Mechanical operation of the spirit

Getting towards the end of the tale in a tub first noticed at reference 1, being just started on the second of two shorts tacked onto the end of the tale proper. Entitled as this post.

All in all a very strange book. Suffice it to say for the moment that it is hard to see how Swift survived as an ordained member of the Church of Ireland, an affiliate of our Church of England, given the sort of thing that appeared in print under or near his name. 

The present interest is the word 'pad' which crops up in a footnote to the beginning of Section 1, a passage concerning Mohamet's use of an ass to take him on a visit to Paradise, instead of a sedan chair or some other grander conveyance. A passage which present day Muslims might well find offensive. A book no doubt banned from libraries in Saudi Arabia. The footnote starts: 'England is famous for good Pads for common journys, and our Author seems here to recommend those of the Establisht Church...'. Which was rather confusing and a visit to OED was clearly called for.

Which turns out to devote about five columns to the word, arranged in five nominal and two verbal meanings. All in all, quite a mixture. Under the first nominal meaning we have toads and starfish. Under the second we have paths, tracks, roads, footpads and highwaymen. Which is where Swift must have been coming from. The third nominal meaning includes the more usual paddings, seemingly originally to do with horses and saddles.

I also learn that a pad-stool or paddock-stool is an old word for a toadstool or mushroom. While paddock, as in enclosed bit of grass, comes from somewhere entirely different. While padlock is of uncertain origin. There was some talk of padlocks being originally used to lock pads, in the sense of baskets or panniers, but talk which has not found much acceptance in the wider lexicographic community.

PS: furthermore, I now know that St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, snapped above, is one of the oldest and largest churches of Ireland and HQ of the Church of Ireland. Swift was Dean in his time. Proper Catholics have made other arrangements. There was a major reconstruction in the middle of the 19th century and it hard to tell which bits, if any, are really old. A reconstruction paid for the then head of the Guinness brewing family. A pity that I did not think to visit this cathedral in the course of one of my two or three visits to the city.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/11/another-proper-book.html.

Reference 2: A Tale of a Tub - Jonathan Swift - 1704.