When, in the Song of Hiawatha—
"Gitche Manito, the mighty,
Smoked the calumet, the Peace-pipe,
As a signal to the nations,"
he was using an implement with a French name. Calumet is an Old Norman word for chalumeau, reed, pipe, a diminutive from Lat. calamus. It was naturally applied by early French voyagers to the "long reed for a pipe-stem." Eng. shawm is the same word without the diminutive ending. Another Old French word, once common in English, but now found only in dialect, is felon, a whitlow. It is used more than once by Mr Hardy—
"I've been visiting to Bath because I had a felon on my thumb."
(Far from the Madding Crowd, Ch. 33.)
This is still an every-day word in Canada and the United States. It is a metaphorical use of felon, a fell villain. A whitlow was called in Latin furunculus, "a little theefe; a sore in the bodie called a fellon" (Cooper), whence Fr. furoncle, or froncle, "the hot and hard bumpe, or swelling, tearmed, a fellon" (Cotgrave). Another Latin name for it was tagax, "a felon on a man's finger" (Cooper), lit. thievish. One of its Spanish names is padrastro, lit. step-father. I am told that an "agnail" was formerly called a "step-mother" in Yorkshire. This is a good example of the semantic method in etymology (see pp. [99-104]).
PORTUGUESE WORDS
Some of the above instances show how near to home we can often track a word which at first sight appears to belong to another continent. This is still more strikingly exemplified in the case of Portuguese words, which have an almost uncanny way of pretending to be African or Indian. Some readers will, I think, be surprised to hear that assegai occurs in Chaucer, though in a form not easily recognisable. It is a Berber word which passed through Spanish and Portuguese into French and English. We find Fr. archegaie in the 14th century, azagaie in Rabelais, and the modern form zagaie in Cotgrave, who describes it as "a fashion of slender, long, and long-headed pike, used by the Moorish horsemen." In Mid. English l'archegaie was corrupted by folk-etymology (see p. [115]) into lancegay, launcegay, the form used by Chaucer—
"He worth upon his stede gray,
And in his hond a launcegay,
A long swerd by his syde."
(Sir Thopas, l. 40.)