2''* S. No 71., May 9. *67.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



361 



LONDON, SATURDAY, MAY 9, 1857. 



Etymologies. 



" Toast.''^ — " It now," says Fielding, " came to 

 the turn of Mr. Jones to give a toast, as it is called, 

 who could not refrain from mentioning his dear 

 Sophia." During the greater part of the last cfen- 

 tury it was, in fact, the custom after dinner for 

 each person to give the name of some absent lady, 

 whose health was then drunk by the company, and 

 ladies whose names were thus treated were called 

 toasts. A passage is quoted in Johnson's Dic- 

 tionary (s. v.) from the Tatler, as giving the origin 

 of this expression. A lady, it says, being in the 

 Crossbath at Bath, a gentleman dipped a glass In 

 the water and drank her health, when " a gay 

 young fellow, half fuddled, offered to jump In, 

 swearing that though he liked not the liquor, he 

 would have the toast." As there are many per- 

 sons, perhaps, who may not clearly see the mean- 

 ing of this, it may be as well to explain it. 



Our ancestors had a great predilection for 

 setting warm substances afloat in their liquor, such 

 as flap-dragons, roasted crabs, and hot toasts of 

 bread. " A toast and tankard " was a common 

 expression : but the toast was not confined to ale ; 

 it claimed its place in wine also, as appears from 

 the following lines of the celebrated Earl of Ro- 

 chester, quoted by Richardson, s. v., — 



" Make it so large, that filled with sack 

 Up to the swelling brim, 

 Vast toasts on the delicious lake 

 Like ships at sea may swim." 



A lady's name being then coupled with wine very 

 naturally caused her to be called a toast, and there 

 seems to be no necessity for the origin assigned in 

 The Tatler. 



With the toast was, as Lord Cockburn informs 

 us, associated the sentiment, which was also ex- 

 acted from ladies ; and, as I often heard in my 

 early days, was a source of great dismay and per- 

 plexity to those of a timid bashful character. 

 When the toast went out of use the sentiment took 

 its name, and this I can remember myself. At 

 length toast came to signify any person or thing 

 that was to be commemorated after dinner, as 

 "The King," "The Land we live in," &c. In 

 this sense the word has been adopted on the Con- 

 tinent. 



/[Jilt" and " Flirt " — These words, so dis- 

 similar in meaning, seem to be merely the compo- 

 nent parts of one original word, Jill-fiirt. This I 

 take to have been Jill-Fleer-at or out. St. Ju- 

 liana seems to have been rather a favourite, and 

 hence Gillian, abbreviated to Jill, was so common 

 a name that we have Jack and Jill as representa- 

 tives of the sexes. When JiU separated from 



flirt the t seems to have been appended for uni- 

 formity sake. 



Sept. — This is a word peculiar to Irish history, 

 and a subject of perplexity to Irish antiquaries. 

 It is equivalent to tribe or clan ; but whence did 

 it come ? It is not Irish, nor has the English lan- 

 guage oflered any source from which it might be 

 derived. Johnson proposed the Latin septum, and 

 Richardson the French cep ; but without even a 

 shadow of probability, Webster gives, in his usual 

 hap-hazard way, the Hebrew shehet (t2lK^), tribe. 

 I myself had thought of this before I looked Into 

 Webster; for finding, as it appeared to me, the 

 earliest mention of sept in Campion, 1571, I 

 thought it might have been a word formed from 

 the Hebrew after the Reformation, when that 

 language began to be studied. Still I had great 

 doubts, finding that Campion used it as a well- 

 known term ; and these doubts were converted 

 into certainty, when I met in the State Papers (li. 

 410.) in "A Memorial, or a Note for the wynnyng 

 of Leynster" in the year 1537, the following pas- 

 sage, " wherein now M'Morgho and his kinsemen 

 called the Cavenanges, Obyrn and his septe and 

 the Tholesbien inhabited." 



This threw me back on another etymon which 

 had been running in my head, namely, that sept is 

 merely a corruption of sect ; for that c and p are 

 commutable I shall presently show. Froissart 

 constantly uses secte of the parties or factions of 

 Paris and of the cities of the Low Countries ; and 

 in the State Papers (ii. 328.), in a " Letter from 

 R. Cowley to Crumwell " in 1536, I read, " there 

 are another sect of the Berkes and divers (sects ?) 

 of the Irishry towardes Sligoo." This appears to 

 me to be conclusive evidence on the subject. 



Rock. — This is the French roc, roche, rocher ; 

 the Italian rocca, roccia ; and the etymologists of 

 the three languages agree in a derivation from ^d^. 

 In my humble opinion they are all wrong ; for pw^ 

 is cleft; and we might almost as well deduce hill 

 from hole or hollow. The real root is rapes ; just 

 as there is bVws and okws ; Avkos and lupus, and as 

 words which have a jo in Welsh have a c in Irish, 

 as paen, crann, tree ; pen, cean, head ; map (whence 

 up), or mab, mac, son, &c. Thos. Keightley. 



CHATTEBTON. 



Not having seen any attempt to dispute my 

 allegation (2"'' S. ill. 53.), that no authentic por- 

 trait of Chatterton is known, permit me to en- 

 deavour to contravene two more illusions in 

 respect to this ill-fated youth, which have gained 

 credence amongst his biographers. I allude to 

 the house in Brooke Street, Holborn, in which 

 he committed suicide, and to the belief that his 

 body was conveyed from the pit into which it was 



