ACT II.
Scene 2. Page 92.
Kent. I'll make a sop o' the moonshine of you.
It is certain that an equivoque is here intended by an allusion to the old dish of eggs in moonshine, which was eggs broken and boiled in salad oil till the yolks became hard. They were eaten with slices of onions fried in oil, butter, verjuice, nutmeg and salt.
Scene 3. Page 109.
Edg. Pins, wooden pricks, &c.
Rightly explained skewers. Greene, in his admirable satire, A quip for an upstart courtier, speaking of the tricks played by the butchers in his time, makes one of his characters exclaim, "I pray you, goodman Kilcalfe, have you not your artificial knaveries to set out your meate with pricks?" The brewers and bakers come in also for their share of abuse.
Scene 3. Page 110.
Edgar. Poor Turlygood!
Warburton would read Turlupin, and Hanmer Turluru; but there is a better reason for rejecting both these terms than for preferring either; viz. that Turlygood is the corrupted word in our language. The Turlupins were a fanatical sect that overran France, Italy, and Germany, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They were at first known by the names of Beghards or Beghins, and brethren and sisters of the free spirit. Their manners and appearance exhibited the strongest indications of lunacy and distraction. The common people alone called them Turlupins; a name which, though it has excited much doubt and controversy, seems obviously to be connected with the wolvish howlings which these people in all probability would make when influenced by their religious ravings. Their subsequent appellation of the fraternity of poor men might have been the cause why the wandering rogues called Bedlam beggars, and one of whom Edgar personates, assumed or obtained the title of Turlupins or Turlygoods, especially if their mode of asking alms was accompanied by the gesticulations of madmen. Turlupino and Turluru are old Italian terms for a fool or madman; and the Flemings had a proverb, As unfortunate as Turlupin and his children.
Scene 4. Page 113.
Lear. To do upon respect such violent outrage.
Explained by Dr. Johnson, "to violate the character of a messenger from the king." It is rather "to do outrage to that respect which is due to the king." This, in part, agrees with the ensuing note.
Scene 4. Page 114.
Kent. They summon'd up their meiny.
Meiny, signifying a family, household, or retinue of servants, is certainly from the French meinie, or, as it was anciently and more properly written, mesnie; which word has been regarded, with great probability, by a celebrated French glossarist and antiquary, as equivalent with mesonie or maisonie, from maison: in modern French ménage. See glossary to Villehardouin, edit. 1657, folio.
Mr. Holt White has cited Dryden's line,
"The many rend the skies with loud applause,"
as supplying the use of many in Kent's sense of train or retinue. With great deference, the word is quite unconnected with meiny, and simply denotes any multitude or collection of people. It is not only used at present in its common adjective form for several, divers, multi, but even substantively: for in the Northern parts of England they still say a many, and a many people, i. e. of people. In this sense it is never found in the French language; but we have received it directly, as an adjective, from the Saxon manɩ manɩᵹ, and as a substantive from menɩu, mænɩᵹeo, menɩᵹo, &c. &c.; for in that language the word is found written not less than twenty different ways. It is the same as the Latin manus. Horace uses manus poetarum; and Quintilian oratorum ingens manus. It does not appear that the Saxons used many for a family or household.
Scene 4. Page 121.
Fool. Cry to it nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels.
The difficulties that have attended all inquiries concerning this term, have been not a little augmented by an expectation of finding an uniformity which it does not possess, and by not reflecting that it is in reality susceptible of very different explanations.
There is hardly a doubt that it originates in an Utopian region of indolence and luxury, formerly denominated the country of cocaigne,[21] which, as some have thought, was intimately connected with the art of cookery; whilst others, with equal plausibility, relate that the little pellets of woad, a commodity in which Languedoc was remarkably fertile, being called by the above name, the province itself acquired the appellation of the kingdom of cocaigne or of plenty, where the inhabitants lived in the utmost happiness, and exempt from every sort of care and anxiety. Hence the name came to be applied to any rich country. Boileau calls Paris un pays de cocagne. The French have likewise some theatrical pieces under this title. The Italians have many allusions to it; and there is said to be a small district between Rome and Loretto so called from its cheapness and fertility. With us the lines cited by Camden in his Britannia, vol. i. col. 451,
"Were I in my castle of Bungey
Upon the river of Waveney
I would ne care for the king of Cockeney,"
whencesoever they come, indicate that London was formerly known by this satirical name; and hence a Londoner came to be called a cockney. The French have an equivalent word, coqueliner, to pamper, cherish, or dandle, whence our cocker.
From the above circumstances it is probable that a cockney became at length a term of contempt; one of the earliest proofs of which is Chaucer's use of it in the Reve's tale, v. 4206: "I shall be halden a daffe or a cokenay." In the Promptuarium parvulorum, 1516, 4to, it is explained to be a term of derision. In Shakspeare's time it signified a child tenderly brought up, a dearling, a wanton. See Barret's Alvearie; and a little before it had been used in a bad sense, from an obvious corruption. See Hulæt's Abcedarium, 1552, folio. In this place too Mr. Steevens's quotations from Meres and Deckar might be introduced.
