Читать книгу Notes and Queries, Number 41, August 10, 1850 - Various - Страница 2

No one would at present think of any other answer to a Query as to the meaning of this term than that the phrase originated with the scarecrows and stuffed apings of humanity with which the rising generation enlivens our streets on every fifth of November, and dins in our ears the cry, "Please to remember the guy," and that it alludes to the Christian name of the culprit, Guido. Have, however, any of your readers met this title, or any allusion to it, in any writer previously to 1605? and may its attribution to the supposed framer of the Gunpowder Plot only have been the accidental appropriation of an earlier term of popular reproach, and which had become so since the conversion of the nation to Christianity? This naturally heaped contumely and insult upon every thing relating to the Druids, and the heathen superstitions of the earlier inhabitants.

Amongst others, Guy was a term by which, no doubt, the Druids were very early designated, and is cognate, with the Italian Guido and our own Guide, to the Latin cuidare, which would give it great appropriativeness when applied to the offices of teachers and leaders, with which these lordly flamens were invested. Narrowly connected with their rites, the term has descended to the present day, as is decidedly shown in the French name of the mistletoe, le Gui, and as denoting the priesthood. The common cry of the children at Christmas in France, au gui l'an neuf, marks the winter solstice, and their most solemn festival; so ai-guil-lac, as the name of new year's gifts, so necessary and expensive to a Frenchman, which they particularly bear in the diocese of Chartres, can only be explained by referring it to the same origin. In the French vocabulary at present this word, as I have before observed, is restricted to the mistletoe, the viscum album of Linnæus: but in Germany we have pretty much the same conversion of a favourite druidical plant, the trefoil, or shamrock, and the cinquefoil; both of them go in Bavaria and many other parts of Germany under the name of Truten-fuss, or Druid's foot, and are thought potent charms in guarding fields and cattle from harm; but there too, as with us, possibly the oldest title of guy, the term Druid, has grown into a name of the greatest disgrace: "Trute, Trute, Saudreck," "Druid, Druid, sow dirt," is an insulting phrase reserved for the highest ebullitions of a peasant's rage in Schwaben and Franken.

Whilst on the subject of the mistletoe, I cannot forbear to mark the coincidences that run through the popular notions of a country in all ages. Pliny, in his very exact account of the druidical rites, tells us, when the archdruid mounted the oak to cut the sacred parasite with a golden pruning-hook, two other priests stood below to catch it in a white linen cloth, extremely cautious lest it should fall to earth. One is almost tempted to fancy that Shakspeare was describing a similar scene when he makes Hecate say

In a very excellent note to Dr. Giles' translation of Richard of Cirencester, p. 432., he adduces the opinion of Dr. Daubeny, of Oxford, that as the mistletoe is now so rarely found in Europe on oaks, it had been exterminated with the other druidical rites on the introduction of Christianity. I am not sufficiently botanist to determine how far it is possible to destroy the natural habitat of a plant propagated by extrinsic means, and should be more inclined to account for the difference then and now by supposing that the Druids may have known the secret of inoculating a desirable oak with the seeds where birds had not done so, and practised it when necessary.

P.S. Since writing the above, I recollect that the Latin verse,

is frequently quoted from Ovid, sometimes, and that recently, specifying the Fasti. I need not tell you that it is not to be found there, and I wish to inquire if any of the numerous readers of your valuable publication can say where I can meet with it; if classical, it is another remarkable evidence of the endurance of popular customs to the present day. In the following quotation from Keyssler's Treatise de Visco, the Anklopferleinstag would be also a noisy demonstration dating from druidical times, at a period of the year not far removed from the beginning of November.

"In superiori Germaniæ parte, Marchionatu Onolsbacensi comprehensa, cujus inolæ plurimas Gentilismi reliquias retinent, regio ipsa multis Druidum vestigiis abundat, tempore adventus Christi, sive media Hyeme (am Anklopferleinstag), vulgus per vias et pagos currit malleisque pulsat fores et fenestras indesinenter clamans Gutheyl! Gutheyl! Quod quidem non salutem per Christi adventum partam indicat, quasi diceres: Gut Heyl; bona salus; multo minus fictitam Sanctam Günthildem, quam rustici illius tractus miris fabulis ac nugis celebrant, sed nomen ipsum visci est."

The present popular and only German name of the mistletoe, the parent of our English denomination, is Mistel, which is evidently only Meist-heyl (most heal, or healing), the superlative of the above Gut-heyl, and both wonderfully agreeing with the name which Pliny says it bore in his time, Omnia sanans.

William Bell, Ph.D.