Fysshers of the sea and muskel-takers. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VI. ‘NICKNAMES.’ If we may trust the accredited origin of the term nickname—viz., that it is prosthetically put for ‘an ekename,’ that is, an added name—it may seem somewhat inconsistent to entitle a special branch of my book by that which in reality embraces the whole. But I do not think I shall be misunderstood, since, whatever be the original meaning intended, the word has now so thoroughly settled down into its present sphere of verbal usefulness that it would be a matter of still more lengthened explanation if I were to put it in its more pretentious and literal sense. By ‘nickname,’ in this chapter, at any rate, I intend to take in all those fortuitous and accidental sobriquets which, once expressive of peculiar and individual characteristics, have survived the age in which they sprang, and now preserved only in the lumber-room of our directories, may be brought forth once more wherever they help to throw a brighter light upon the decayed memorials of a bygone era. It will be seen at a glance that it is no easy task that of assorting a large body of nondescript and unclassed terms, but I will do my best under pleaded indulgence. We are not without traces of this special kind of sobriquets even in the early days before the Norman Conquest was dreamt or thought of. I have already instanced the Venerable Bede as speaking of two missionaries who, both bearing the name of Hewald, were distinguished by the surnames of ‘White’ and ‘Black,’ on account of their hair partaking of those respective hues. In the ninth century, too, Ethelred, Earl of the Gaini, was styled the ‘Mucel’ or ‘Mickle’—‘eo quod erat corpore magnus et prudentiâ grandis.’ With the incoming of the Normans, however, came a great change. The burlesque was part of their nature. A vein for the ludicrous was speedily acquired. It spread in every rank and grade of society. The Saxon himself was touched with the contagion, ere yet the southern blood was infused into his veins. Equally among the high and the low did such sobriquets as ‘le Bastard,’ ‘le Rouse,’ ‘le Beauclerk,’ ‘le Grisegonel’ (Greycloke), ‘Plantagenet,’ ‘Sansterre,’ and ‘Cœur de lion’ find favour. But it did not stay here; the more ridiculous and absurd characteristics became the butt of attack. In a day when buffoonery had become a profession, when every roughly-sketched drawing was a caricature, every story a record of licentious adventure, it could not be otherwise. The only wonderment is the tame acquiescence on the part of the stigmatized bearer. To us now-a-days, to be termed amongst our fellows ‘Richard the Crookbacked,’ ‘William Blackinthemouth,’ ‘Thomas the Pennyfather’ (that is, the Miser), or ‘Thomas Wrangeservice’ (the opposite of Walter Scott’s ‘Andrew Fairservice’), would be looked upon as mere wanton insult.