The fortunes of a word are sometimes determined by accident. Glamour (see p. [145]) was popularised by Scott, who found it in old ballad literature. Grail, the holy dish at the Last Supper, would be much less familiar but for Tennyson. Mascot, from a Provençal word meaning sorcerer, dates from Audran's operetta La Mascotte (1880). Jingo first appears in conjurors' jargon of the 17th century. It has been conjectured to represent Basque jinko, God, picked up by sailors. If this is the case, it is probably the only pure Basque word in English. The Ingoldsby derivation from St Gengulphus—
"Sometimes styled 'The Living Jingo,' from the great tenaciousness of vitality exhibited by his severed members,"
is of course a joke. In 1878, when war with Russia seemed imminent, a music-hall singer, the Great Macdermott, delighted large audiences with—
"We don't want to fight, but, by Jingo, if we do,
We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too."
Hence the name jingo applied to that ultra-patriotic section of the population which, in war-time, attends to the shouting.[12] Fr. chauvin, a jingo, is the name of a real Napoleonic veteran introduced into Scribe's play Le Soldat Laboureur. Barracking is known to us only through the visits of English cricket teams to Australia. It is said to come from a native Australian word meaning derision. The American caucus was first applied (1878) by Lord Beaconsfield to the Birmingham Six Hundred. In 18th-century American it means meeting or discussion. It is probably connected with a North American Indian (Algonkin) word meaning counsellor, an etymology supported by that of pow-wow, a palaver or confab, which is the Algonkin for a medicine-man. With these words may be mentioned Tammany, now used of a famous political body, but, in the 18th century, of a society named after the "tutelar saint" of Pennsylvania. The original Tammany was an Indian chief with whom William Penn negotiated for grants of land about the end of the 17th century. Littoral first became familiar in connection with Italy's ill-starred Abyssinian adventure, and hinterland marked the appearance of Germany as a colonial power—
"'Let us glance a moment,' said Mr Queed, 'at Man, as we see him first emerging from the dark hinterlands of history.'"
(H. S. Harrison, Queed, Ch. 17.)
BLUNDERS
Sometimes the blunder of a great writer has enriched the language. Scott's bartisan—
"Its varying circle did combine
Bulwark, and bartisan, and line
And bastion, tower ..."