“He swore by the wound in Jesu’s side.”—Coleridge, ‘Christabel.’

We may now turn our backs upon the luxuriant and fanciful swearing of the ancient world and pursue our researches into one other division of the subject that gives rise to more serious reflections. The diversions of the Roman and the Greek in the way of imprecation seem to have been mostly intended in good part, and to have been productive of little theological odium. But there is a body of swearing that has diffused itself through Christian countries which is the very reverse of sportive, and has undeniably provoked the strongest feelings of aversion. The abuse to which we allude consisted mainly in the indiscriminate use of popular oaths that selected the limbs and members of Christ as the paraphernalia of swearing. There does not appear at the present day any great irreverence in the exclamation, “S’light,” or “S’lid,” or “Bodikins,” as, happily, the wave of impiety that brought them has long since broken and passed away. Indeed, as they now occur in the pages of sixteenth century writings, they only strike the modern reader in the light of so many interruptions from the text. But we shall find as we pursue the inquiry further, that there was a great deal of meaning wrapped up in these expletives, and that they played a by no means unimportant part in the workings of the mediÆval understanding.

Whatever may have been the malignities laid to the charge of the later middle ages, it is certain that the Englishman was on the whole of a reverential type. The pious moralist who laboured in those times was so far assisted by an utter absence of captious criticism to honeycomb his teaching, and by the solid sense of appreciation that was wont to fill the minds of his listeners. He was practised, moreover, in the exercise of two potent influences that he was ever ready to exert. The one may be said to have had its root in his hearers’ fund of ready sympathy, the other in their ghostly apprehension of horror and dread. It is not at all surprising that in later times we should find an opaqueness to have obscured the clear crystal of these subtle perceptions, for fear and pity have no longer the same ascendancy in a busy world. But at a period more piously illiterate, things of this shadowy nature were linked very closely to objects of a material kind. A long process of reasoning could then be saved by reference to some obscure picture of monkish fancy. And so, in the glooms and twilights of mediÆval life, the moralist might insure speedy victory by overwhelming men’s intellects by an appeal to the formidable images of terror and compassion.

The pre-Reformation Englishman, stricken and toil-worn, having no hope save in forbearance from the skies, and no consolation but in the repose of the ale-house, could yet be awed and subdued by the apprehension of some priest-directed shape of ghostly terrorism. Above all, he had been made to grasp a sentiment, which, slightly as it can be treated in a secular work, may be said to have left no adequate imprint upon the Protestant world. By dint of the monastic teaching, he had been brought to entertain a keen personal realisation of the actual sufferings of Christ. The fact is self-evident from every fragment of contemporaneous literature intended to react upon the fears and sympathies of uncultivated men. It was the constant presentment of the notion of the divine agony, the daily calling to remembrance of the thorns, the nails, and the hyssop, that was relied upon to keep alive in those poor agued souls some struggling flame of spiritual vitality. And so surely was the spark wont to kindle, and so reverently was the similitude of these priestly images treasured up, that they formed the mainstay of the ploughman’s faith, the sum total of the poor man’s theology.

From this cause it arose, as there is now every reason to suspect, that the country was at one time inundated with a torrent of the most acrid and rasping blasphemy. It would not be difficult to trace the relative connection between the luxuriance of oath-taking and the various forms of religion under which oath-taking has successively flourished. It could be shown that the swearing of most Catholic states is of greater fertility, and displays a readier fund of invention than that of countries brought under the reformed faith. The more religion appeals to the senses, the more fecund has been the vocabulary of oaths. The more it has been made the subject of illustration and imagery, the more finished and ornate have been the comminations in use. A priest-ridden nation, such as the Spanish or Italian, has always been eminent for its proficiency in blasphemy; and as part of the argument it may not be out of place to mention the instance of the hedge-parson in the ‘Fortunes of Nigel,’ who, by reason of his superior knowledge of divinity, could swear with greater volubility than any of his associates.Thus it was that, labouring under the ban of priestly exaction, and confronted on all sides by the ghostly emblems of wrath and condemnation, there descended upon England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a torrent of the hardest and direst of verbal abuse. Not mere words of intemperate anger came bubbling to the surface, but sullen and defiant blasphemies, execrations that proclaimed open warfare with authority and a lasting separation from everything that was tender in men’s faith. Imprecations were contrived from every incident in the narrative of the Crucifixion. The limbs and members of the slain Christ were made the vehicle of revolting profanation. The didactic writers of the time, no less than epic poets and sprightly versifiers, give full testimony to the prevalency of the offence. The laureate, Stephen Hawes, Lydgate, Chaucer and the “moral Gower,” all are alike loud in their expression of horror and renunciation. Among the later writers replete with instances of the scandal is the epigrammatist, Robert Crowley, who enumerates a lengthy catalogue of expletives current in his day. Although by the time Crowley appeared upon the scene the language of blasphemy had become a little softened by the admixture of rather more innocent particles, as “by cock and pye,” or “by the cross of the mousefoot,” the author still finds it necessary to record a set of hard, grating oaths pronounced by the “hands,” the “feet,” and the “flesh” of Christ.

