The Etymology of the word Rum. 8i 
gives it as a Devonshire word meaning, A great tumult ; 
and, as many of the settlers in Barbados, at the time 
when Sugar-making was being established in that Island, 
came from Devonshire, it was no doubt due to some far- 
seeing West-countryman that the cause of so much 
strife* among men was so fitly named. There was pro- 
bably an intermediate stage in cutting down the word, 
as Sir Walter Scott, a great finder out of disused 
terms, describes in the 39th chapter of The Pirates, 
Hawkins the Boatswain, and Derrick the Quarter- 
master, as regaling themselves with a " can of rumbo;" 
and, in the History of New York during the Revolu- 
tionary War, mention is made of some patriots having 
indulged in Rumbo, which, in a footnote, is explained 
to be " a kind of strong punch made chiefly of Rum." 
But is not the original word preserved to us, almost in its 
integrity, when Jack-tars speak of their grogf as Rum- 
BOWLING? 
ing which Dr. Jamieson in his Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish 
Language, writes thus : — 
RUMBALLIACH [gutt], adj. 1. Stormy, applied to the weather, Roxb. 
2. Quarrelsome ; as, " a rumballiach wife," a woman given to 
brawls : ibid. 
This word has greatly the appearance of a Gael. one. But I find 
none that have any resemblance. Isl. rumba has precisely the first 
sense, — which seems to be the primary one ; procella pelagica, Haldor- 
son. Shall we suppose that this term has been compounded with alag, 
in pi. aloeg, dirae fatales, expl. by Dan. forhekselse inchantment ; q. 
rvmbaaloeg, " a storm at sea raised by the weird sisters," or " by 
enchantment ?" As used in the second sense, it might thus denote one 
agitated by the furies, as in Isl. At vera i aloegum, furiis agitari. 
* It is not the use, but the abuse, of Rum that is bad. Medical men 
regard good Rum as one of the most wholesome of all spirits. 
f In Chambers's Etymological Dictionary, 1876, this term is stated 
to be derived from ' Old Grog', a nickname given by the sailors to Ad- 
miral Vernon, who first introduced it, because he used in bad weather 
to wear a grogram cloak. 
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