"AULD NICK."

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 454, 6 April 1912, Page 3

"AULD NICK."

HIS RISE AND PROGRESS

The phrase "Old Nick," used as a analogous synonym for the fiend, ha: a history at the back of it. It has very commonly been assumed that this is a survival of the Old English "nicer," a mischievous waterdemon, Icel. "nykr" (Ger. "nix"); Samuel Butler even thought that it was Nick Machiavel. as a byword foi evil cunning, who "gave his name tc our Old Nick" ("Hudibras," pt. iii canto i). But the origin is even more remote and curious. It seems to have arisen, strange to say, out of an exaggerated view of the sternei aspect of the most popular saint of the Middle Ages—St. Nicholas (Bishop of Mysa in the fourth century). Owing to his extraordinary piety ir infancy Nicholas had been adopted as th.2 patron saint of children. Th< pretty legend which told how the good Bishop stealthily flung a purse of gold through a window en three successive occasions, in order to provide a marriage portion for the three fair daughters of a poverty-stricken gentleman in his native city, was so widely current that parents in later times pretended that the little presents which they provided for their :hildren at Christmas time had been left by St. Nicholas (or Nicklas), who had popped it through the windows during the night. The perenlial popularity of Santa Glaus (i.e., Klaus, 'Klas, the mutilated remnant of Nikolaus) as the unseen giver o'. Christmas gifts still keeps his memory green.

Fathers and mothers, thus finding a useful ally in St. Nicholas in encouraging youthful virtue, after g time came to the judicious conclusion that the patron saint of childhood ought properly to be a terroi to evil-doers as well as a rewarder of them that do well. Accordingly they provided him with a rod to be used when necessary. Pope Hildebrand, writing nine hundred years ago mentions that parents on Christmas Eve used to give their childrei various little presents, such as rat ties, boxes, apples, nuts, and the like, and that a rod was generally provided in addition that they might the more easily be kept in order xorn the fear of punishment ("plerumque virga additur ut metu castigationis eo facilius regnenter—Pes;um Nativitatis Christi," sec. 8). A.t first the kindly but secret benefactor, he says, was feigned to he the Christ-child Himself. Afterwards St. Nicholas was assigned to him as his attendant or servant, .by way of foil or contrast, to play the sterner part of castigator. The rod which he carried quite altered his character. ' He was probably represented as having i blackened face, like Knecht Ruperecht, and he might even bear ofl laughty children in his pannier to some doom of dreadful vagueness. We can imagine what fear the threat 'St. Nicholas is coming !" would strike into the hearts of the reprooates of the nursery. French nurses still tell their charges that he brings St. Flogger (St. Fouettard) with him as his companion. In this way Nficholas would come to be an object }f dread, almost equivalent to a bogey, ready to carry away and punish bad children. Indeed, De Quincey mentions that an appeal to Niccolo is (or was) in the South of France a common nursery artifice for alarmng refractory infants. Prom this grim presentiment of Nicholas as an agent of retribution, he seems to lave degenerated imperceptibly into a kind of hobgoblin. When we find that this nursery word for the bogey man was similarly used in Scotland lormerly as a name for the Devil in the form of "Auld Nichol," we can nave no hesitation in recognising here the origin of our vulgar expression, 'Old Nick." Allan Ramsay, writing in 1719, says—

Fa use flattery aane but fools will tickle

That gars me hate it like auld Nicol —Epistle to Arbuthnot.

Nickel is used similarly in German for goblin or devil. In Sweden a worthless ore which yielded no metal tsed to be called "Kupfer-nickel" ;or '"Kupfer-nicol," 1725), i.e., "cop-per-demon," whence comes our "nickel" as a name,for a well-known base motal, as if produced by the mocking imps of the mine. The saintly and kindly old Bishop of Myra has fallen on evil days when his name is so maligned in popular usage as to become a synonym for :he Prince of Evil.—The Rev. Dr. Smythe Palmer, in the "Nineteenth Century,"