246. Why is buckwheat so called?
The word “buckwheat” is a corruption of beechwheat. It is so called from the similarity of the shape of its grains to the mast or nuts of the beech-tree.
247. Who originated tarring and feathering?
Richard Cœur de Lion seems to have originated tarring and feathering. Hoveden, quoted by Dr. Hook in his “Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury,” says that Richard, when he sailed for the Holy Land, made sundry laws for the regulation of his fleet, one of which enacted that “a robber who shall be convicted of theft shall have his head cropped after the manner of a champion, and boiling pitch shall be poured thereon, and then the feathers of a cushion shall be shaken out upon him, so that he may be known, and at the first land at which the ship shall touch he shall be set on shore.”
248. What is the meaning of the phrase “By Jingo”?
Jingo is a corruption of Jainko, the name of the Basque Supreme Being. “By Jingo!” or “By the living Jingo!” is an appeal to deity. Edward I. had Basque mountaineers conveyed to England to take part in his Welsh wars, and the Plantagenets held the Basque provinces in possession. This Basque oath is a landmark of these facts.
249. Who is “Old Nick”?
This vulgar and ancient name for the devil is derived from that of the Neck, or Nikke, a river or ocean god of the Scandinavian popular mythology. “The British sailor,” says Scott, “who fears nothing else, confesses his terrors for this terrible being, and believes him the author of almost all the various calamities to which the precarious life of a seaman is so continually exposed.” Butler, the author of “Hudibras,” erroneously derives the term from the name of Nicolo Macchiavelli.
250. Who was “Rare Ben”?
This famous appellation was conferred upon Ben Jonson (1574–1637), the dramatic poet. It is said that soon after his death, a subscription was commenced for the purpose of erecting a monument to his memory; but the undertaking having advanced slowly, an eccentric Oxfordshire squire took the opportunity, on passing one day through Westminster Abbey, to secure at least an epitaph for the poet by giving a mason eighteen pence to cut, on the stone which covered the grave, the words, “O, rare Ben Johnson.”