsed between Jonson and Sheridan. Under the t.i.tle of 'Covent Garden Weeded,' it exposes the riotous doings that prevailed in that joyous locality. It was to cleanse this new plantation of the human nettles and creepers that found shelter in its precincts that the drama purports to have been designed. The builders had just completed the s.p.a.cious piazza which occupies a portion of the site of the convent garden formerly existing there. Among the rollicking societies that were springing up in this new settlement, was one known, at least in the comedy, as the "Brothers of the Blade and the Batoon."

One scene in this play discloses the brethren in a state of carnival.

They are engaged in pa.s.sing a novice into the ranks of the order, their captain thus exhorting the new-comer as to their social code:--

"_Captain._ I have given you all the rudiments and my most fatherly advice withall.

"_Clot._ And the last is that I should not swear; how make you that good?

"_Captain._ That's most unnecessary, for look you, the best, and even the lewdest of my sons do forbear it, not out of conscience, but for very good ends, and instead of an oath, furnish the mouth with some affected protestation. _As I am honest!_ it is so. _I am no honest man!_ if it be not. _'Ud take me!_ if I lie to you. _Nev'rigo! nev'rstir! I vow!_ and such like.

"_Clot._ I'll have _I vow_, then.

"_Nick._ Nay, but you shall not, that's mine.

"_Clot._ Can't you lend it me now and then, brother?"

It would almost seem, from the evidence of the several pa.s.sages we have had occasion to refer to, as if the various diversities of character and occupation had engendered a spirit of compet.i.tion in the a.s.sumption of oaths. Whether scholar or soldier, knight or citizen, each man, according to his degree, is burning to distinguish himself by some distinctive and eccentric form of swearing. The a.s.severations employed by the Shallows and Slanders are as limpid and as timorous as those of Falstaff and Bardolph are downright and headstrong. Hotspur, as we have seen, reproaches Lady Percy for swearing like a comfit-maker's wife.

With the rest of the Percies he had lived in Aldersgate Street, and had probably contracted an aversion to everything savouring of the vulgar life of a great city. How defiant and versatile were the expletives of the old French n.o.bility, we may learn from the pages of Brantome. When seeking to convey a flattering portrait of his father, Francois de Bourdeilles, he does not omit to impress us with the importance of his oaths. Playing backgammon with Pope Jules II., his form of adjuration was _Chardieu benit!_ when he lost, and _Chardon benit!_ when he won.

In Elizabethan England a ridiculous notion prevailed among town society, a.s.sociating the idea of good breeding with the use, by way of oath, of the word "protest." Such an affirmation was understood to raise the presumption of quality in the person who used it. Says Carlo Buffone, "Ever, when you can, have two or three peculiar oaths to swear by, that no man else swears, and above all protest." Neither is Shakespeare silent upon this fashionable eccentricity. The Nurse in 'Romeo and Juliet' is instantly won over to the side of the Veronese lover the moment he utters "I protest," and no longer harbours a doubt of his principles. We see her desirous of communicating to her mistress this single expression of gentlemanhood without concerning herself about the more weighty portion of Romeo's message. This is, perhaps, almost beneath the dignity of the love-story, but we have to regard it as a relic. We must understand the allusion as a piece of chaff administered to the gallants and templars who sported their fine clothes and broached their oaths and their jests seated upon the very stage where the performers were playing. A pa.s.sage in a contemporary, ent.i.tled 'Sir Giles Goosecap,' affords a key to the especial estimation in which the term then happened to be held:--"There is not the best duke's son in France dares say _I protest_ till he be one-and-thirty years old at least, for the inheritance of that word is not to be possessed before."

Not only do we view these allusions as relics, but we may as justly consider them in the light of literary fossils. The aim and intention of the author have become petrified. It is, in fact, only by the help of study and appreciation that the true shape and proportion of the idea can be adequately revealed. But search beneath the crust of this intellectual spoil-bank, and there will be seen those slight, if somewhat corroded indications which disclose the humour and the temper of a forgotten age. These inconsequent oaths and no less incomprehensible bywords, fit only now-a-days to undetermine critics and to baffle commentary, are really the reflection of a tinsel finery that was no doubt borne aloft and bravely carried in its day. The explanation for this is simple. The player, to be well in with his patrons, had to turn the laugh from side to side, to give a thrust here and a buffet there, just as the mood or the opportunity dictated. It is this easy familiarity with audiences which has filled our play-books with such store of meaningless or half-meaningless expressions. Not that their supposed want of meaning is more than co-extensive with their apparent want of purpose. Once re-animated with a design, and that of ever so trivial a character, and their significance stands out in relief. When, as frequently happens in our reading, we encounter oaths of the pattern which Shakespeare ascribes to the youth of Verona, we may feel sure we have fallen upon some pa.s.sing home-thrust, some spectral blow, delivered, as it were, among now ghostly antagonists.

Thus we find that in the town life of the more favoured days of Charles I. it was a common affectation to use the words "refuse me," much as the Elizabethan dandies made mention of the word "protest." We see this indicated by several examples of contemporary raillery, and particularly in the play of 'Match at Midnight,' in which the lordlings of the time are described as "those wicked elder brothers, that swear, _refuse them!_ and drink nothing but wicked sack."

So at other periods we find other combinations doing yeoman service in this particular; as, for instance, in Killigrew's play 'The Parson's Wedding,' where Careless is explaining his plan for attacking the affections of the fair s.e.x--"I am resolved to put on their own silence, answer forsooth, swear nothing but _G.o.d's nigs_." Except upon the score of banter at prevailing idiotcies, it would be difficult to account for the luxuriant way in which oaths of this description have been provided.

