STINGKTH LIKE AN ADDER. Ill 



green pastures" would have been a phrase without mean- 

 ing, a cruel mockery. 



Stingeth Like an Adder. 



BY WILLIAM H. HUSE. 



Adder is a word of Anglo-Saxon origin that has passed 

 through a course of evolution from ncedre, and has relat- 

 ives more or less remote in all the Germanic languages. 

 The name is given to the only poisonous serpent that in- 

 habits Great Britain, and for centuries all English speak- 

 ing people have been familiar with the word and its mean- 

 ing. When the translators of the Bible came upon the 

 passage in Proverbs that warns the wine- bibber against 

 the cup, the}^ found the statement that it stingeth like a 

 basilisk or cockatrice, a fabled reptile whose very breath 

 was noxious. The English readers of the Scriptures, how- 

 ever, were not familiar with those names and the force of 

 ' 'stingeth like a basilisk' ' would be lost upon a Saxon drink- 

 er. Consequently addervjB.s used as the only English word 

 that would convey an adequate idea of the meaning and 

 has been used until the present time regardless of the fact 

 that neither the adder nor any other serpent can sting. 



When the English settled in New England they found 

 three species of snakes near the coast that were mottled or 

 spotted. One had such a noticeable appendage on its tail 

 that it was given the name of rattlesnake ; the other two 

 were called adders because of their resemblance to the En- 

 glish reptile, just as several other animals received similar- 

 ly inappropriate names. 



The Puritans could reason from premises and their de- 

 scendants have learned of them. The English adder is 

 mottled. So are these two snakes. Therefore the latter 



