German, Flemish, Dutch, Spanish, and French Schools (1854) and the
Essays on the Administrations of Great Britain (1864), written by
his lifelong friend, Sir George Cornewall Lewis. His translation
from the Icelandic of Viga Glum’s Saga appeared in 1866.
HEAD, SIR FRANCIS BOND, Bart. (1793–1875), English
soldier, traveller and author, son of James Roper Head of the
Hermitage, Higham, Kent, was born there on the 1st of January
1793. He was educated at Rochester grammar school and the
Royal Military Academy, whence in 1811 he was commissioned
to the Royal Engineers. He was for some years stationed in
the Mediterranean, and he served in the campaign of 1815,
being present at the battle of Waterloo. He went on half-pay
in 1825, when he accepted the charge of an association formed
to work the gold and silver mines of Rio de La Plata. In
connexion with this enterprise he made several rapid journeys
across the Pampas and among the Andes, his Rough Notes of
which, published in 1826, and written in a clear and spirited
style, obtained for him the name of “Galloping Head.” On
his return in 1827, he became involved in a controversy with
the directors of his company, and in defence of his conduct he
published Reports of the La Plata Mining Association (London,
1827). He was soon afterwards restored to the active list of
the army as a major unattached, mainly owing to his efforts
to introduce the South American lasso into the British service
for auxiliary draught. In 1830 he published a life of Bruce,
the African traveller, and in 1834 Bubbles from the Brunnens
of Nassau, by an Old Man. In 1835 he was knighted, and in
the following year created a baronet. In 1835 he was appointed
lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, and in this capacity he
had to deal with a political situation of great difficulty, being
called upon in 1837 to suppress a serious insurrection. Shortly
afterwards, in consequence of a dispute with the home government,
he resigned his post and returned to England, via New
York (see Quarterly Review, vols. 63-64). Thereafter he devoted
himself to writing, chiefly for the Quarterly Review, and to hunting.
He rode to hounds until he was seventy-five. In 1869 Sir Francis
Head was made a privy councillor. He died on the 20th of July
1875, at Duppas Hall, Croydon.
Head was the author of a considerable number of works, chiefly of travel, written in a clever, amusing and graphic fashion, and displaying both acute observation and genial humour. His principal works, beside those mentioned above, and a narrative of his Canadian administration (1839), were The Emigrant (1846); Highways and Dryways, the Britannia and Conway Tubular Bridges (1849); Stokers and Pokers, a sketch of the working of a railway line (1849); The Defenceless State of Great Britain (1850); A Faggot of French Sticks (1852); A Fortnight in Ireland (1852); Descriptive Essays (1856); comments on Kinglake’s Crimean War (1853); The Horse and his Rider (1860); The Royal Engineer (1870); and a sketch of the life of Sir John Burgoyne (1872).
His brother, Sir George Head (1782–1855), was educated at the Charterhouse. In 1808 he received an appointment in the commissariat of the British army in the Peninsula, where he was a witness of many exciting scenes and important battles, of which he gave an interesting account in “Memoirs of an Assistant Commissary-General” attached to the second volume of his Home Tour, published in 1837. In 1814 he was sent to America to take charge of the commissariat in a naval establishment on the Canadian lakes, and he subsequently held appointments at Halifax and Nova Scotia. Some of his Canadian experiences were narrated by him in Forest Scenery and Incidents in the Wilds of North America (1829). In 1831 he was knighted.
He published in 1835 A Home Tour through the Manufacturing Districts of England, and in 1837 a sequel to it, entitled A Home Tour through various parts of the United Kingdom. Both works are amusing and instructive, but his Rome, a Tour of many Days, published in 1849, is somewhat dull and tedious. He also translated Historical Memoirs of Cardinal Pacca (1850), and the Metamorphoses of Apuleius (1851).
