Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853. Various
Barclay, 1570.
"Behold how ready we are, how willingly the women of Sparta will die and live with their husbands."—The Pilgrimage of Kings and Princes, p. 29.
Except in Shakspeare's behalf, it would not have been worth while to exemplify so unambiguous a phrase. The like remark may also be extended to the next word that falls under consideration.
Kindly, in accordance with kind, viz. nature. Thus, the love of a parent for a child, or the converse, is kindly: one without natural affection (ἄστοργος) is unkind, kindless, as in—
"Remorselesse, treacherous, letcherous, kindles villaine."
Thence kindly expanded into its wider meaning of general benevolence. So under another phase of its primary sense we find the epithet used to express the excellence and characteristic qualities proper to the idea or standard of its subject, to wit, genuine, thrifty, well-liking, appropriate, not abortive, monstrous, prodigious, discordant. In the Litany, "the kindly fruits of the earth" is, in the Latin versions "genuinus," and by Mr. Boyer rightly translated "les fruits de la terre chaqu'un selon son espèce;" for which Pegge takes him to task, and interprets kindly "fair and good," through mistake or preference adopting the acquired and popular, in lieu of the radical and elementary meaning of the word. (Anonymiana, pp. 380—1. Century viii. No. lxxxi.) The conjunction of this adjective with gird in a passage of King Henry VI. has sorely gravelled Mr. Collier: twice over he essays, with equal success, to expound its purport. First, loc. cit., he finds fault with gird as being employed in rather an unusual manner; or, if taken in its common meaning of taunt or reproof, then that kindly is said ironically; because there seems to be a contradiction in terms. (Monck Mason's rank distortion of the words, there cited, I will not pain the reader's sight with.) Mr. Collier's note concludes with a supposition that gird may possibly be a misprint. This is the misery! Men will sooner suspect the text than their own understanding or researches. In Act I. Sc. 1. of Coriolanus, dissatisfied with his previous note, Mr. Collier tries again, and thinks a kindly gird may mean a gentle reproof. That the reader may be able to judge what it does mean, it will be necessary to quote the king's gird, who thus administers a kindly rebuke to the malicious preacher against the sin of malice, i.e. chastens him with his own rod:
"King. Fie, uncle Beauford, I have heard you preach,
That mallice was a great and grievous sinne:
And will not you maintaine the thing you teache,
But prove a chief offender in the same?
Warn. Sweet king: the bishop hath a kindly gyrd."
A gird, akin to, in keeping with, fitting, proper to the cardinal's calling; an evangelical gird for an evangelical man: what more kindly? Kindly, connatural, homogeneous. But now for a bushel of examples, some of which will surely avail to insense the reader in the purport of this epithet, if my explanation does not:
"God in the congregation of the gods, what more proper and kindly"?—Andrewes' Sermons, vol. v. p. 212. Lib. Ang.-Cath. Theol.
"And that (pride) seems somewhat kindly too, and to agree with this disease (the plague). That pride which swells itself should end in a tumour or swelling, as, for the most part, this disease doth."—Id., p. 228.
"And so, you are found; and they, as the children of perdition should be, are lost. Here are you: and where are they? Gone to their own place, to Judas their brother. And, as is most kindly, the sons to the father of wickedness; there to be plagued with him for ever."—Id., vol. iv. p. 98.
"For whatsoever, as the Son of God, He may do, it is kindly for Him, as the Son of Man, to save the sons of men."—Id., p. 253.
"There cannot be a more kindly consequence than this, our not failing from their not failing: we do not, because they do not."—Id., p. 273.
"And here falls in kindly this day's design, and the visible 'per me,' that happened on it."—Id., p. 289.
"And having then made them, it is kindly that viscera misericordiæ should be over those opera that came de visceribus."—Id., p. 327.
"The children came to the birth, and the right and kindly copulative were; to the birth they came, and born they were: in a kind consequence who would look for other?"—Id., p. 348.
"For usque adeo proprium est operari Spiritui, ut nisi operetur, nec sit. So kindly (proprium) it is for the spirit to be working as if It work not, It is not."—Id., vol. iii. p. 194.
"And when he had overtaken, for those two are but presupposed, the more kindly to bring in επελάβετο, when, I say, He had overtaken them, cometh in fitly and properly επιλαμβάνεται."—Id., vol. i. p. 7.
"No time so kindly to preach de Filio hodie genito as hodie."—Id., p. 285.
"A day whereon, as it is most kindly preached, so it will be most kindly practised of all others."—Id., p. 301.
"Respice et plange: first, 'Look and lament' or mourn; which is indeed the most kindly and natural effect of such a spectacle."—Id., vol. ii. p. 130.
"Devotion is the most proper and most kindly work of holiness."—Id., vol. iv. p. 377.
Perhaps the following will be thought so apposite, that I may be spared the labour, and the reader the tedium of perusing a thousand other examples that might be cited:
And there is nothing more kindly than for them that will be touching, to be touched themselves, and to be touched home, in the same kind themselves thought to have touched others."—Id., vol. iv. p. 71.1
DEVONIANISMS
Miserable.—Miserable is very commonly used in Devonshire in the signification of miserly, with strange effect until one becomes used to it. Hooker the Judicious, a Devonshire man, uses the word in this sense in the Eccl. Polity, book v. ch. lxv. p. 21.:
"By means whereof it cometh also to pass that the mean which is virtue seemeth in the eyes of each extreme an extremity; the liberal-hearted man is by the opinion of the prodigal miserable, and by the judgment of the miserable lavish."
Few.—Speaking of broth, people in Devon say a few broth in place of a little, or some broth. I find a similar use of the word in a sermon preached in 1550, by Thomas Lever, Fellow of St. John's College, preserved by Strype (in his Eccles. Mem., ii. 422.). Speaking of the poor students of Cambridge, he says:
"At ten of the clock they go to dinner, whereas they be content with a penny piece of beef among four, having a few pottage made of the broth of the same beef, with salt and oatmeal, and nothing else."
Figs, Figgy.—Most commonly raisins are called figs, and plum-pudding figgy pudding. So with plum-cake, as in the following rhymes:—
"Rain, rain, go to Spain,
Never come again:
When I brew and when I bake,
I'll give you a figgy cake."
Against is used like the classical adversùm, in the sense of towards or meeting. I have heard, both in Devonshire and in Ireland, the expression to send against, that is, to send to meet, a person, &c.
The foregoing words and expressions are probably provincialisms rather than Devonianisms, good old English forms of expression; as are, indeed, many of the so-called Hibernicisms.
Pilm,