Degraded Words, 



43 



such a progression in meaning toward the bad but this — that it has 

 been the common exj^erience that people are apt to claim more than 

 their due — to make demands considerably in excess of the require- 

 ments of equity ? 



There is yet one more word that may perhaps be considered as 

 allied to the foregoing, if the history of its changing sense, as given 

 by Barclay — an author of no great fame, who nevertheless managed 

 to gather a good deal of curious and interesting matter — is true. 

 This is legend, of which he says, writing about eighty years ago, that 

 it was originally " a book in the church containing the lessons that 

 were to be read in divine service; from hence the word was applied 

 to the histories of the lives of the saints, because chapters were 

 read out of them at matins, but as the * golden legend,' compiled by 

 James de Varase about the year 1290, contained several ridiculous 

 and romantic stories, the word is now used to signify any incredible 

 or unauthentic narrative." That is to say, legends, books highly 

 esteemed, have been so often found to contain glaring falsehoods — 

 for it can hardly be that the change is wholly attributable to the 

 single instance mentioned by our author — that the very word which 

 used to denote only that the composition to which it was applied 

 ought to be read, now serves rather to warn the reader that it ought 

 not to be believed ! 



n. 



Another common fault with our not-too-truthful humanity, nearly 

 allied to the practice of exaggerating one's own deserts and conceal- 

 ing blemishes, is that of unduly depreciating the merits of other 

 people, and particularly of despising beyond reason such classes of 

 the community as we thing below us; and this habit, as might be an- 

 ticipated, has made its mark upon our language. There are numerous 

 words that formerly indicated little more than inferior social or poli- 

 tical position, but which have come to embody the charge of some- 

 thing much worse. Thus a villain was at first, as Trench puts it, 

 only a serf or bondsman " (i)illamts\ because attached to the villa 

 or farm; " and secondly "the peasant who, it is taken for granted," 

 [and this is the root of the matter] " will be churlish, selfish, dis- 

 honest, and of evil moral conditions, these having come to be assumed 

 as always belonging to him, and to be permanently associated with 

 his name, by those higher classes of society who in the main com- 

 manded the springs of language. At the third step, nothing of the 

 meaning which the etymology suggests, nothing of villa^ survives 