To refer, for instance, to the use of the one word “zounds!” This strikes us now-a-days as anything but a very solemn or a very momentous form of adjuration. But in unreformed England—the England that still adored the Genetrix incorrupta, and had earned among the devout the title of Our Lady’s Dower, it was absolutely impossible to surpass in blasphemy the hideous import that had been imparted to the user of the word. It was in fact nothing else than a rebellious and mutinous rendering of the once sacred oath taken by the wounds of the Redeemer. There are few who can probably now realise the conspicuous place then occupied in the Catholic worship by the legends relating to the five several incisions in the body of Christ. The monkish representations of the wounds were depicted in countless rosaries and Books of Hours. Confraternities were formed in the Church for their greater veneration. There were occasions when papal absolution was specially extended to those worshippers who paid their devotions to the wound in the side of Christ. The so-called measurement of them was even preserved in families, and was reputed to be a charm.[22] In the great northern insurrection of 1536, known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, the Five Wounds was the badge under which York and Lincoln farmers marched to avenge the spoliation of the monasteries. Such was the oath in the days of the last King Henry. Its more modern application scarcely requires illustration, but if any such were needed, we might find it in the villainous lines which Lord Byron wrote in connection with a certain trip on board the Lisbon packet.

To the present hour, in Italy, the popular oaths are in close alliance with the Romanist faith. The ordinary exclamation “Per l’ostia” is the equivalent of “God’s bread!” that so long did duty in England of the pre-Reformation era. A modern traveller has noticed how distinct an impress has been set upon Italian swearing by the particular notions of heavenly beings that are inculcated by the national creed. A workman in an art-studio was heard vociferating in such terms as “Per Christo,” “Per sangue di Christo,” “Per maladetto sangue di Christo,” whereupon the following conversation occurred:—“Do you forget who Christ is, that you thus blaspheme Him?”

“Bah!” replied the man, “I am not afraid of Him.”

“Who, then, do you fear?”

“I’m afraid of the Madonna, and not of Him.”

The fact was that the Mother of God was the sole being the mind was brought to esteem with feelings of veneration. Christ was only the bambino, or infant in arms, and nothing more.[23]

The state of feeling that still prevails in Italy should go far to explain the presence in pre-Reformation England of this widely-spread body of irreverent swearing. With the Reformation, however, the contagion was shortly to abate. The severer authors at the close of the sixteenth century do not have to complain so bitterly of these jarring elements of vituperation. In the literature of the stage there is a marked improvement: in none but the earlier of the Elizabethan comedies do the characters accentuate their meaning by reference to the grossest description of blasphemy. When expletives occur they are generally in the spirit of derision and lampoon. As the writings of the stage grew more robust, the custom altogether wore away. It may, indeed, be held that the subversion of the Catholic religion was mainly, if not entirely, accountable for the change. There is certainly a marked distinction between the oaths of the outgoing and incoming creeds. But if we have been finally spared from the ravages of the infection, we may attribute our deliverance to that reserve of reverence of which we have spoken as possessed by English laymen, and to the pious devices that were practised upon it by the inferior orders of preachers.

