March 1, 1887.] 



KNO^A^LEDGE 



133 



Eiding on his deathless horse, and wielding his resistless 

 sword Gram, he forces his way into the castle, slays Fafnir, 

 and recovers the Valkyrie. The Valkyries are also cloud- 

 maidens, or Niljelungs.* 



There is some resemblance to be traced between the 

 horse which bears Sigurd into the place where Brynhild is 

 imprisoned, the wooden horse which enters Ilion, and the 

 l)ruidic steed which leaps with Sculloge over the walls of 

 Fiach's enchanted castle.f 



Among the Greek legends we have the account of Odysseus, 

 who is ensnared by Calypso, the nymph of darkness, and 

 kept in bondage. Then we have the story of Hercules, who, 

 whilst reposing by the banks of the Tiber, has his cattle 

 stolen by the three-headed monster Cacus. He drags the cattle 

 (or clouds) into a dark cavern (Night), and does not recover 

 them until he breaks open the entrance of the cavern and 

 destroys the demon. Professor Fiske tells us that the 

 three-headed monster is a near kinsman of Geryon's three- 

 headed dog Orthros, and of the three-headed Kerberos, who 

 guards the dark regions below the horizon. He is the 

 original were-wolf or Eakshasa, who steals the bright cattle 

 of Helios, and hides them in the black cavernous rock, 

 from which they are afterwards rescued by the Schamir or 

 lightning- stone of the solar hero, t Then we have the 

 beautiful myth of Endymion, his name being one of the 

 many names of the Sun, but having special reference to the 

 setting-sun. Endymion sank into an eternal sleep in the 

 Latmian Cave, or cave of Night, after living but one day. 

 Selene the Moon sees him, loves him, and keeps him cap- 

 tive. In the poetical language of Elis, people said, " Selene 

 loves," instead of •' it is getting late " ; " Selene embraces 

 Endymion," instead of "the Sun is setting," and "the 

 Moon is rising"; "Selene kisses Endymion into sleep," 

 instead of " it is Night." § 



This myth reminds us of the story of Tannhiiuser, the 

 Frankish knight, who lost his way whilst travelling at 

 twilight past the Hijrselberg. " He saw a white gleaming 

 ligure, of matchless beauty, standing before him, and 

 beckoning him to her." He left his horse and disappeared 

 behind the moonlit cliffs, lured by Venus Ursula, the foir 

 goddess of Night. She kept him captive for seven years, 

 and then, longing once more to return to his old home, he 

 prayed to the Virgin Mother, who released him. Finding 

 no priest who would absolve him from his sin, not even the 

 Pope, whom he journeyed to Rome to see, he returned in 

 despaii' to the Venusberg, and has never been heard of since. 



Even the story of Rip Van Winkle, who wandered away 

 among the CatskiUs, lured by the gnomes, and return- 

 ing after a sleep of twenty years, is um-ecognised and forgotten 

 by his own wife and child, had its origin in the nature myths 

 of Winter and Night. 



{To he continued.) 



AMERICANISMS. 



By Richard A. Proctok. 



Fexce-eidixg, the art of remaining on the fence (see 

 December number). It is to be carefully distinguished from 

 riding on a rail, though a fence-rider not unfrequently ends 

 his career by being a rail-rider. 



Fetch. Bartlett notices the nautical phrase " to fetch u\i 

 all standing," and thence simply to " fetch up," meaning to 

 stop suddenly, as an Americanism — though this expression is 



* " Myths and Myth-makers." Fiske, p. 132. 



t Ibid. p. 187. X Ibid. p. 118. 



§ " Chips from a German Workshop," p. 80. Max Miiller. 



probably much commoner in England than in America. 

 But he altogether overlooks the Americanism, " to fetch," as 

 meaning to influence strongly. The expression is used pro- 

 vincially in this sense in England ; but it is commonly so 

 used in the States, even by educated persons. Thus I 

 remember a college professor telling me how unwilling he 

 had been to accede to a publisher's request that he should 

 write a treatise on the sun, till told that if he would not 

 another person, whom he knew to be incompetent, would be 

 invited to write the volume. " That fitchrd me," he said 

 with emphasis; meaning that that was an argument he 

 could not resist. 



Few. Used for " a little," may be a shade commoner in 

 America than in England. But so common a Gockneyism 

 can hardly be called an Americanism. 



F.F.V., First Families of Virginia. — A term used 

 under the amusing delusion that the original settlers in 

 Virginia were all, or nearly all, descended from the noblest 

 ftimilies (in the conventional sense) in England. There 

 were five or six such among the first two hundred ; and not 

 all even of those few left any to succeed them. But the 

 great majority were much more useful settlers. The first 

 wives of the settlers were sent out as assorted samples, pur- 

 chaseable at as many pounds of tobacco as they would bring. 

 They averaged 120 lbs. of the best Virginian. The next lot 

 brought 150 lbs. per head. The First. Families delusion, 

 however, does no harm. Perhaps in some cases, by sug- 

 gesting the thought that noblesse uhlige, it does good, like 

 the corresponding idea in England of which our Thackeray 

 has made amusing use. The Xew York Tribune asserted in 

 August 18G1, that F.F.V. had come to standfor Fast Footed 

 Virginians, because of undue alacrity displayed before the 

 enemy. We had supposed in England that the Virginians 

 at Bull's Run had been fast-footed with face forward to the 

 foe. But the newspaper writer may have been too far from 

 the field to know how the matter really stood, or how the 

 foemen on either side really ran. 



FicE, or FvsE. In Kentucky a small dog or cur. Nares 

 has the word in his glossary in the form "fyst," as " a foist- 

 ing hound or cur of the lap-dog kind." 



Figure, To. As, "you may figure on that," meaning 

 you may count on that. Also, but less commonly, figure is 

 used for thinking over ; as " figure on that " — " think of it." 

 This, the only meaning given by Bartlett, is probably the 

 original meaning of the expression. He gives the usage as 

 Western, but it is quite commonly heard in New England. 



FiLlBiSTER. From the Dutch vrijbuiler, German J'rei- 

 heutfr, English freebooter, the French flibustier, or the 

 Spanish jihbustero. The word has come into tolerably free 

 use in America, especially South-west. It may be under- 

 stood as the equivalent of " freebooter." The following 

 passage from a letter written by General llenniugsen to 

 Senator Toombs in 1857 gives a good idea of the use of the 

 word, both as noun and as verb, and is worth reading for 

 other reasons : 



" What was Moses but a filibuster, whose mission was to 

 dispossess tribes retrograding (or whose civilisation was cor- 

 rupting before matured), and to plant in their stead another 

 people, whose subsec[uent annals show them to have been 

 at least in nowise superior to our own ^ What were the 

 Normans from whom the sovereigns of Great Britain affect 

 to derive their descent, and a portion of their title to the 

 crown, but filibusters 1 What the Pilgrim Fathers but 

 filibusters 1 What State, what territory in this Union has 

 not been filibustered from the Indians, or purchased from 

 those who had filibustered it? Have ever five years elapsed 

 down to the present time, since the landing of the Pilgrim 

 Fathers, that some of the Monarchies of Europe have not, 

 somewhere, been filibustering something ? " 



