A Cursory History of Swearing

by Julian Sharman

“Clot. I’ll have I vow, then.

“Nick. Nay, but you shall not, that’s mine.

“Clot. Can’t you lend it me now and then, brother?”

It would almost seem, from the evidence of the several passages we have had occasion to refer to, as if the various diversities of character and occupation had engendered a spirit of competition in the assumption of oaths. Whether scholar or soldier, knight or citizen, each man, according to his degree, is burning to distinguish himself by some distinctive and eccentric form of swearing. The asseverations employed by the Shallows and Slanders are as limpid and as timorous as those of Falstaff and Bardolph are downright and headstrong. Hotspur, as we have seen, reproaches Lady Percy for swearing like a comfit-maker’s wife. With the rest of the Percies he had lived in Aldersgate Street, and had probably contracted an aversion to everything savouring of the vulgar life of a great city. How defiant and versatile were the expletives of the old French nobility, we may learn from the pages of Brantôme. When seeking to convey a flattering portrait of his father, François de Bourdeilles, he does not omit to impress us with the importance of his oaths. Playing backgammon with Pope Jules II., his form of adjuration was Chardieu bénit! when he lost, and Chardon bénit! when he won.

In Elizabethan England a ridiculous notion prevailed among town society, associating the idea of good breeding with the use, by way of oath, of the word “protest.” Such an affirmation was understood to raise the presumption of quality in the person who used it. Says Carlo Buffone, “Ever, when you can, have two or three peculiar oaths to swear by, that no man else swears, and above all protest.” Neither is Shakespeare silent upon this fashionable eccentricity. The Nurse in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is instantly won over to the side of the Veronese lover the moment he utters “I protest,” and no longer harbours a doubt of his principles. We see her desirous of communicating to her mistress this single expression of gentlemanhood without concerning herself about the more weighty portion of Romeo’s message. This is, perhaps, almost beneath the dignity of the love-story, but we have to regard it as a relic. We must understand the allusion as a piece of chaff administered to the gallants and templars who sported their fine clothes and broached their oaths and their jests seated upon the very stage where the performers were playing. A passage in a contemporary, entitled ‘Sir Giles Goosecap,’ affords a key to the especial estimation in which the term then happened to be held:—“There is not the best duke’s son in France dares say I protest till he be one-and-thirty years old at least, for the inheritance of that word is not to be possessed before.”

Not only do we view these allusions as relics, but we may as justly consider them in the light of literary fossils. The aim and intention of the author have become petrified. It is, in fact, only by the help of study and appreciation that the true shape and proportion of the idea can be adequately revealed. But search beneath the crust of this intellectual spoil-bank, and there will be seen those slight, if somewhat corroded indications which disclose the humour and the temper of a forgotten age. These inconsequent oaths and no less incomprehensible bywords, fit only now-a-days to undetermine critics and to baffle commentary, are really the reflection of a tinsel finery that was no doubt borne aloft and bravely carried in its day. The explanation for this is simple. The player, to be well in with his patrons, had to turn the laugh from side to side, to give a thrust here and a buffet there, just as the mood or the opportunity dictated. It is this easy familiarity with audiences which has filled our play-books with such store of meaningless or half-meaningless expressions. Not that their supposed want of meaning is more than co-extensive with their apparent want of purpose. Once re-animated with a design, and that of ever so trivial a character, and their significance stands out in relief. When, as frequently happens in our reading, we encounter oaths of the pattern which Shakespeare ascribes to the youth of Verona, we may feel sure we have fallen upon some passing home-thrust, some spectral blow, delivered, as it were, among now ghostly antagonists.

Thus we find that in the town life of the more favoured days of Charles I. it was a common affectation to use the words “refuse me,” much as the Elizabethan dandies made mention of the word “protest.” We see this indicated by several examples of contemporary raillery, and particularly in the play of ‘Match at Midnight,’ in which the lordlings of the time are described as “those wicked elder brothers, that swear, refuse them! and drink nothing but wicked sack.”

So at other periods we find other combinations doing yeoman service in this particular; as, for instance, in Killigrew’s play ‘The Parson’s Wedding,’ where Careless is explaining his plan for attacking the affections of the fair sex—“I am resolved to put on their own silence, answer forsooth, swear nothing but God’s nigs.” Except upon the score of banter at prevailing idiotcies, it would be difficult to account for the luxuriant way in which oaths of this description have been provided.

We may not inaptly before closing this chapter travel into another hemisphere and advert to that side of the subject in which the powers of darkness are accustomed to be apostrophised in place of the powers of light. Most of the swearing which we have had to pass in review may be said to have been accumulated at a vast expense to our notions and perceptions regarding the Source of all light. How is it, then, that the full detriment of this system was never taken into account before, and that the obverse of the present practice was not more generally adopted. One might have supposed that the malignant beings who find so facile an entrance into popular imagination would have been the first objects with which to associate so much that is acrimonious. If this could have been seen to, and thoroughly brought about, it is possible that we should never have heard of “swearing” at all, or that it might very well have occupied the same relative position upon the pedestal of virtues as it now does upon the more degraded tallies of vice. However this may be, and of course speculation upon the subject can be nothing more than fanciful, it is the beneficent creations of the universe, and not the malignant ones, that have absorbed the greater part of the energy directed to the practice of swearing.

In English archaic writings the instances in which the mention of the Satanic power is thus utilised are not numerous. We cannot compete with the diables and diavolos of another race. Wherever references of this kind do occur, they as often assume the shape of some amusing transposition. The sharp edge is at once taken off the anathema. Thus the soubriquet “old Harry” or “the Lord Harry” generally understood to refer to Satan, is frequently used as an adjunct of strong feeling.[50] But as an imprecation it is of quite inferior magnitude, and seems almost to imply the existence of a strain of good-fellowship with the Evil One which it might be exceedingly impolitic to disturb.