Note (return) — REPLIES.

Hockey, a game played by boys with a stick bent at the end, is very likely derived from hook, an Anglo-Saxon word too. But we cannot suppose that anything else was derived from that, and especially when we come to words apparently more genuine than that. It seems natural to connect them with a hock-tide, Hoch-zeit (German), and Heoh-tid (A.-S.), a name given to more than one season when it was usual to have games and festivities. Now surely this is nothing else than high tide, a time of some high feast; as we vulgarly say, "high days and holidays." So in the Scripture, "that Sabbath day was a high day." So high Mass. We Protestants have no conception of the close connection between the superior sanctity and the superior jollity of a particular season. Among the heathen Romans, festicus is derived from festus.3 We say high romps, high jinks.