Du Bartas

And Death, drad Seriant of th' eternall Judge,
Coms very late to his sole seated lodge.
P. 88 (86) third edition.

(iv) as a military term in nearly, if not quite, its modern

sense.

In Shakespeare the word occurs thirteen times. In the first sense it occurs four times in the Comedy of Errors (act iv, scenes 2 and 3). From what we there read it would appear that the sheriff's officers at that time wore a kind of buff coat, being the same uniform as was worn by soldiers of that period in the field. This might suggest the question whether the office were not at first a military one, or whether, perhaps, soldiers were selected for the duty. The word is used in its second sense, that of serjeant-at-arms, twice, and then in Henry VIII (Act i, scene 1). In its third sense it is used once as we have already seen; and it is used to denote a soldier six times, three times in Macbeth (Act i, sc. 2), and thrice in the first part of Henry VI (Act ii, sc. 1). In the first sense we also find the word used in Taylor, thus

The serjeant I before the jaylor name

Because he is the dog that hunts the game:

He worries it and brings it to the toyle,

And then the jaylor lives upon the spoyle. 1630 (iii, 10).

THE ETYMOLOGY OF PLANT NAMES.

By Thomas Comber, F.L.S.

(READ 24TH JANUARY, 1878.)

PART III.

TIMBER TREES.

IN continuation of two papers read before your Society on the Etymology of plant names,* I now bring to your notice the names of Timber-trees. Our tree-names possess an especial interest, arising from the fact that many of them are of great antiquity. The word "tree" is itself one of the oldest in our family of language, as is shewn by its belonging to a series that runs through all the Arian tongues. Coming to us through the A. S. treow, it can be traced back to the old Saxon treo or trio and Goth. triu. Its oldest known form is found in the Scr. dru, from a root which existed variously as dru, druh, drih, and dri, to grow. The word signified both a tree and wood, an alternative meaning which often attaches to cognate words in other languages. It was possessed also by dáru, another Scr. form; whilst a third, táru, signified tree, and is only once used in the sense of a wooden ladle. This interchange of the dentals d and t is found also in other Arian languages. Moving westwards the word is met with in Zend as dâuru, and dru, in the sense of wood, or a spear; in Pehlvi, Parsi, Kurdish, and Persian as dár, and in Armenian as durh or tharh, a tree or timber;

* Part I-Fruits and Edible Berries, Vol. XXVIII, p. 15. Part II-Kitchen and Salad Plants, Vol. XXIX, p. 43.

Of

and in Pers. also as darakht, a tree, shrub, or beam. cognate words in Gr. dpvc, while it was used in the general sense of tree, was more especially applied to the oak, as being the tree par excellence; dpios signified a bush; whilst dopu, originally meaning a wooden shaft, came eventually to mean a spear. Another, reduplicated, form devdpov was used in the generic sense of tree. The Celtic equivalents, though originally no doubt meaning tree in general, have, like the Gr. Spvs, been applied specifically to the oak; as the Wel. Dar or Derw, Corn. Dar or Deru, Bret. Derv, Ir. Darach, and Gael. Daroch. Old Slavonic had drjevo, a tree, the descendants of which are the Rus. derevo, Ill. drevo, Boh. drewo, Pol. drzewo, and Wend, drjowo, meaning either tree or wood. The foregoing have preserved the initial d, and it is found also in some of the Teutonic languages, especially when it occurs in composition; as in our El-der, Ger. Wachol-der (juniper), Old Norse Apal-dr, or in even a more reduced form abild, an appletree, the equivalent of which in A. S., apul-dor, is preserved amongst us to the present time in the names of some places,* as Apple-dore, a seaport in Devon, and a parish in Kent, Appledram (= Apple-dor-ham) near Chichester, and Appledurcombe, in Isle of Wight. More frequently in the Teutonic languages, the initial is t, the complete series being as follows:

In Lat. and the Romance languages we find no corresponding word having the primary meaning of tree or wood; but we find one in Lat. signifying a "beam," and rarely used in the secondary sense of a young tree, namely Trabs, the b *The old forms of tree names are often preserved in the names of places.

of which may be the equivalent of the v in Slavonic. It has been suggested that this belongs to the same series as the words signifying tree or timber; but that it has undergone a further modification of meaning. Such a change of application is shown to be not unlikely by a precisely similar one that has taken place with our Eng. word beam.* This in A. S., and the older Goth. bagm, meant a tree, and it still occurs in some of our present tree names, e.g. Hornbeam, Whitebeam; but when used separately the word now expresses in Eng. the same meaning as trabs. Dr. Prior considers beam to be related to the Ger. bauen, to build, as suggested by Grimm; but seeing that in A. S. and Goth. the word signified tree, that it still retains that meaning in the Ger. baum and Dut. boom, and that it is even found applied to shrubs and bushes not available for building, as in Lett. pahm, it seems more probablo that it is descended from a root which existed in Scr. as bah, to grow, having thus a similar origin to tree and wort, from verbs implying growth.

The wide range from India to Iceland of words so closely related to our "tree," and varying so slightly in either form or signification, shows clearly that a corresponding word must have existed in the language spoken by the original Arian stock, before its various branches became separated from each other. We may therefore further conclude that the country occupied by the Arians, before their dispersion, was not a treeless steppe, but must have produced, at any rate in places, some timber-trees. If, by the same mode of argument, we endeavour to ascertain what those trees were, we meet with only moderate success, and can indeed only fix with any approach to certainty upon two trees, of which we treat first.

BIRCH. This tree bears on the slopes of the Himalaya a

* Our "tree" is also sometimes used in the sense of a piece of timber, as in rooftree, axletree, saddletree.

66

name similar to that by which it is known throughout Northern Europe. "On this foundation Klaproth builds an argument "for the Northern origin of the dominant race in Hindostan. "It seems birch was the only tree the invaders recognised "and could name on the S. side of the Himalaya; all others "'* being new to them." The Himalayan tree (Betula Bhurja,) is a different species to the European (B. alba, L.); but the two are sufficiently alike to be readily identified in popular nomenclature. The Scr. name, Bhúrja, has left a descendant in the present Hind. Bhoj. There appears to be no corresponding name in the Pers. group; but in Europe we find the name running through all the Teutonic group, the series being as follows:

In the Slavonic group the Teutonic K is represented as usual by a Z, the series being :

Amongst the Celtic tongues the z is also found in the Bret. Bezo, Corn. Bezo, also written Bedho, Wel. Bedw, Gael. Beithe and Ir. Beith. From the Celtic has evidently been borrowed the Prov. and Cat. Bes; and the change in dentals from 2 to d and t leads also to the Lat. Betulla or Betula, the more likely to be derived from the Celtic, because Pliny writes of the tree as "Gallica hæc arbor." The Lat. has passed into Ar., probably during the rule of the Moors in the Peninsula, and has also originated the names in Romance languages as follows:

* Rev. R. Garnett, Philol. Ess. p. 33.