The position they chose to assume in combating this “fine old gentlemanly vice” is a singular feature in its history. Their method was to associate the practice of swearing with the notion of actual bodily pain being occasioned to the Saviour. They made it appear that Christ in person was put to extreme physical agony on every occasion of its committal. Not alone did they assert the wantonness and hardihood of so directly incurring the Divine displeasure, but they raised the most piteous appeal to the compassion of these benighted swearers. It was daily proclaimed from their pulpits that the profanity in this one respect of professedly Christian men had worked a sharper and more agonising martyrdom than that formerly designed by the Jews themselves. In countless broadsheets, no less than by pictorial illustration, the wounds of Christ were portrayed as hourly re-opened, and the sufferings of Golgotha renewed from day to day. The doctrine gained additional credit when transferred from the hands of monkish authors and embraced by popular and captivating pens. Stephen Hawes, own poet to carpet-knights and buckram soldiery, brought home conviction to a class of offenders that a whole consistory would not have succeeded in convincing. In a rhyming pamphlet, prefaced by a figure of the bleeding Christ, Hawes depicts with awful realism those sufferings which, as he believed, were being actually and bodily inflicted.[24] The author of ‘Bel Amour’ describes the feet and hands of Christ as literally pierced anew, and every member torn and lacerated by reason of the imprecations of unheeding Christians.

At this time of day it might be difficult to ascertain with any certainty the origin of this forced view of the iniquity of swearing. So far as concerns printed literature, we discover it for the first time in the doggerel of the poet Hawes, but it is none the less traceable to that encyclopÆdic work of the thirteenth century, the ‘Miroir du Monde.’ This takes us to the year 1279, and instances could be furnished showing its regular passage through the next three centuries, until the monkish notion is at last surrendered and delivered over to the cleansing fires of the Reformation. The last of the English authors who seems to have seriously advanced the theory is to be found in the rigid disciple of asceticism, Thomas Becon.

Becon was a man who, throughout a devout and severe life, had set himself sternly to the task of rebuking the immoderate lawlessness of the orders among which he lived. The rustic usage of collecting round the village tavern to celebrate the Sabbath in sport and holiday was one particularly repellant to the mind of Becon, and held by him to be the mainspring of all the evils that ravaged the country-side. The fore part of the day having been devoted to the services of the Church, it was usual for a time of high festival to succeed the morning’s austerities. Noon discovered all the grown men of the village assembled round the vintner’s door and partaking of the ale-house hospitalities. Here feats of rude strength were performed, wrestlers practised their throws, and sturdy fellows played bouts at quarter-staff. Foot-races were run upon the greensward for wholesome wagers of barley-cake, and games of hazard were conducted under the shelter of the ivy-bush at the publican’s threshold. Bets were staked, dice were rattled, and yokels learned to place the dues of the harvest-field upon the fortunes of the winning or losing colour. When, therefore, after earnest and fruitless entreaty, the good Becon rushed into print and produced his learned ‘Invective,’ he did not omit to visit with uncompromising censure the chartered licence of this Sunday festival.

The riot and pastime that on every seventh day had been wont to disturb the quietude of rustic life appeared to our reformer as a direct encouragement to the practice of swearing, and in fact as constituting so many training-schools for the cultivation of this unwelcome accomplishment. In the hope of rendering the habit positively forbidding to the more impressionable among his readers, he reminds them how the body of the Saviour is actually torn and mangled by reason of the imprecations hurled at him in these country sports. Oaths, he deplores, were then used in every matter of chopping and changing, of bargaining and selling, and he groans to think how the “dicer” will swear rather than passively submit to the loss of a single cast, the “carder will tear God in pieces rather than lose the profit of an ace.”

It is a feature that must be very palpable to the student of incipient literature, that when once an original and daring notion was fairly launched upon the world, it was not allowed to founder for want of repetition. The peculiar mode of thought which we have ventured to ascribe to the ‘Miroir du Monde’ in the thirteenth century, could boast a long line of exponents in the interval that closed with Thomas Becon. The writer to whose industry, rather than invention, English laymen were indebted for their acquaintance with this painful doctrine was a certain Dan Michael, described as a brother of the Cloister of Saint Austin. This person has produced a didactic treatise based upon the model of the famous ‘Miroir,’ an original from which no writer at that time felt himself justified in departing. With the subject of swearing he deals in a way that is highly painstaking. Not to mention the intricate distinctions which he treats under these several heads, we find that he has grouped the offences of the tongue into no less than eight cardinal divisions. It may be curious to record the titles as our author enumerates them, notwithstanding that it is scarcely to our purpose to follow him through the niceties he has created. The branches of the subject, according to his classification, would therefore seem to be: “ydelnesse,” “yelpinge,” “bloudynge,” “todiazinge,” “stryfinge,” “grochynge,” “wyÞstondinge,” and lastly “blasfemye.” So far as we have mastered the system of Dan Michael we are driven to the conclusion that the practice of swearing, as understood in the Cloister of Saint Austin, was, save for the outward distinction of dress, much the same as prevails in the later world. “For there are some,” says he of the cloister, “so evil taught that they are able to say nothing without swearing. Some swear as if smitten with sudden pain. Others swear by the sun, the moon, by the head, or by their father’s soul.”