We may not inaptly before closing this chapter travel into another hemisphere and advert to that side of the subject in which the powers of darkness are accustomed to be apostrophised in place of the powers of light. Most of the swearing which we have had to pa.s.s in review may be said to have been acc.u.mulated at a vast expense to our notions and perceptions regarding the Source of all light. How is it, then, that the full detriment of this system was never taken into account before, and that the obverse of the present practice was not more generally adopted.

One might have supposed that the malignant beings who find so facile an entrance into popular imagination would have been the first objects with which to a.s.sociate so much that is acrimonious. If this could have been seen to, and thoroughly brought about, it is possible that we should never have heard of "swearing" at all, or that it might very well have occupied the same relative position upon the pedestal of virtues as it now does upon the more degraded tallies of vice. However this may be, and of course speculation upon the subject can be nothing more than fanciful, it is the beneficent creations of the universe, and not the malignant ones, that have absorbed the greater part of the energy directed to the practice of swearing.

In English archaic writings the instances in which the mention of the Satanic power is thus utilised are not numerous. We cannot compete with the _diables_ and _diavolos_ of another race. Wherever references of this kind do occur, they as often a.s.sume the shape of some amusing transposition. The sharp edge is at once taken off the anathema. Thus the soubriquet "old Harry" or "the Lord Harry" generally understood to refer to Satan, is frequently used as an adjunct of strong feeling.[50]

But as an imprecation it is of quite inferior magnitude, and seems almost to imply the existence of a strain of good-fellowship with the Evil One which it might be exceedingly impolitic to disturb.

But beyond the intuitive feeling that the cognomen does apply to this individual, there is little to advance which can clear up the question as to the precise origin of the term. It is supposed that our popular notion of the devil is derived from the Roman fauni. The s.h.a.ggy coat, the horns and cloven feet, are certainly peculiar to the cla.s.sical treatment of this supernatural being. It is inferred therefore that the idea has been transmitted to us through the medium of our early moralities and interludes. This course of descent derives colour from the fact that the like paraphernalia are not the subject of opprobrious mention in the Scriptures,[51] and that hence our notion of the devil must be drawn from pagan rather than biblical influences. It is accordingly suggested that "old Harry," the subject of so much irreverent and irresponsible reference, is no other than "old hairy" of the earliest phases of theatrical representation.

A jocose turn seems also to have been given to that common contraction of the Satanic name of which Mistress Page makes use in the 'Merry Wives' when she exclaims, "I cannot tell what the d.i.c.kens his name is!"

It does not however seem that the expression can be traced earlier than Heywood's 'Edward the Fourth,' of the date 1600, where we meet with the pa.s.sage: "What the d.i.c.kens! Is it love that makes you prate to me so fondly?" The word is, however, less of an oath than an exclamation.

Probably few persons who allow themselves the enjoyment of that rather jocular expletive, _the deuce!_ are in the least aware of the remote antiquity of this delectable figure of speech. It is perhaps the most ancient of all the oaths and apologies for oaths that have come down to us, and which after a long and vicissitudinous transit have arrived at last, neither mutilated or dismembered. So old is it that it dates from the very formation of the language, but of so tainted a pedigree that in spite of some six hundred years of regular descent we can scarcely permit it to hold dictionary rank.

But, if the account we have to give of its origin can be credited, its history is singular as being intimately connected with one of the greatest social changes that have taken place in the national life. When we are told that the Norman conquerors imposed their language upon the subject race, we can understand with what difficulty and hesitation the Saxon thanes would attempt to a.s.similate the foreign tongue. So severe a lesson could only be learned by grasping at such words and phrases as were the more frequently recurring. To say that oaths and imprecations, and in fact all terms of anger and violence, would leave the more durable impression, is only to insist upon what we see daily exemplified in countries where the like process is going on. So it happened with a very favourite Norman exclamation. From the evidence of the earliest metrical romances we gather that _Deus!_ was such a term of impatience as was constantly upon the lips of the descendants of the invaders. But no sooner did these more courtly and cultivated entertainments make their way into English vernacular, than we find that even in this latter shape the Norman _deus_ is significantly preserved. There it appears among the rugged doggrel, a piece of continental finery st.i.tched into the homely Saxon garb. It had dropped out of the vocabularies of the French romancists and had become the common property of the ordinary provincial poetaster. It had pa.s.sed in fact from the French to the English tongue, and is claimed to be that very _deuce_ with which we are most of us familiar.

Proof of this is afforded by comparison of the old romance of 'Havelok the Dane'[52] as it exists in its home and in its foreign versions, and both of which are a.s.signed to a period anterior to the fourteenth century. The translator was evidently a man of spirit, who to warm his Lincolnshire readers has added much original incident and local colouring. Nevertheless he carefully retained the Norman _deus_. It was evidently quite at home on the wolds and in the fens of the translator's country, and only wanted the accent which Grimsby patrons would not fail to supply, to transform it to the expression with which we are so well acquainted.

There seems to be one oath of this description which bids fair to elude all guess-work as to its origin or meaning. It was formerly a practice in France to swear _par le diable de Biterne_. When so much exact.i.tude had been employed to emphasise the whereabouts of this personage, it is only natural to inquire where the locality referred to might happen to be. We believe, however, that no satisfactory answer has as yet been returned. Some light is thrown upon the question by Francisque Michel who (in his 'Recherches sur les Etoffes de Soie') has shown that a present of some rare _pailes de Biterne_ was sent to Alexander by Candace, one of the queens of Ethiopia. With this single ray of illumination we must be content.