Here the interjection seems to retain somewhat of its old ceremonial significance: but when, in the ensuing scene, Mistress Quickly says, 'This is all indeede-la: but ile nere put my finger in the fire, and neede not,' there is nothing in it but the merest expletive.

200. Wa has a history much like that of la. It has changed its form in modern English to wo. Wo,' in the New Testament, as Rev. viii. 13, stands for the Greek interjection oval and the Latin vae. In the same way it is used in many passages in which the interjectional character is distinct. This word must be distinguished from woe, which is a substantive. For instance, in the phrase 'weal and woe.' And in such scriptures as Prov. xxiii. 29: 'Who hath woe? who hath sorrow?'

The fact is, that there were two distinct old words, namely, the interjection wa and the substantive woh, genitive woges, which meant depravity, wickedness, misery. Often as these have been blended, it would be convenient to observe the distinction, which is still practically valid, by a several orthography, writing the interjection wo, and the substantive woe.

This interjection was compounded with the previous one into the forms wala and walawa-a frequent exclamation in Chaucer, and one which, before it disappeared, was modified into the feebler form of wellaway. A still more degenerate variety of this form was well-a-day. Pathetic cries have a certain disposition to implicate the present time, as in woe worth the day!

The Norman cry Harow coupled with the Saxon walawa is often met with in our early literature, as 'Harrow and well away!' Faery Queene, ii. 8. 46.

201. There was yet another compound interjection made with la by prefixing the interjection ea. This was the Saxon eala;-Eala þu wif mycel ys pin geleafa,' Oh woman,

great is thy faith, Matthew xv. 28; Eala fæder Abraham, gemiltsa me,' Oh father Abraham, pity me, Luke xvi. 24.

This eala may have made it easier to adopt the French hélas, in the form alas, which appears in English of the thirteenth century, as in Robert of Gloucester, 4198, 'Alas! alas! pou wrecche mon, wuch mysaventure hap pe ybrogt in to pys stede,' Alas! alas! thou wretched man, what misadventure hath brought thee into this place?

Chaucer it is a frequent interjection.

Allas the wo, allas the peynes stronge,
That I for yow haue suffred, and so longe;
Allas the deeth, allas myn Emelye,
Allas departynge of our compaignye,

Allas myn hertes queene, allas my wyf,
Myn hertes lady, endere of my lyf.

Knight's Tale.

And in

Alack seems to be the more genuine representation of eala, which, escaping the influence of hélas, drew after it (or preserved rather?) the final guttural so congenial to the interjection. Thus the modern alack suggests an old form ealah. This interjection has rather a trivial use in the south of England, and we do not find it used with a dignity equal to that of alas, until by Sir Walter Scott the language of Scotland was brought into one literature with our own. Jeanie Deans cries out before the tribunal at the most painful crisis of the trial: Alack a-day! she never told me.' Still, the word is on the whole associated mainly with trivial occasions, and in this connection of ideas it has engendered the adjective lackadaysical, to characterise a person who flies into ecstasies too readily.

202. Pooh seems connected with the French exclamation of physical disgust: Pouah, quelle infection! But our pooh expresses an analogous moral sentiment: pooh! it's all stuff and nonsense.'

'Pooh!

'Doubt is always

Psha, Pshaw, expresses contempt. crying psha and sneering.'-Thackeray, Humourists, p. 69. Tush. Now little used, but frequent in writers of the sixteenth century, and familiar to us through the Psalter

of 1539.

Heigh ho. Some interjections have so vague, so filmy a meaning, that it would take a great many words to interpret what their meaning is. They seem as well fitted to be the echo of one thought or feeling as another; or even to be no more than a mere melodious continuance of the rhythm :—

How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
How pleasant it is to have money.
Arthur H. Clough.

This will suffice to exhibit the nature of the first class of interjections;-those which stand nearest to nature and farthest from art; those which owe least to conventionality and most to genuine emotion; those which are least capable of orthographic expression and most dependent upon oral modulation. It is to this class of interjections that the following quotation applies.

It has long and reasonably been considered that the place in history of these expressions is a very primitive one. Thus De Brosses describes them as necessary and natural words, common to all mankind, and produced by the combination of man's conformation with the interior affections of his mind.Edward B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, ch. v. vol. i. p. 166.

And this writer has produced a large collection of evidence tending to the probability that the affirmative answers aye, I (102, 205), yea, yes, are of this primitive class of words, although their forms may have been modified by admixture. of grammatical material.

likely to be the sound as the sense that gave it currency.

In

the fourteenth century, BENEDICITE had this sort of career; and it does not appear how it could have been other than a senseless exclamation from the first. It often occurs in Chaucer; and with that variety of misspelling which a degenerate word is naturally liable to, we find it written benedicitee, benediste.

The charm of this word, and its availability as an interjection, was no doubt largely due to its being in a dead. language. So Mr. Mitford tells us that the Japanese have an interjection which was originally a conglomerate of certain sacred words which they no longer understand; and that this compound interjection serves by tonal variation for all manner of occasions :-Nammiyô! nammiyô! self-depreciatory; or grateful and reverential; or expressive of conviction; or mournful and with much head-shaking; or meekly and entreatingly; or with triumphant exultation 1.

Ejaculations which once were earnest, may sink into trite and trivial expletives. The cursory conversational way in which Mon Dieu is used in France by all classes of persons, without distinction of age, sex, education, or condition, astonishes English people; not because the like is unheard in England, but because among us it is restricted both as to the persons who use it, and also as to the times and occasions of its utterance. There is no person whatever in England who uses such an exclamation when he is upon his good behaviour. In past ages we have had this interjectional habit in certain graver uses, and have not quite discarded it. In Coverdale's Translation, 1535, we read 'Wolde God that I had a cotage some where farre from folke,' which was corrected in the Bible of 1611 to this-'Oh that I had in the wilderness a

Tales of Old Japan, by A. B. Mitford, vol. ii. p. 128. Macmillan, 1871.

lodging place of wayfaring men.' Jer. ix. 2. But even the later version retained traces of this exclamatory habit which will probably be removed in our day.

205. Not only is it true that interjections are formed out of grammatical words, but also it is further true that certain grammatical words may stand as interjections in an occasional way, without permanently changing their nature. This chiefly applies to some of the more conventional colloquialisms. Perhaps there is not a purer or more condensed interjection in English literature than that INDEED in Othello, Act iii. Sc. 3. It contains in it the gist of the chief action of the play, and it implies all that the plot developes. It ought to be spoken with an intonation worthy of the diabolic scheme of Iago's conduct. There is no thought of the grammatical structure of the compound, consisting of the preposition 'in' and the substantive deed,' which is equivalent to act, fact, or reality. All this vanishes and is lost in the mere iambic disyllable which is employed as a vehicle for the feigned tones of surprise.

Iago. I did not thinke he had bin acquainted with hir.

Oth. O yes, and went betweene vs very oft.

Iago. INDEED!

Oth. Indeed? I indeed. Discern'st thou ought in that?

not honest?

Iago. Honest, my lord?

Oth. Honest? I, honest!

Is he

Thus strong passion may so scorch up, as it were, the organism of a word, that it ceases to have any of that grammatical quality which the calm light of the mind appreciates; and it becomes, for the nonce, an interjection.

206. And not only passion, but ignorance may do the like. With uneducated persons, their customary words and phrases grow to be very like interjections, especially those phrases which are peculiar to and traditional in the vocation.