Minute as is Dan Michael in his treatment of the subject of abuse, his elaborations are possibly surpassed by the next competitor for moralistic fame. Robert of BrunnÉ, who produced a similar work in the year 1303, availed himself largely of the other’s labours, while he enriched his collections with recitals of wrong-doing from his own exclusive stores. From the “Handlyng Sinne,” as the production is called, one may gather considerable insight into the state of prejudice existing at the time. The neighbours tell one another good stories in church time, and inquire during the sermon where they can get the best ale. The monks have become so luxurious that they refuse to shave their heads and have commenced to array themselves in fine clothes. The king’s courts are crowded with supplicating suitors, craving for redress from the extortions of trustees and executors, and yielding themselves victims to the falsity of the men of law. Swearing, at that time, would seem to be no longer the prerogative of laymen, but even to have become the privilege of learned clerks.

To depict what, from this author’s point of view, were the fruits and consequences of blasphemy, BrunnÉ enters into a narrative describing the Mother of God presenting the bleeding Jesus to the gaze of the rich man Dives. The latter inquires the reason for the Child being gashed with wounds. In reply the Virgin points out in terms of keen resentment the injuries inflicted upon the Infant by the swearing of Dives and his associates. The doctrine of the ‘Miroir’ is then introduced in full to demonstrate the infamy and inhumanity of the practice, the whole concluding with a promise of repentance on the part of the sinful man. This fable is only one among many others that were narrated with a view to curbing the propensities of blaspheming swearers. The work that contains it met with general circulation at the commencement of the fourteenth century, but that the spread of the iniquity was not sensibly abated we may infer from other sources of information we have mentioned.[25] In 1544, the evil was set forth in the light of a national grievance, and was paraded in a broadsheet published in that year entitled a “Supplycacion to Kynge Henry the Eyght.”

Such, then, was the ponderous metal that passed current as the swearing of pre-Reformation England. These verbal projectiles were sometimes moulded, however, of a lighter calibre, and when employed in the talk of priests or women, were so nicely rounded off as to incur little of theological displeasure. Chaucer’s people, in particular, are very punctilious in the propriety of their oaths; good Sir Thopas swearing mildly “by ale and bread,” and Madame Eglantine naming holy Saint Eligius as the patron of her vows—

“There was also a nonne, a prioresse,
That of hire smyling was ful symple and coy,
Hire grettest oath was but by St. Eloy.”

In much the same way did princes and dignitaries of the land single out some swearing cognizance that might befriend them in the everlasting conflict between lies and honesty. Edward I. sanctified his oaths by the mention of a brace of milk-white swans, and whoever will consult St. Palaye will find that the peacock and the pheasant entered largely into the codes of chivalry as bearing witness to the truth of a statement. Edward III. followed the lead of his grandsire in the selection of his gage of testimony. At the festival held in 1349 to celebrate the creation of the Order of the Garter, his cognizance was the swan, adorned, moreover, with the swearing motto: “Haye! Haye! the Whyte Swan! by Godde’s soule I am thy man.”