The next sense in which cockney was used seems to be conveyed in the line cited by Mr. Tyrwhitt from Pierce Plowman's Visions:
"And yet I say by my soule I have no salt bacon,
Ne no cokeney by Christe coloppes to make:"
as well as in those from the tournament of Tottenham;
"At that feast were they served in rich array,
Every five and five had a cokeney:"
where in both instances, with deference to the respectable authorities of Dr. Percy and Mr. Tyrwhitt, it signifies a little cock. In the latter quotation it might mean a peacock, a favourite dish among our ancestors; and this conjecture is countenanced by the words served in rich array. This mode of forming a diminutive with respect to animals is not unfrequent. Thus in the Canterbury tales, l. 3267: "She was a primerole, a piggesnie." And here again some apology may be necessary for differing from Mr. Tyrwhitt, who supposes that Chaucer "meant no more than ocellus, the eyes of that animal being remarkably small, and the Romans using oculus as a term of endearment." But the objection to this ingenious explanation is, that nie cannot well be put for eye; that in this case the word would have been pigseye, and that it is rather formed from the A. S. pɩᵹa, a girl. See Lye's Saxon dict. Similar words were afterwards constructed, but without due regard to the above etymology. For example, "Prythee sweet birdsnye, be content."—Davenport's City night cap, Act III. Scene 1. "Jella, why frownst thou? say sweet biddiesnie?"—Davies's Scourge of folly. "Ay birdsneys, she's a quean."—Shadwell's Virtuoso, Act III. And in Congreve's Old bachelor, Fondlewife calls his mate cockey.
It is observable that in all the above instances these appellations are only used to females. It is not improbable therefore, that, in an abstract sense, cockney might sometimes be used in speaking to male children as a term of endearment; and it may be necessary to make this remark here, for the purpose of anticipating any suggestion that it is connected with the present subject.
It remains only to notice the cockneys or sugar pellet which Mr. Steevens's old lady remembered to have eaten in her childhood. The French formerly used a kind of perfumed pastry made of the powdered Iris flower, sugar, musk, and rose-water; these were called pastilles; and from the similitude of the word to pastel, or the Languedoc woad mentioned at the beginning of this note as the produce of the pays de cocagne, it is not improbable that some latent affinity may exist. The animal involved in the English term might indeed be thought sufficient to indicate the form. Had the old lady, happily for us, described the shape of these comfits, and which motives of delicacy might have prevented, we could possibly have traced them from our Gallic neighbours in another descent of a very singular nature. The following extract from Legrand's Vie privée des Francois, tom. ii. p. 268, will explain this: "Croira-t-on qu'il a existé en France un tems ou l'on a donné aux menues pâtisseries de table les formes les plus obscenes, et les noms les plus infâmes? Croira-t-on que cet incroyable excés de depravation a duré plus de deux siécles? Aussi sont ce moins les noms de ces pâtisseries qu'il faut blâmer que les formes qu'on leur donnait. Champier, apres avoir décrit les differentes pâtisseries usitées de son temps, dit, Quædam pudenda muliebria, aliæ virilia (si diis placet) representant. Sunt quos c... saccharatos appellitent. Adeò degeneravere boni mores, ut etiam Christianis obscœna et pudenda in cibis placeant."
Minsheu's tale of the cock neighing, and Casaubon's derivation of cockney from οικογενης, i. e. domi natus, may serve to increase those smiles of compassion which it is to be feared some of the present remarks may have already excited.
It is worth remarking, although not immediately connected with the present subject, that in the Celtic languages coeg, and kok, signified anything foolish or good for nothing. They seem connected with the radical word for a cuckow, a silly bird, which has thus transmitted its appellation to persons of a similar nature. See the words cog in the Welsh dictionaries, and cok in Pryce's Cornish vocabulary. In the North they call the cuckow a gowk, whence genkit, foolish, and gawky. Our term cokes, for a fool, is of the same family, and, perhaps, cuckold.
Scene 4. Page 132.
Lear. Thou art a boil.
The note on this word states that it was written byle in the old copies, which all the modern editors have too strictly followed; that the mistake arose from the word boil being often pronounced as if written bile; and that in the folio we find in Coriolanus the same false spelling as here.—But this charge against the editors seems to have originated in a misconception. The ancient and true orthography is byle and bile, and such was the common pronunciation. The modern boyl and boil are corruptions. Thus in the Promptuarium parvulorum, 1516, we have "Byle sore,—Pustula." In Mathews's bible, 1551, "Satan smote Job with marvelous soore byles." In Whetstone's Mirour for magestrates of cyties, 1584, 4to, "Dicyng houses are of the substance of other buildinges, but within are the botches and byles of abhomination." Bile is pure Saxon, and is so given in most of the old dictionaries.
Scene 4. Page 135.
Lear. ... but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws.
On the word flaws we have the following note: "A flaw, signifying a crack or other similar imperfection; our author, with his accustomed license, uses the word here for a small broken particle. So again in the fifth Act,
'... but his flaw'd heart
Burst smilingly.'"
Now there is some reason for supposing that flaw might signify a fragment in Shakspeare's time, as well as a mere crack; because among the Saxons it certainly had that meaning, as may be seen in Somner's Diction. Saxon. voce ꝼloh. It is to be observed that the quartos read flowes, approaching nearer to the original. In the above quotation flaw'd seems to be used in the modern sense.