216 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



Now, it is extremely curious to find that at a more distant 

 date the word "knight "in kindred languages chiefly means 

 " a groom," one who attends to horses, as in German knecht, 

 a man-servant ; reiter, a rider, horseman ; knecht, a groom : 

 Dutch, knecht, a servant : Danish, knegt, a man-servant, the 

 knave (at cards) : Swedish, knekt, a soldier, knave (at cards) : 

 German, stall- knecht, an ostler ; fuhr-knecht, an under-carter 

 (from fnhren, to carry) . 



The original form of the word "esquire" dates back to 

 the far-off time when chariots were drawn by a pair of horses, 

 and at times carried three men in battle — one person was the 

 driver, the second the warrior, while the third bore the shield 

 (Latin, scut-urn), and was named therefrom (scut-arius) . 

 This in French becomes ecu, a shield, and Scuyer, a shield- 

 bearer ; but ecuyer is now used to denote " esquire," 

 " squire," " equerry " (not from Latin equ-us, a horse), also 

 "riding-master" and "rider," and the English word 

 " esquire " is derived therefrom. The French say, II est bon 

 ecuyer — he is a good horseman ; ecuyere is a female equestrian 

 performer ; and ecuyer cle cuisine is the chef or head cook in 

 large establishments. A further explanation is found in titre 

 donne en Angleterre au proprietaire Le plus influent, mais non 

 noble, d'un village, which I translate — a title given in Britain 

 to a freeholder, the most influential, but not a nobleman, in 

 any village. 



In German " shield-bearer " and " esquire " are given under 

 the same words as schild- fnhren, schild-knappe, schild- knecht, 

 schild-triigcr ; but on letters wohl-geborcn (of good birth, gentle- 

 man) is written as a title of courtesy in place of our British 

 method of affixing " Esq. " to the addressee's surname. In 

 German schild-burtig means of gentle blood. 



Now, the aforementioned shield was formerly (that is, 

 previous to the discovery of the process of mining and forging 

 metals of bronze, iron, &c.) a tough portion of hide or skin 

 secured to a light framework of vegetable material, such as 

 willow or hazel twigs. This is readily seen in the etymology 

 of the word cuir-ass, a breast-plate, from old French cuir-ace, 

 a cuirass : French, cuir, leather : Italian, corazzo, a cuirass ; 

 corio, the skin ; corame : Latin, corium, leather : Lithuanian, 

 skura : Greek, chorion, a hide : from which also are the Eng- 

 lish words ex-cori-ate and scourge, and the Italian s-curi-ata 

 and s-curi-ada, a scourge, a whip, which, after the manner 

 of our stockwhip, would originally be made of raw hide. The 

 Italian scuro (ob-scur-e), unknown, and scur-are, to become 

 dark, seem closely allied to the above. Here the idea is 

 " dark when shaded or covered up," as in our two forms — 

 hide, to cover (Anglo-Saxon, hyd-an), and hide, a skin, or 

 more especially a flayed skin (Anglo-Saxon, hyd, the skin — 



