FORMS OF ADDRESS. 



petition began with the words &quot; So and so strikes his fore 

 head &quot; [on the ground] ; arid petitioners were called &quot; fore 

 head strikers.&quot; At the Court of France as late as 1577, it 

 was the custom of some to say &quot; I kiss your grace s hands/ 

 and of others to say &quot; I kiss your lordship s feet.&quot; Even 

 now of Spain, where orientalisms linger, we read When 

 you get up to take leave, if of a lady, you should say, My 

 lady, I place myself at your feet; to which she will reply, 

 I kiss your hand, sir. 



From what has gone before, such origins and such char 

 acters of forms of address might be anticipated. Along 

 with other ways of propitiating the victor, the master, the 

 ruler, will naturally come speeches which, beginning with 

 confessions of defeat by verbal assumptions of its attitude, 

 will develop into varied phrases acknowledging servitude. 

 The implication, therefore, is that forms of address in gen 

 eral, descending as they do from these originals, will ex 

 press, clearly or vaguely, ownership by, or subjection to, 

 the person addressed. 



303. Of propitiatory speeches there are some which, 

 instead of describing the prostration entailed by defeat, 

 describe the resulting state of being at the mercy of the 

 person addressed. One of the strangest of these occurs 

 among the cannibal Tupis. While, on the one hand, a 

 warrior shouts to his enemy &quot; May every misfortune come 

 upon thee, my meat! &quot; on the other hand, the speech re 

 quired from the captive Hans Stade on approaching a dwell 

 ing, was &quot; I, your food, have come: &quot; that is my life is 

 at your disposal. Then, again, instead of profess 



ing to live only by permission of the superior, actual or pre 

 tended, who is spoken to, we find the speaker professing to 

 be personally a chattel of his, or to be holding property at 

 his disposal, or both. Africa, Asia, Polynesia, and Europe, 

 furnish examples. &quot; When a stranger enters the house of a 

 Serracolet (Inland Ts&quot;egro), he goes out and says White 



