2"* S. No 96., Oct. 31. '57.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



355 



and therefore were not the worse for some little 

 clerical anointing. G. N. 



(2'"iS. iv. 87. 176.) 



On Me. Keightley's statements, that the word 

 bottle "seems peculiar to the French language, 

 whence we got it," and that, "in a '■bottle of hay 

 or straw,' it is apparently a mere corruption of 

 bundle" I would ofFei? the following remarks and 

 suggestions. 



The root of the word is common to all the 

 northern tongues ; in every one of which (the 

 Celtic included) there is a word corresponding to 

 the Eng. butt, meaning a tub, cask, or other vessel 

 of the kind. In the Low-German dialects the 

 word occurs as an adjective, butt or bat, meaning 

 dull, stupid, also dumpy, or short and thick ; as, 

 for instance, of a little fat hand. Light Is thrown 

 on the primary sense of the root by the Icelandic 

 buti\ a trunk or stump, and buta, to truncate or 

 dock, as cited by Grimm. Intimately allied is the 

 old German word bottech, body, trunk, corre- 

 sponding to which is the Ang.-Sax. botech, Eng. 

 body. We may infer from all this, and a great 

 many more indications to the same effect, that the 

 Eng. butt, Ger. hutte, Dan. b'otte, Ital. botta, Low 

 Lat. butta, Gr. jSuxTty, &c., meant originally some- 

 thing cut short, truncated, a stump or end of a log, 

 and hence, a vessel made of such a piece. For, as 

 boats began with the stem of a tree hollowed out 

 laterally, so, doubtless, began tubs, casks, vats, 

 &c., with a short cut of a stem hollowed out 

 vertically. 



Now the French word bout, whether borrowed 

 from the northern tongues, or a part of the main 

 Latin vocabulary, or a remnant of the ancient 

 Gallic, has evidently the same radical meaning of 

 a short piece or cut of anything : as in the phrases, 

 "un bout de chandelle," " un bout de saucisse;" 

 and in " un bout d'homme," and we have an exact 

 parallel of the Dutch, "een but vam jungen," the 

 English for which, " a bit of a youth," preserves 

 even the etymology, as we shall afterwards see. 

 Another form of the word in German is butze, 

 from which is formed the diminutive biitzel, both 

 applied to persons, animals, or plants of a dwarf- 

 ish shape and size. 



This brings us to the French bouteille, the di- 

 minutive of bout, which, retaining the radical 

 notion of short, thick, and rotund, has been re- 

 stricted, eventually at least, to vessels with nar- 

 row necks. It is most likely that the Eng. bottle, 

 meaning a vessel of that kind, came to us through 

 the French ; but however that may be, I have 

 little doubt that in the phrase " a bottle of hay," 

 the word is a genuine Saxon diminutive from the 

 root above discussed. In any case the words are 



radically the''same, both etymologically and In the 

 fundamental meaning. There is no occasion to 

 suppose " a bottle of hay," to be a blunder for " a 

 bundle of hay" (think of the French '■'■botte de 

 foln"). There are even local usages of the word 

 showing a lurking sense of tlie primary meaning 

 of the root. In the north of Aberdeenshire, the 

 ordinary-sized bundle of oat straw, made up for 

 distribution among the cattle as fodder, is called 

 a windlen or windling (from to wind or bind) ; but 

 when for any reason, such as the shortness or 

 grassy nature of the remnants of the threshing, a 

 few smaller and more dumpy-shaped bundles are 

 made, these are termed bottles. Over what ex- 

 tent of country this distinction prevails, I am not 

 aware ; I speak from what I was accustomed to 

 hear from a boy in my native parish. 



It will not now be difficult, I think, to find an 

 answer to Mr. Keightley's Query as to the sense 

 in which Richard III. Is called 



" That bottled spider, that foul hunch-backed toad." 



The name " spider " expresses the malice of his 

 nature ; the epithet " bottled " (gathered or 

 crooked up into the shape of a bottle), recalls his 

 dwarfish misshapen figure. This Interpretation Is 

 borne out by the following clause of the line, which 

 is what In Hebrew poetry is call ed a parallelism, 

 the meaning being the same In both clauses, and 

 noun answering to noun, and adjective to adjec- 

 tive : thus, bottled =zhunc7i-backed. Would It not 

 be intelligible enough to call a squat, misshapen 

 youth " a bottle of a boy." The only difficulty I 

 feel regarding the " bottled spider," Is as to the form 

 of the word ; adjectives In ed formed from nouns 

 meaning generally, "provided with," and not 

 " shaped like." If we could assume that in Shak- 

 speare's time bottle, like the Ger. biitzel or piitzel, 

 above mentioned, was applied not only to a dumpy, 

 dwarfish creature, but to a tumour or hump, it 

 would be all plain ; and bottled would be analo- 

 gous in foi'm to humped. 



And now what actual verbal roots are there 

 with which to associate these noun and adjective 

 derivatives ? I have little hesitation In pointing 

 to beat, as one. The notions of beating and cutting 

 invariably run Into one another (compare Lat. 

 ccedere, and the Eng. " to give a cut with a cane,") ; 

 they Involve as effects, — separation of parts, break- 

 ing off projections or limbs, truncating, shorten- 

 ing, rounding, blunting. The corresponding word. 

 In German, though old and rather rare. Is boszen^ 

 or poszen, to beat, strike push (French pousser), 

 to hew, to cut or hollow out ; also, to raise bosses 

 or convexities, or figures In relief. The counter- 

 part of these being concavities, the same word 

 boss. In old English writers. Is applied to a reser- 

 voir of water, thus bringing ifs back to butt. 



Bite would seem to be only a modification 

 of beat, having the special sense of dividing or 

 cutting by a stroke of the teeth. By bearing in 



