Dulaure again quotes Ducange in regard to the tolls demanded of public women first crossing the bridge at Montluc. He finds description of this peculiar toll in registers dating back to 1398; he also sees the resemblance between this toll and the tenure of the Manor of Essington.—(See “Traité des Dif. Cultes,” vol. ii. p. 315, footnote.)
Surgeon Robert M. O’Reilly, U. S. Army, states that among the Irish settlers who came to the United States in the closing hours of the last century the expression was common, in speaking of Flatulence, to term it “Sir-Reverence.”
“Sir-Reverence. In old writers, a common corruption of ‘save reverence,’ or ‘saving your reverence,’—an apologetic phrase used when mentioning anything deemed improper or unseemly, and especially a euphemism for stercus humanum.” “‘Cagada,’ a surreverence.”—(Stevens’s “Sp. Dict.,” 1706.)
“Siege, stool, sir-reverence, excrement.”—(Bishop Wilkins’s “Essay towards a Philosophical Language,” 1688, p. 241.)
“Thoo grins like a dog eating sir-reverence.” (Holderness, “Glossary, English Dialect Society.”) Compare Spanish salvanor, anus. (Stevens.)—(“Folk-Etymology,” Rev. A. Smith Palmer, London, 1882.)
THE SACRED CHARACTER OF BRIDGE-BUILDING.
It is quite within the bounds of argument and proof to show that the Romans looked upon the building of a bridge as a sacred work. Upon no other hypothesis can we make clear why their chief priest was designated “the Greatest Bridge-Builder” (the Pontifex Maximus). That this idea was transmitted to the barbarians who occupied Continental and insular Europe would be a most plausible presumption, even were historical evidence lacking.
Concerning the tolls exacted from the prostitutes who crossed certain bridges in France, and the tenures by which certain estates were held in England, we have to bear in mind that during the Middle Ages bridges were erected by bodies or associations of bridge-builders, which seem to have been secret societies. “It seems not improbable that societies or lodges of bridge-builders existed at an early period, and that they were relics of the policy of Roman times; but the history of such societies is involved in obscurity. The Church appears to have taken them up and encouraged them in the twelfth century, and then they were endowed with a certain religious character.... The order of bridge-builders at Avignon, with the peculiar love of punning which characterized the Middle Ages, were called ‘fratres pontificales,’ and sometimes ‘fratres pontis’ and ‘factores pontium.’ ... According to Ducange (Gloss. v. fratres pontis), their dress was a white vest with a sign of a bridge and cross of cloth on the breast.” (“Essays on Archæological Subjects,” Thomas Wright, London, 1861, vol. ii. p. 137 et seq., article “Mediæval Bridge-Builders.”) In this connection it may be just as well to remember that the Pope of Rome is still the Pontifex Maximus.
Knowing that bridges were constructed by secret societies, we have fought out half our battle; for these secret societies were undoubtedly under the patronage and protection of some god in heathen times, or of some saint in later days, reserving for the honor of the latter the same ritual which had been consecrated to the devotion of the heathen predecessor.