Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/390

esseau. According to a note supplied as an editorial explanation by Monsieur L. U. Fontaine, this word appears in the Glossary of the Norman patois to be the name of a ditch through which the over-flow on a marsh takes its course. This explanation, we perceive at a glance, does not explain much.

There is a word esseau in French which has two different, and apparently not closely connected, meanings: 1. "A small, curved hatchet"; 2. A board to cover roofs, i.e. a shingle." These definitions lend us no assistance in an attempt to interpret the Norman patois. But, assuming the word to be good, ordinary French after all, although it has not obtained admission to the dictionaries, let us apply to it the same simple mode of analysis that we have applied to the abat-cau. Considering it as a compound, "esse-eau," we have only the meaning and derivation of the first part to discover. What then is an esse? An esse, or—as it is in its abbreviated form—an ess, is, first, the name of the letter S; then it means a piece of iron, shaped like an S, such as we often see used as a clamp, to hold together weak walls; then an iron to grasp and hold stones that are being lifted; then, as an "esse d'affût," it is the fore-lock, or linch-pin, of a gun-carriage wheel, or of any truck—having, perhaps, in such uses the form of an S; then as a key for any kind of bolt; and then, a catch, or clasp—possibly also resembling an S—as used in mediæval armor to hold the helm, or beaver, to the gorget, or to the breast-plate in front.

The "flood-gate," or valve, in an abat-eau performs just this office of closing and clasping the structure that keeps out the water. It is, therefore, an "ess-eau."