[857] Westropp, T. J., Proc. of Royal Irish Academy.
[858] Cf. Folklore, xxix., No. 2, p. 159.
[859] Quoted from Besant’s Westminster.
[860] Besant supposes that Tothill Street took its name from watermen touting there for fares.
[861] Ps. lii. 7.
[862] In Persia the Shamrakh was held sacred as being emblematical of the Persian triads.
[863] Odyssey, xiv., 12.
[864] Skeat comments upon the word hag as “perhaps connected with Anglo-Saxon haga, a hedge enclosure, but this is uncertain”: this authority’s definition of a ha-ha is as follows: “Ha-ha, Haw-haw, a sunk fence (F.). From F. haha an interjection of laughter, hence a surprise in the form of an unexpected obstacle (that laughs at one). The French word also means an old woman of surprising ugliness, a ‘caution’.”
The Celts were conspicuously chivalrous towards women, and I question whether they burst into haw-haws whensoever they met an ill-favoured old dame. As to the ha-has, or “unexpected obstacles,” Cæsar has recorded that “the bank also was defended by sharp stakes fixed in front, and stakes of the same kind fixed under the water were covered by the river”: if, then, the amiable victim who unexpectedly stumbled upon this obstacle chuckled ha-ha! or haw-haw! as he nursed his wounded limbs, the ancient Britons must have possessed a far finer sense of humour than has usually been assigned to them.
[865] Stockdale, F. W. L., Excursions Through Cornwall, 1824, p. 116.