Surname Origins, Their Source and Significations (1875)

he had been cured of the disorder,1 and no wonder that in our 'Lepers ' and 'Leppers ' the name still remains as but one more memorial of that noble mad-ness which set Christendom ablaze some six centuries ago. A term used synonymously at this time with leper is found in such an entry as 'Richard le Masele' or ' Richard le Masle,' that is, 'Measle.' Wicklyffe has the word in the case of Naaman, and also of the Samaritan leper.' Langland speaks of those who are afflicted with various ailments, and adds that they, if they

Take these myschiefs meeklike,

As mesels, and others,

Han as pleyn pardon

As the plowman hymselve.

Capgrave, too, to quote but one more instance, speaking of Deodatus, a Pope of the seventh century, says He kissed a mysel and sodeynly the mysel was whole.' Strange to say, this name also is not extinct. Our ' Badmans' are not so bad as they might seem. They, and our 'Bidmans,' are doubtless but corrupted forms of the old ' bedeman,' or ' beadman,' he who professionally invoked Heaven in behalf of his patron. It is hence we get our word 'bead,' our forefathers having been accustomed to score off the number of ayes and paternosters they said by means of these small balls strung on a thread. This practice, I need not say, is still familiar to the Romish Church.

1 1t was thus in the case of Simon the Leper of Bethany. The fact of there being a feast in his house shows that he had been cured of his disorder. None the less, however, did the surname cling to him.

2 'Go ye and tell agen to Jon those things that ye have herd and seen. Blind men seen, crokide goen, mesels ben maad clene, defe men heren,' &c. (Matt. xi., Wicklyffe.)

SURNAMES OF OFFICE.

But we have not yet done with the traces of these more distant practices. The various religious wanderers or solitary recluses, though belonging to a system long faded from our English life, find a perpetual epitaph in the directories of to-day. Thus we have still our 'Pilgrims,' or 'Pelerins' ('John Pelegrim,' A., ' William le Pelerin,' E.), as the Normans termed them. We may meet with 'Palmers' ('Hervey le Palmer,' A., 'John le Paumer,' M.) any day in the streets of our large towns, names distinctly relating the manner in which their owners have derived their title. The pilgrim may have but visited the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury; the latter, as his sobriquet proves, had, forlorn and weary, battled against all difficulties, and trod the path that led to the Holy Sepulchre

The faded palm-branch in his hand

Showed pilgrim from the Holy Land.'

The 'Pardoner,' with his pouch choked to the full ('Walter le Pardoner,' M.) with saleable indulgences, had but come from Rome. He was an itinerant retailer of ecclesiastic forgivenesses, and was as much a quack as those who still impose upon the credulity of the bucolic mind by selling cheap medicines. As Chaucer says of him

With feigned flattering and japes,

He made the parson and the peple his apes.

Hermit' I have failed to find as at present existing,

1 Pilgrims to Rome were 'Romers;' whence such an entry as 'Cristiana la Romere' (H.R.) Piers Plowman in 'Passus IV.' speaks, within eight lines, of ' religious romares' and 'Rome-runners.'