The immense
popularity of this poem we gather from many evidences--from none more
clearly than from this. 'Chanticleer' is the name of the cock, and
'Bruin' of the bear in the same poem. [Footnote: See Genin, _Des
Variations du Langage Francais_, p.12] These have not made fortune to
the same extent of actually putting out of use names which before
existed, but contest the right of existence with them.
Occasionally a name will embody and give permanence to an error; as
when in 'America' the discovery of the New World, which belonged to
Columbus, is ascribed to another eminent discoverer, but one who had no
title to this honour, even as he was entirely guiltless of any attempt
to usurp it for himself. [Footnote: Humboldt has abundantly shown this
(_Kosmos_, vol. ii. note 457). He ascribes its general reception to its
introduction into a popular work on geography, published in 1507. The
subject has also been very carefully treated by Major, _Life of Prince
Henry the Navigator_, 1868. pp. 382-388] Our 'turkeys' are not from
Turkey, as was assumed by those who so called them, but from that New
World where alone they are native. This error the French in another
shape repeat with their 'dinde' originally 'poulet _d'Inde_,' or Indian
fowl. There lies in 'gipsy' or Egyptian, the assumption that Egypt was
the original home of this strange people; as was widely believed when
they made their first appearance in Europe early in the fifteenth
century. That this, however, was a mistake, their language leaves no
doubt; proclaiming as it does that they are wanderers from a more
distant East, an outcast tribe from Hindostan.
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