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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 32

X.—Buxom

X.—Buxom.

The English word buxom, like the words lust and lewd, has entirely lost its original meaning. Búhsum in Saxon is obedient, búhsumnes obedience. The letter h being very strongly or roughly aspirated, readily slipped into the sound x. We retain the word buxom only in one, and that an altered sense, a buxom lass—a stout, healthy, comely, young woman. Gray, in his "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College," applies the word to boys:—

"Theirs, buxom health and rosy face,

Wild with invention ever new,

And lively cheer, of vigour born;

The thoughtless day, the easy night,

The spirits pure, the slumbers light,

That fly th' approach of dawn."

The Tatler, No. 273, uses the word in its modern signification—"buxom and bonny dames." Búhsum is derived from beog-an, or bug-an, to bend or bow, the attitude of obedience; and the weapon bow as well as the bough of a tree have the same ety-mology. In old English the word was spelled bough-sum. Verstegan, in his "Restitution of Decayed Intelligence," explains the word thus: "Pliebleness or boughsumnesse to, wit humbly stooping or bowing down in sign of obedience." In its original sense we have the word both in the Vision of Piers Plowman and in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The former has the expres- page 34 sion, "bux-sum to the lawe," and in the Knight's Tale Chaucer says:—

And thei with humble herte, full buxumly

Kneeling upon hir (their) knees, full reverently, him thanken all—

And nearly a century later, in the Boke of St. Albans (1486), it is laid down among the qualifications of a gentilmon that he should be "buxom to Goddis bydding," i.e., obedient to God's commandments.

The following extract from Sir Francis Palgrave's History of the English Commonwealth, Vol. II., page 136, besides being in-trinsically interesting, may help us to account for the change of meaning which the word has undergone :—

"In the older marriage forms the rythm is more strongly marked than that which is now in use. According to the usage of Salisbury, the bride answered :—'I take thee, John, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold, fro' this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in hele, to be bonere and buxom (that is, obedient—Ger., biegsam) in bedde and at borde tile death us do part (if Holy Church it will ordain), and thereto I plight thee my troth.' This in fact is the wedding, from wed pledge, or sponsio, the civil ceremony to which the Church added its benediction. The penultimate clause is evidently a Christian insertion. The form was adopted with some very slight alterations in the other English dioceses. Thus, in the province of York, or to speak more correctly in the kingdom of Northumbria, the bridegroom's promise was to the following effect:—'I take thee, Alice, to be my wedded wife, to have and to holde, at bedde and borde, for fairer for fouler, for better for worse, in sicknesse in hele, tile death us do part.'"

We may fairly infer that a buxom lass was a young woman who had reached an age at which she could lawfully promise to be búh-sum—buxom—obedient; that is, a marriageable young woman, and she now enjoys the exclusive monopoly of the word, though its origin is lost sight of.

But Palgrave is incorrect in assigning the modern German word biegsam, as the equivalent of buxom—búh-sum—obedient. I am not aware of a single instance of its use in such a sense. Undoubtedly, it has the same etymology—German biegan, to bow or bend—Anglo-Saxon, beogan, to bow—but the German word in modern use for obedient is exclusively gehorsam—obedience is gehorsamkeit. In Anglo-Saxon also we have similar words—gehyrsum, obedient; gehyrsumnes, obedience; gehyrsumian, to obey. Biegsam is not even used for obsequiousness, or servile obedience. It is simply pliant, bending, supple, flexible, and so forth. If there be any nice distinction in Anglo-Saxon between gehyrsum and búhsum, I incline to think that the latter inclines more to obsequious submission than the former. Gehorsam, German; gehoorzaam, Dutch; gehyrsum, Anglo-Saxon, are all probably from the word in the respective languages for to hear or listen to; and so the three words all imply a disposition to hear or listen patiently—disposed to listen: quite as much a mark of obedience as bowing.