[20]. No such verb as linch or linge is found in Bosworth’s Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language, or in Stratmann’s Middle-English Dictionary. Murray’s Oxford Dictionary (1903) gives the verb linch as a variant of linge, a word “of obscure origin.”
[21]. See “lynch,” Skeat’s Etymological Dictionary.
[22]. Although Bristed ingeniously traces lynch-law back to the verb linch, he remarks, in passing, that “if there ever was a phrase deemed particularly Trans-atlantic in origin, it is that of Lynch Law for summary and informal justice.”
[24]. “Reminiscences and Memoirs of North Carolina” (1884), p. 172.
[25]. “History of North Carolina” (1851), p. 274.
[26]. See article by Albert Matthews in the Nation, Dec. 4, 1902 (75: 439).
[27]. Alexander Gregg: “History of the Old Cheraws” (1867), p. 120. F. X. Martin: “History of North Carolina” (1829), II, 228, 233. Hugh Williamson: “History of North Carolina” (1812), II, 128, 131.
[28]. J. B. O’Neall: “Annals of Newberry” (1859), p. 76. It is not stated by O’Neall at what time these gentlemen instituted this practice in South Carolina. From the evidence that Gregg gives, it apparently took place in the summer of 1767. See the following chapter, p. [53].
[29]. See article by Edward McCrady, in the Nation, Jan. 15, 1903 (76: 52). This article as originally written was published in full in the Sunday News, Charleston, S. C., Jan. 11, 1903. In a letter published in the Nation, March 19, 1903 (76: 225), Mr. George S. Wills cites an example of the use of the word lynch in connection with this creek, which is found in a journal kept by the Rev. William H. Wills, a Methodist minister of North Carolina, who traveled in his sulky from Tarboro, North Carolina, to Alabama, in the early summer of 1837. After describing a narrow escape from drowning in an attempt to cross Lynch’s Creek while it was swollen, the Rev. Mr. Wills writes in his journal: “Probably I shall never forget Lynches Creek; for it had well nigh Lynchd me.”—See “Publications of the Southern Historical Association,” November, 1902 (6:479). This example, however, shows no original connection between the term lynch-law and Lynch’s Creek, South Carolina. As will appear in the following pages, by the year 1837 the word lynch had come to be widely used to indicate summary punishment. Evidently the writer in this case merely noticed the similarity between the name of the creek and the word which had recently come into use, and so made this play upon words, using the word lynch in a somewhat figurative sense.