Various - Notes and Queries, Number 179, April 2, 1853.

I wish to note, and to suggest to students in ethnology, the Query, how it comes to pass that John Bull has a peculiar propensity to call things by his own name, his familiar appellative of Jack ?

Of all the long list of abbreviations and familiar names with which times past and present have supplied us, that which honest Falstaff found most pleasing to his ears, " Jack with my familiars!" is the household word with which ours are most conversant. Were not Jack the Giant-killer, Jack and the Bean-stalk, and Little Jack , the intimates of our earliest days? when we were lulled to sleep by ditties that told of Jack Sprat and his accommodating wife (an instance of the harmony in which those of opposite tastes may live in the bonds of wedlock); of Jack , the bachelor who lived harmoniously with his fiddle, and had a soul above the advice of his utilitarian friend; of Jack who, like Caliban, was to have a new master; of Jack 1 1 Jack and Gill were measures. "Wherefore," says Grumio, "be the Jacks fair within and the Gills fair without," meaning the leathern jacks clean within, and the metal gills polished without. the brother of Gill; and of the Jack who was only remarkable for having a brother, whose name, as a younger son, is not thought worthy of mention. And were not our waking hours solaced by songs, celebrating the good Jack 2 2 His character has suffered by antiquarian research, which tells us that the song was made on a Colonel Horner, intrusted by the last Abbot of Wells with a pie, containing the title-deeds of the abbey, which he was to deliver to Henry VIII., and that he abstracted one for his own purposes, whereupon the abbot was hanged. , little Jack Horner, and holding up to obloquy the bad Jack, naughty Jacky Green, and his treachery to the innocent cat? Who does not remember the time when he played at jack -straws, fished for jack -sharps, and delighted in a skip- jack , or jack -a-jumper, when jack -in-a-box came back from the fair (where we had listened not unmoved to the temptations of that eloquent vagabond cheap- Jack ) and popped up his nose before we could say Jack Robinson; and when Jack -in-the-green ushered in May-day? While a halo of charmed recollections encircles the memory of Jack -pudding, dear to the Englishman as Jack Pottage and Jack Sausage (Jean Potage and Hans Wurst) are to Frenchman and German.

Our childhood past, Jack still haunts us at every turn and phase of our existence. The smoke- jack and bottle- jack , those revolutionary instruments that threw the turnspit out of employment (and have well-nigh banished him from the face of the earth), cook the Jack hare, which we bring in in the pocket of our shooting- jacket . We wear jack -boots, and draw them off with boot- jacks ; prop up our houses with jack -screws; wipe our hands on jack -towels; drink out of black- jacks , and wear them on our backs too, at least our ancestors did; while flap- jacks 3 3 The old name for pancakes. Slap- jacks is their present name in America. gave a relish to their Lenten diet, jack -of-the-clock 4 4 The figure which struck the hour, as on the old clocks of St. Dunstan's, and of Carfax in Oxford. told them the hour; Jack priests held rule over them; and gentle exercise at the jack , at bowls, helped them to digest their dinners. We ride upon jack -asses; jacks flourish in our fish-ponds; jack -a-lanterns and jack -snipes flit over our bogs, the one scarcely less difficult to capture than the other; jack -daws multiply in our steeples, and jack -herons still linger about our baronial halls.

The four jack knaves, jack -a-lents, jack -a-dandies, jack -a-nasties, and jacks -in-office ( jack -an-apeses every man jack of them), with that name fraught with mysterious terror, Jack Ketch, are the scape-graces of this numerous family; and, at every Jack who would be the gentleman, at a saucy Jack who attempts to play the jack with us, our indignation rises, like that of Juliet's nurse. But, on the whole, Jack is an honest fellow, who does his work in this life, though he has been reproached with Tom's helping him to do nothing; but let the house that Jack built vindicate him from this calumny. Jack , we repeat, is an honest fellow, and is so more especially, when as Jack -tar (Heaven protect him from Jack -sharks both on sea and shore!) he has old Ocean beneath, and the union- jack above him. Of black and yellow jack , who are foreigners, we make no mention; neither of Jack -Spaniards, nor of Jacko the monkey, whom we detest; but, go where we will, Jack meets us, and is master of all trades, for that we hold to be the right, though, we are aware, not the usual version of the saying. In short, with Merry Andrews , Jerry Sneaks, Tom Noddies, and Silly Simons , we may all have a casual acquaintance; but Jack , sweet Jack , kind Jack , honest Jack , Jack still is our familiar.

When I first began to write on Mythology, I followed the Germans in using mythus for the Greek μῦθος. I afterwards thought it would be better to Anglicise it, and, strange to say, I actually found that there was a rule in the English language without an exception. It was this: Words formed from Greek disyllables in ος, whether the penultimate vowel be long or short, are monosyllables made long by e final. Thus, not only does βῶλος make bole , but πόλος pole , πόρος pore , σκόπος scope , τόνος tone , &c.; so also γῦρος, gyre ; θύμος, thyme ; στῦλος, style ; κύβος, cube , &c.: I therefore, without hesitation, made an English word mȳthe . Mr. Grote, in his History of Greece , has done the very same thing, and probably on the same principles, quite independently of me; for, as I am informed, he has never condescended to read my Mythology of Greece and Italy , perhaps because it was not written in German. We have had no followers, as far as I am aware, but Miss Lynn, in her classical novels, and Mr. J. E. Taylor, in his translation of the Pentamerone , &c.

Meantime the English language had got another form of μῦθος, namely, my̆th , which I believe made its first appearance in Mr. Cooley's Maritime and Inland Discovery , and so has the claim of priority, if not of correctness. This form has been so generally adopted, that it seems likely ere long to become a mere slang term. It is used for every kind of fiction whatever; indeed, I have seen it employed where the proper word would be hoax . Nay, to make matters worse, it is actually used of persons. Mrs. Harris, for instance, has been termed a myth , as also was Robin Hood, not long since, even in "N. & Q."! I wonder how Apolodorus would have looked, if he had heard Orion or Polyphemus called a μῦθος!

Do I then expect the people of England to surrender their glorious privilege of going wrong without let or hindrance, in matters of grammar and etymology? Far from me be such folly and presumption. All I venture to expect is, that men of learning and good sense will, when they are speaking or writing about those venerable fictions which once commanded the assent of polished nations, use the more dignified term mȳthe , and the adjective mythic , instead of the hybrid mythical , leaving the poor unhappy little my̆th to be bandied about at the popular will and pleasure.