IN TOKEN
OF MY ADMIRATION FOR HIS GENIUS,
This Book is Inscribed
TO
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
ETYMOLOGY.
(SUPPLIED BY A LATE CONSUMPTIVE USHER TO A
GRAMMAR SCHOOL.)
The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him
now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer
handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the
known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it
somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.
ETYMOLOGY
“While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them by what
name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue, leaving out, through
ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh up the signification
of the word, you deliver that which is not true.”
_Hackluyt._
“WHALE. * * * Sw. and Dan. _hval_. This animal is named from roundness
or rolling; for in Dan. _hvalt_ is arched or vaulted.”
_Webster’s Dictionary._
“WHALE. * * * It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. _Wallen_;
A.S. _Walw-ian_, to roll, to wallow.”
_Richardson’s Dictionary._
חו, _Hebrew_.
ϰητος, _Greek_.
CETUS, _Latin_.
WHŒL, _Anglo-Saxon_.
HVALT, _Danish_.
WAL, _Dutch_.
HWAL, _Swedish_.
HVALUR, _Icelandic_.
WHALE, _English_.
BALEINE, _French_.
BALLENA, _Spanish_.
PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, _Fegee_.
PEHEE-NUEE-NUEE, _Erromangoan_.
EXTRACTS.
(Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian.)
It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm
of a poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long
Vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random
allusions to whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever,
sacred or profane. Therefore you must not, in every case at least, take
the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in these
extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from it. As touching the
ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here appearing, these
extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as affording a glancing
bird’s eye view of what has been promiscuously said, thought, fancied,
and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and generations, including our
own.
So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I
am. Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of
this world will ever warm; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be
too rosy-strong; but with whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel
poor-devilish, too; and grow convivial upon tears; and say to them
bluntly, with full eyes and empty glasses, and in not altogether
unpleasant sadness—Give it up, Sub-Subs! For by how much the more pains
ye take to please the world, by so much the more shall ye for ever go
thankless! Would that I could clear out Hampton Court and the Tuileries
for ye! But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the royal-mast
with your hearts; for your friends who have gone before are clearing
out the seven-storied heavens, and making refugees of long-pampered
Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against your coming. Here ye strike
but splintered hearts together—there, ye shall strike unsplinterable
glasses!
EXTRACTS.
“And God created great whales.”
_Genesis._
“Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him;
One would think the deep to be hoary.”
_Job._
“Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.”
_Jonah._
“There go the ships; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to
play therein.”
_Psalms._
“In that day, the Lord with his sore, and great, and strong sword,
shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that
crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.”
_Isaiah._
“And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of this
monster’s mouth, be it beast, boat, or stone, down it goes all
incontinently that foul great swallow of his, and perisheth in the
bottomless gulf of his paunch.”
_Holland’s Plutarch’s Morals._
“The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are:
among which the Whales and Whirlpooles called Balæne, take up as much
in length as four acres or arpens of land.”
_Holland’s Pliny._
“Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, when about sunrise a
great many Whales and other monsters of the sea, appeared. Among the
former, one was of a most monstrous size. * * This came towards us,
open-mouthed, raising the waves on all sides, and beating the sea
before him into a foam.”
_Tooke’s Lucian._
“_The True History._”
“He visited this country also with a view of catching horse-whales,
which had bones of very great value for their teeth, of which he
brought some to the king. * * * The best whales were catched in his own
country, of which some were forty-eight, some fifty yards long. He said
that he was one of six who had killed sixty in two days.”
_Other or Octher’s verbal narrative taken down
from his mouth by King Alfred, A. D._ 890.