1. What was the date of the sale?
2. The name of the Venerable Archdeacon who perpetrated this robbery?
3. Whether there are any legal means for recovering the missing works?
My extracts are from Thompson's History of Boston, a correspondent of yours, a new edition of whose laborious work is about to appear.
Thomas Collis.
Boston.
Painter—Derrick (Vol. vii., pp. 178. 391.).—I cannot agree with J. S. C. that painter is a corruption of punter, from the Saxon punt, a boat.
According to the construction and analogy of our language, a punter or boater would be the person who worked or managed the boat. I consider that painter—like halter and tether, derived from Gothic words signifying to hold and to tie—is a corruption of bynder, from the Saxon bynd, to bind. If the Anglo-Norman word panter, a snare for catching and holding birds, be a corruption of bynder, we are brought to the word at once. Or, indeed, we may go no farther back than panter.
J. C. G. says that derrick is an ancient British word: perhaps he will be kind enough to let us know its signification. I always understood that a derrick took its name from Derrick, the notorious executioner at Tyburn, in the early part of the seventeenth century, whose name was long a general term for hangman. In merchant ships, the derrick, for hoisting up goods, is always placed at the hatchway, close by the gallows. The derrick, however, is not a nautical appliance alone; it has been long used to raise stones at buildings; but the crane, and that excellent invention the handy-paddy, has now almost put it out of employment. What will philologists, two or three centuries hence, make out of the word handy-paddy, which is universally used by workmen to designate the powerful winch, traversing on temporary rails, employed to raise heavy weights at large buildings. For the benefit of posterity, I may say that it is very handy for the masons, and almost invariably worked by Irishmen.
As a collateral evidence to my opinion, that painter is derived from the Saxon bynder, through the Anglo-Norman panter, and that derrick is from Derrick the hangman, I may add that these words are unknown in the nautical technology of any other language.