MISCELLANEOUS:-- Notes on Books, &c. 345 Books and Odd Volumes wanted 346 Notices to Correspondents 346 Advertisements 346
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] 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], 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_ { 326} 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] gave a relish to their Lenten diet, _jack_-of-the-clock[4] 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.