When anyone, after failing to get satisfaction from Annandale's or
Ogilvie's Dictionaries or the Encyclopaedia Britannica, turns to me I naturally swell a little. But we must move cautiously. I am asked for the true derivation of Hogmanay. Well, the true derivation of Hogmanay is—when I come to think of it, what is it ? Now the essential thing in life is not to know things oneself—there are far too many things to know—but to know where to find them when you want them. Actually I 'don't in the least want to know the derivation of Hogmanay. I don't mind if it has no derivation. It seems to have been some barbarous festival observed to this day by Picts and Scots. But I do, of course, want to be. obliging, and if anyone does, quite unintelligibly, desire to know what Hogmanay is derived from I am anxious to help. But the plain answer, so far as I can discover, is that nobody knows. The Oxford English Dictionary—the twelve-volume edition— must remain the highest authority till Cambridge rises to its responsibilities and turns out something better, and the O.E.D. on this point can do no better than endeavour to conceal its ignorance. Three and a half inches of minute print say noth- ing more than that Hogmanay comes from an old French word in which gui—mistletoe—is one constituent. There are some things that are best left severely alone, and I am convinced that Hogmanay is one of them. " Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring." I am against deep drinking.
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