“Cryant: Qui vive aux Godons d’Angleterre.
······
Seigneurs du sang, barons et chevaliers,
Tous seculiers d’illustre parentage,
Permettez vous à ses Godons, galliers,
Gros godaillers, houspalliers, poullalliers,
Prendre palliers au françoys heritaige?”
The aspersion however did not always rest with Frenchmen. Lord Hailes, in a criticism written about the year 1770, incidentally gives it as his experience that in Holland the children when they espy any English people say, “There come the Goddams,” and that the Portuguese, as soon as they acquire a smattering of the tongue, exclaim, “How do you do, Jack? damn you!”[13]
We have attentively considered the tone of contemporary English writings to ascertain whether by a hazard the nickname was appropriately bestowed. In the result we have not been able to discover anything to lead to the supposition that this particular form of speech was, upon these shores at least, very generally indulged in. Either the tall soldiers who accompanied Henry of Monmouth to the wars were so stimulated by the unaccustomed juice of the grape as to then and there originate this vigorous epithet, unspoken at home, or else there was little or no justification for the taunting expression. We are inclined to think that the former surmise is approximately correct. The habit was not an Englishman’s but a soldier’s vice, and when the foreign troubles were at an end it may very well have been drafted back to this country with the rest of the fighting contingent.
Although in its usage it is now considered essentially British, there is no reason to impute to it any other than an etymology decidedly French. Its similarity with the numerous derivatives of the verb damno have probably obscured the true derivation of the word. For its real parentage we must have recourse to the Latin dominus or domina which produced the Gallic dame. This again was used equally to denote a potentate of either sex, until at last we find the interjection dame! applied in the same sense as Seigneur! or our own Lord! When, therefore, we go still further, and meet with dame Dieu! occurring frequently in ancient texts we are helped at once to the source of our adopted expletive. By one of those combinations so often to be found where there is a confusion or admixture of tongues, the English soldiery rendered their dame! or dame Dieu! in the way we have seen, and a hybrid term was thus produced which has not even yet been found waning in popularity. The derivation we have here suggested is sufficient of itself to account for the amusement that was displayed by laughter-loving Frenchmen, who twitted the invader in that he was unable to pronounce the irrepressible Dieu, and was forced to anglicise it to fit it to the remainder of the oath. It will be perceived that, taking this view of the case, the British shibboleth is rather more of a shibboleth than has previously been supposed.
It is true that in a scarce work we find it is recorded that the expression originated with Richard III., but this is easily confuted by the examples we have given. The ‘Comedy of Errors’ contains one isolated allusion to it:—“God damn me! that’s as much as to say, God make me a light wench.” Here the term is dearly interpolated as a kind of newly-coined catchword. We suspect that the true era of the oath being absorbed into common speech is indicated by a passage in the epigrams of Sir John Harrington. This work, which appeared in 1613, is much concerned at the abusive element that had at that time entered into English conversation. No longer, says Sir John, do men swear devoutly by the cross and mass, or by such innocent oaths as the pyx or the mousefoot. Now they invite damnation as their pledge of sincerity. “Goddamn-me,” he repines, had then become the customary oath. This appears to us to be the first intimation of the fact that we find in English literature.[14]
Neither was amusement neglected to be created out of this new word-sally. In one of the comedies which throw so much light upon the manners of the time, a piece called ‘Amends for Ladies,’ from the pen of Nat Field, we are introduced among a so-called society of roarers. The experiment had been already tried by Thomas Middleton, who, in his ‘Faire Quarrel,’ had initiated his audience into the exercises of a pretended roaring-school. The notion was simply that the young idlers about town met together to acquire perfection in the arts of bombast and exaggeration. In the former production, a Lord Feesimple is supposed to be enjoying the coveted distinction of being drilled into becoming a roarer. As was usual in these performances, the characters pass from one insolence to another, until at last swords are drawn and general uproar prevails. But what upon the present occasion has given rise to the misunderstanding, is the unlucky assumption by Feesimple of one of the roysterers’ private and particular oaths. In an ill-omened moment he has presumed to exclaim, “Damn me!” whereupon a certain Tearchaps who has been noticeable through the play as the improprietor of the term, very loudly objects—“Use your own words, damn me is mine; I am known by it all the town o’er. D’ye hear?”
Feesimple, although disposed to contest the other’s title, is happily brought to order by the timely interference of one Welltried, whose knowledge of such matters enables him to bear out the truth of the assertion. This play, produced in 1618 and acted upon the stage of the Blackfriars, tallies in substance with Harrington’s verses produced in the earlier year.
Allied to this expression is a phrase which may even be said to have a kind of literary merit. “Don’t care a damn” is indicative of about the utmost possible amount of unconcern. It would be in vain to seek for any object more intrinsically inconsiderable with which to liken a condition of indifference. Anstey seizes upon it in his ‘Bath Guide’:—
“Absurd as I am,
I don’t care a damn
Either for you or your valet-de-sham.”
But curiously enough this figure of speech was originally as independent of the “shibboleth” as we have seen that was of the classic “damno.” There is in India a piece of money of the minutest value, which is known as a dam. The phrase, therefore, so far from originating in a fanciful comparison, really does nothing more than announce a prosaic fact. It has been said that the expression was occasionally used by the “great Duke,” a circumstance for which the Indian experiences of the victor of Assaye has been held sufficient to account. Mr. Trevelyan, indeed, in his ‘Life of Lord Macaulay’ (ii. 257) states positively that the Duke of Wellington invented this oath.