The tradition that St. Paul was the saint that Richard III. was wont to conjure with, has found expression in the tragedy of Shakespeare. Faithful to the popular notions of the usurper’s characteristic, this form of oath has been placed upon Gloucester’s lips at each impassioned outburst. Henry V., in his wooing of Katherine, gallantly invokes St. Denis to aid him in his attempts at love-making. But the chronicler who seems positively to have had an affection for the oaths the memory of which he is recalling, is the historian BrantÔme. Upon this unimpeachable testimony we learn that the oath of Louis XI. was par la PÂque Dieu, an affirmation that Scott avails himself of in his portraiture of that monarch in ‘Quentin Durward.’ This was succeeded by the jour de Dieu of Charles VIII.; by the diable m’emporte of Louis XII., and the foi de gentilhomme of Francis I. Among the Gascon oaths of Henry IV. the most usual was ventre Saint Gris. As for Charles IX., adds BrantÔme, he swore in all fashions, and always like a sergeant who was leading a man to be hanged.[26]The question has frequently been asked who was intended by the cognomen Saint Gris? The answer accorded by Le Duchat, a savant learned in such matters, is that Saint Francis d’Assise was the person indicated. It is true that Saint Francis was ceint by a hempen girdle, and, moreover, was clad in a habit of gris. But there nevertheless seems no reason to suppose that any individual personage was suggested, or, indeed, as has been stated, that the oath was of a Huguenot character. Says M. Charles Rozan,[27] who has had occasion to refer to this subject, Saint Gris is purely a creature of fancy, and was constituted a patron of drinkers, as St. LÂche was a patron of idlers and St. Nitouche of hypocrites.

The oath of William Rufus, per vultum de Lucca, has raised conjectures as to its probable signification. The literal meaning, “by Saint Luke’s face,” being rejected as not very intelligible, there remain two distinct explanations: one that it referred to the face of Christ as painted by St. Luke, the other that the portrait of Christ as preserved in the cathedral church at Lucca is the object intended. To support the first derivation, credence must be given to the legend which places the apostle among the artist craftsmen of JudÆa, and has enshrined him as the patron saint of all workers in the arts. On the other hand, there has reposed for some centuries at Lucca a miraculous crucifix, famous alike for the marvels it has seen and accomplished. The Tuscan people set great store by the possession of this relic, and have engraved a representation of it upon their coins. The inscription upon the Tuscan florin, “Sanctus vultus de Lucca,” would seem, therefore, to be identical with the expletive of William Rufus.

We have seen how the occupants of the throne have usually comported themselves in the matter of oaths, but there is one recorded instance of Plantagenet royalty having created a singular precedent. If any man can be said to have ever had cause for swearing, Henry VI. might be described as being that individual. It is stated, however, by contemporaries who had opportunities for conversing with this king, and by whom it is given as a somewhat remarkable fact, that he was never known to swear under the greatest provocation.

The adage that enjoins us to repeat “no scandal about Queen Elizabeth” should dispose us to deal lightly with any verbal excesses committed by the virgin queen. It would appear, however, that the moral atmosphere of her court, despite the intellect and talent that adorned it, was not so refined or particular but that the sovereign and the ladies over their breakfasts of steaks and beer could ring out exclamations that to a later generation might appear of rather an astounding character.[28] To turn for comparison to the era of the next female majesty, it is questionable whether even Sarah Jennings, with all her power of abuse, would not have taken exception to the flavour of some of the Elizabethan adjectives.

A story is told of Edward VI., that at the time of arriving at the kingly dignity he gave way to a torrent of the most sonorous oaths. The pastors and masters charged with the well-being of the royal youth could not but stare in blank astonishment at the conduct of one so well nurtured as the child of Anne Boleyn. It transpired, however, that the young king had been given to believe by one of his associates that language of the kind was dignified and becoming in the person of a sovereign. Edward was asked to name the preceptor who had so ably supplemented the course of the royal education. This he instantly and innocently did, and was not a little surprised at the severe whipping that was administered to the delinquent.[29]

The predicament in which the royal child was placed is similar to that which once befel a clerical gentleman while travelling on mule-back across Syria. The Syrian muleteers are, it seems, accustomed to urge onward their beasts with the shout of “Yullah!” or “Bismillah!” and it was under the escort of these shouting and belabouring drivers that the traveller made his way into the town of Beyrout. His friends naturally inquired of him what progress he had made in Arabic, and in reply he told them he had only acquired two words, bakhshish for a present, and Yullah! for go-ahead. He was asked if he had used the latter word much on his way. Certainly, he said, he had used it all the way. “Then, your reverence,” replied his friend, “you have been swearing all the way through the Holy Land.”