Heathen Names for Days of the Week and Months

54 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION The cohesive force is to be found neither in belief nor in action , but in the desire to be exposed to all truth, in the common search for light, for further knowledge of God's will.1 HEATHEN NAMES FOR DAYS OF THE WEEK AND MONTHS By Henry J. Cadbury In an article on "Our Christened Week," The Friend (London), 2 mo. 10, 1928, attention has been called to the apparent lack of any study of the history of the Quaker testimony against the heathen names for the days of the week and months. The earliest full presentation of the subject which that article mentions is an epistle of the London Meeting for Sufferings of the sixth day of the Seventh Month, 1751, issued in connection with the change of calendar adopted by Parliament that year from Old Style to New Style for Great Britain and her dependencies. The epistle was repeatedly excerpted and otherwise used. It may be seen, apparently in full, in Advices and Rules agreed to by the Yearly Meeting of Friends in Ireland, Dublin, 1811, pp. 33-38. But it is almost inconceivable that the earlier Friends did not write tracts on the subject. It was possible for the Epistle of London Yearly Meeting in 1697 to call it " our ancient testimony." And a similar testimony on the part of the precursors of Quakerism is quite likely. Richard Baxter is quoted as saying, " It were to be wished that the custom were changed of using the names of week-days which idolaters honored their idols with—as Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and the rest. And so of the months." Since this Quaker habit of speech has persevered much longer in parts of America than in England it would perhaps be appropriate for the American Bulletin to receive suggestions or references to other or earlier expositions of this testimony. And beside the precept, the practice of Friends and their forerunners in this regard could doubtless be discovered from their letters. The preceding paragraphs were already in type when it became possible to carry back the evidence two or three steps further. 1 An article by Allen C. Thomas, " Congregational or Progressive Friends : a Forgotten Episode in Quaker History " in the Bulletin, 10 (1921), pp. 21-32, deals collectively with about ten such groups, including the one at Longwood. It is the only full study of this obscure chapter in Quakerism. To his bibliography we may add an article in The Friend (Philadelphia), 22 (1849) : 327 f. Ed. HEATHEN NAMES FOR DAYS AND MONTHS55 An appeal was made to A. Neave Brayshaw's unusual knowledge of early Quaker literature for some prior mention of the subject and was not made in vain. He sent references to three passages that he had noted in the collection of George Fox's doctrinal works, Gospel-Truth Demonstrated, 1706 folio, pp. 797, 983 ff., 1075 f. ( = The Works of George Fox, Phila. and N. Y., 1831, Vol. 6, pp. 104, 347 ff., 467 f.) As the first passage is brief and the third is practically a repetition of the second, it will be sufficient to describe here the second. It is a broadside issued originally in 1687, entitled How God's People are not to take the Names of the Heathen Gods in their Mouths, nor follow their Customs, nor learn their Wales, etc. By G. F. It contains beside quotation and application of Jeremiah 10 and other Old Testament passages (Exod. 23, 13; Zach. 13, 2; Hos. 2, 17) a statement of the origin from the pagan Saxons of the names of the days and a complete series of etymologies for these and for the names of the months. The etymologies are not quite the same as in the London Epistle of 1751 which gives as its authority " Verstigan, and Sheringham," i.e., probably Richard Verstegan, Antiquitates Belgicae, Amsterdam, 1700 (issued in Dutch at Brussels in 1646) and Robert Sheringham (1602-1678) De Anglorum gentis disceptatio , etc., Cambridge, 1670. But Fox evidently had relied on the learning of some etymological authority, possibly as in other cases with the assistance of some of his more learned friends...