HEAD (in O. Eng. héafod; the word is common to Teutonic
languages; cf. Dutch hoofd, Ger. Haupt, generally taken to be
in origin connected with Lat. caput, Gr. κεφαλή), the upper
portion of the body in man, consisting of the skull with its
integuments and contents, &c., connected with the trunk by
the neck (see Anatomy, Skull and Brain); also the anterior
or fore part of other animals. The word is used in a large
number of transferred and figurative senses, generally with
reference to the position of the head as the uppermost part,
hence the leading, chief portion of anything.
HEAD-HUNTING, or Head-Snapping, as the Dutch call it,
a custom once prevalent among all Malay races and surviving
even to-day among the Dyaks (q.v.) of Borneo and elsewhere.
Martin de Rada, provincial of the Augustinians, reported its
existence in Luzon (Philippine Islands) as early as 1577. The
practice is believed to have had its origin in religious motives,
the worship of skulls being universal among the Malays. Severe
repressive measures have led to its decrease. Among the
Igorrotes all that remains is the dance, accompanied by singing,
around the bare pole on which the head was formerly fixed.
With the Ilongotes a bridegroom must bring his bride a number
of heads, those of Christians being preferred. The chief examples
of head-hunters are the Was, a hill-tribe on the north-eastern
frontier of India, and the Nagas and Kukis of Assam.
See Bock, Headhunters of Borneo (1881); W. H. Furness, Home Life of Borneo Head-hunters (Philadelphia, 1902); T. C. Hodson, “Head-hunting in Assam,” in Folk-Lore, xx. 2. 132.
HEALTH, a condition of physical soundness or well-being,
in which an organism discharges its functions efficiently; also
in a transferred sense a state of moral or intellectual well-being
(see Hygiene, Therapeutics and Public Health). “Health”
represents the O. Eng. hælth, the condition or state of being hál,
safe or sound. This word took in northern dialects the form
“hale,” in southern or midland English hole, hence “whole,”
with the addition of an initial w, as in “whoop,” and in the
pronunciation of “one.” “Hail,” properly an exclamation of
greeting, good health to you, hence, to greet, to call out to,
is directly Scandinavian in origin, from Old Norwegian heill,
cognate with the O. Eng. hál, used also in this sense. “To heal”
(O. Eng. hælan), to make in sound health, to cure, is also cognate.
Drinking of Healths.—The custom of drinking “health” to the living is most probably derived from the ancient religious rite of drinking to the gods and the dead. The Greeks and Romans at meals poured out libations to their gods, and at ceremonial banquets drank to them and to the dead. The Norsemen drank the “minni” of Thor, Odin and Freya, and of their kings at their funeral feasts. With the advent of Christianity the pagan custom survived among the Scandinavian and Teutonic peoples. Such festal formulae as “God’s minne!” “A bowl to God in Heaven!” occur, and Christ, the Virgin and the Saints were invoked, instead of heathen gods and heroes. The Norse “minne” was at once love, memory and thought of the absent one, and it survived in medieval and later England in the “minnying” or “mynde” days, on which the memory of the dead was celebrated by services and feasting. Intimately associated with these quasi-sacrificial drinking customs must have ever been the drinking to the health of living men. The Greeks drank to one another and the Romans adopted the custom. The Goths pledged each other with the cry “Hails!” a greeting which had its counterpart in the Anglo-Saxon “waes hael” (see Wassail). Most modern drinking-usages have had their equivalents in classic times. Thus the Greek practice of drinking to the Nine Muses as three times three survives to-day in England and elsewhere. The Roman gallants drank as many glasses to their mistresses as there were letters in each one’s name. Thus Martial:
| “Six cups to Naevia’s health go quickly round, |
The English drinking phrase—a “toast,” to “toast” anyone—not older than the 17th century, had reference at first to this custom of drinking to the ladies. A toast was at first invariably a woman, and the origin of the phrase is curious. In Stuart days there appears to have been a time-honoured custom of putting a piece of toast in the wine-cup before drinking, from a fanciful notion that it gave the liquor a better flavour. In the Tatler No. 24 the connexion between this sippet of toast and the fair one pledged is explained as follows: “It happened that on a publick day” (speaking of Bath in Charles II.’s reign)
