80 MANNEES AOT: iTASHION. 



the word has been contracted from courtoisie into curtsy, 

 so the motion has been contracted from a placing of the 

 knee on the floor, to a lowering of the knee towards the 

 floor. Moreover, when we compare the curtsy of a lady 

 with the awkward one a peasant girl makes, which, if con- 

 tinued, would bring her down on both knees, we may 

 see in this last a remnant of that greater reverence re- 

 quired of serfs. And when, from considering that simple 

 kneeling of the West, still represented by the curtsy, we 

 pass Eastward, and note the attitude of the Mahomedan 

 worshipper, who not only kneels but bows his head to the 

 ground, we may infer that the curtsy also, is an evanescent 

 form of the aboriginal prostration. 



In further evidence of this it may be remarked, that 

 there has but recently disappeared from the salutations of 

 men, an action having the same proximate derivation with 

 the curtsy. That backward sweep of the foot with which 

 the conventional stage-sailor accompanies his bow — a move- 

 ment which prevailed generally in past generations, when 

 " a bow and a scrape " went together, and which, within 

 the memory of living persons, was made by boys to their 

 schoolmaster with the efiect of wearing a hole in the floor 

 — ^is pretty clearly a preliminary to going on one knee. A 

 motion so ungainly could never have been intentionally in- 

 troduced ; even if the artificial introduction of obeisances 

 were possible. Hence we must regard it as the remnant of 

 something antecedent : and that this something antecedent 

 was humiliating may be inferred from the phrase, " scraping 

 an acquaintance ; " which, being used to denote the gaining 

 of favour by obsequiousness, implies that the scrape was 

 considered a mark of servility — that is, of serf-Witj. 



Consider, again, the uncovering of the head. Almost 

 everywhere this has been a sign of reverence, alike in tem- 

 ples and before potentates ; and it yet preserves among us 

 some of its original meaning. Whether it rains, hails, oj 



