514 HISTORY OF 



bruised and beaten by this pugnacious spirit, all of which added to horrlb/e' 

 sounds and unearthly noises in the immediate vicinity of its walks,.so 

 alarmed the inhabitants as to induce them to keep closely housed, whenever 

 the hour for its appearance drew near. Hence, Hugo and ghost came to ha 

 synonymous; and as has been already shown, the social worship of night- 

 meetings of the Reformers being so widely different from the imposing cere- 

 niony of the Romish church, and requiring them consequently to be out 

 more after night than the latter, each individual of the former was called a 

 Hugo, the whole Huguenots. Thus much for this derivation, and the tale 

 that thereby hangs. 



'J^'iie next supposed derivation, is that it was a term voluntarily assumed 

 by themselves as a party name, when their religion was attacked and they 

 were forced to take arms against the government in self-defence. As they 

 v.'-ere rigid Calvinists, of great sanctity of character and })urity of morals, 

 Caseneuve has pretended to have discovered the original in the Flemish 

 word Heghenon or Huguenon, which means Catliari or Puritan ; but this 

 is not very probable, inasmuch as it is not likely, that having a word in their 

 own vocabulary, so expressive as "Puritan." they would be disposed to bor- 

 row from a Uini::uage no more known than the Flemiish. 



Another author has attempted to trace its origin to Huguenote, a name 

 given to an iron or earthen pot for cooking, by connecting it with the persecu- 

 tions to which the Reformed v/ere subjected in France; and basing it upon 

 the hypothesis, that some of their number may have been roasted or tortured 

 and exposed to the flames like a vessel used for culinaiy purposes. 



These are all, however, but miere surmises, unsu[iported and unsustained 

 by any thing at all calculated to give th?m a projjer title to serious coiisider- 

 cration. Tiie only etymology then, which in our humble opinion remains, 

 is undoubtedly the true one — this we shall briefly attempt to prove by the 

 liistnry of the times and the people. 



Eulof^noss is a German comf)ounded word, in the Saxon and Dutch dial- 

 ects Eedgeiuitev ; of which the singular is Eid<;erioss, or EedgtnotJ* It is 

 formed from Eid an oath, and Genoss a confederate or partaken of the oath; 

 and was the original designation of the three Swiss patriots Wiiliam Tell, 

 "Walter Fuerst and Arnold of Me'cthal,| on the night of the 7th Nov. 1307, 

 met at Ruetli on the lake of Luzerne and there bound themselves by a solemn 

 oath, to shake off the yoke of their Austrian oppressors, and to re-eslablish 

 the liberties of their country. The conspiracy thus fi)rmed was embraced 

 with delifjht by nil to whom it was communicated, each member of which 

 was called an Eidseiwss and afterwards. January 7, A. D. 1308, when the 

 people of the Waldstetter, compo£^ed of the Cantons Appenzell, Claris and 

 Uri, met in solemn council and took the oath of per]:>etual alliance, they were 

 designated as the E'ulgennossenschafi, i. e. Confederation. Through suc- 

 cessive generations they were thus known, and when in aftertimes, the peo- 

 ple of Geneva which had now been included in the Swiss confederation, em- 

 braced the doctrines of John Calvin ; they threw off the allegiance of the 

 Duke of Savoy ; and in order to maintain their independence, formed a con- 

 federacy after the example of the Waldstetter with the ('antons of Bern and 

 Freibour<j, whi h was also confirmed by an oath of all the contracting par- 

 ties. Like the oriirinal patriots, they in turn were called Eidgenossin. This 

 movement being half temporal and half ecclesiastical or spiritual, related to 



♦Lewis Mayer, D. D. See his letter, Oct. 11, 1843. 

 fDavenport, article Fuerst, 



