26 FEBRUARY 1910, Page 18

"PUMPERNICKEL"

[To THE EDITOR OP TICE "SPECTATOR."] Sra,—This name for wholemeal rye bread, associated especially with Westphalia, was in use in Germany and well known in England long before the time of the Napoleonic invasions. The "Oxford Dictionary" has a quotation for the word as early as the year 1756. We are told in Nugent's "Grand Tour" that this German black bread was called by the people of the country Pompernickel. It has

long been supposed that this name is due to the French phrase "Bon pour Nicole." The story to which Mrs. Radcliffe Cooke refers in your last issue is told in a letter dated l743 which is quoted in Lord Mahon's "History of England," Vol. V., Appendix :—

"Bon paw Nicole' est une histoire qu'on fait d'un Francois is Hanovre qui ne pouvait pas trouver dans ce pays du pain inangeable, et en ayant fait apporter du meilleur il dit, 'Bon your Nicole,' son cheval 11, qui il le donna."

In the same year 1743 a satirical print appeared in London, in which the British lion is represented as lamenting that he is " Starv'd on Bon pour Nicole" (see British Museum, Satirical Print, No. 2,584). It appears from this that the

subject of German black bread had political significance in the middle' of the eighteenth as in the first decade of the twentieth century. But the above derivation of the German word is-not an etymology; it is merely a bit of witticism due to the learned Sclruppius, who died in the year 1661. The German word Pumpernickel (=Westphalian black bread) is really only a transferred use of the older word Pumpernickel (= a rougir country bumpkin). See Weigand's German

Dictionary (1878).—I am, Sir, &c., A. L. MAYHEw.

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