y trace the same progress in 'churl', 'clown', 'antic',
and in numerous other words. The intrusive meaning might be likened in
all these cases to the egg which the cuckoo lays in the sparrow's nest;
the young cuckoo first sharing the nest with its rightful occupants, but
not resting till it has dislodged and ousted them altogether.

{Sidenote: '_Gossip_'}

I will illustrate by the aid of one word more this part of my subject. I
called your attention in my last lecture to the true character of
several words and forms in use among our country people, and claimed for
them to be in many instances genuine English, though English now more
or less antiquated and overlived. 'Gossip' is a word in point. I have
myself heard this name given by our Hampshire peasantry to the sponsors
in baptism, the godfathers and godmothers. I do not say that it is a
usual word; but it is occasionally employed, and well understood. This
is a perfectly correct employment of 'gossip', in fact its proper and
original one, and involves moreover a very curious record of past
beliefs. 'Gossip', or 'gossib', as Chaucer spelt it, is a compound word,
made up of the name of 'God', and of an old Anglo-Saxon word, 'sib',
still alive in Scotland, as all readers of Walter Scott will remember,
and in some parts of England, and which means, akin; they were said to
be 'sib', who are related to one another. But why, you may ask, was the
name given to sponsors? Out of this reason;--in the middle ages it was
the prevailing belief (and the Romish Church still affirms it), that
those who stood as sponsors to the same child, besides contracting
spiritual obligations on behalf of that child, also contracted spiritual
affinity one with another; they became _sib_, or akin, in _God_; and
thus 'gossips'; hence 'gossipred', an old word, exactly analogous to
'kindred'. Out of this faith the Roman Catholic Church will not allow
(unless indeed by dispensations procured for money), those who have
stood as sponsors to the same child, afterwards to contract marriage
with one another, affirming them too nearly related for this to be
lawful.

Take 'gossip' however in its ordinary present use, as one addicted to
idle tittle-tattle, and it seems to bear no relation whatever to its
etymology and first meaning. The same three steps, however, which we
have traced before will bring us to its present use. 'Gossips' are,
first, the sponsors, brought by the act of a common sponsorship into