INTRODUCTION lxi

seems to point to a tribe of Anglian settlers, Ruskings, of whom this village was originally the tún, or homestead.¹ Ruskin himself objected both to “Rough skin” and “Red skin,” and hoped that the learned would let him claim relationship with St. George through the Saxon Kin.² Another etymology would, however, have pleased him, for it connects the name with one of his favourite animals, the squirrel. In a letter of A.D. 1385 mention is made of “two furs of rossel mixed with ruskyn,” and it has been ascertained that rossel was the fur of the squirrel in spring, and ruskyn the fur of the same animal in the winter.³

On the side of his paternal grandmother, Catherine Tweddale, Ruskin was at any rate pure Scottish, and it is to her, as he says, that belongs “what dim gleam of ancestral honour I may claim for myself.”⁴ He was thus connected with two great Galloway families, the Agnews and the Adairs; some particulars of them are given below, pp. 602, 604.

Thus much, then, of Ruskin’s ancestry. Of his father and mother, there is little to add to that which he himself has told in Præterita, and which is incidentally revealed in the correspondence and diaries contained in the present edition of his Works. A few further remarks will be found in the Introduction to Vol. XXXVI.

Of the years of Ruskin’s childhood and boyhood (1819-1836), Præterita is again the fullest record (pp. 11-184). These years are covered in the Introduction to Vol. I. pp. i.-xxxiv.; and his prose works written before 1836 are printed in that volume. The story of his childhood and youth is told again by himself unconsciously in the Early Poems: see Vol. II. pp. 253-516. It may be noted that the certificates of his birth and baptism are now in the Ruskin Museum at

¹ Mr. Wedderburn remembers being present at the Winter Assizes held at Hertford on February 8, 1887, when “James Ruskin,” a labourer, was tried for theft at St. Albans, and one of the jury who tried him was “Frederick Ruskin, of Cheshunt, farmer.”

² See Fors Clavigera, Letters 24 and 30 (Vol. XXVII. pp. 417, 557). We may compare Ruskin’s “childish pleasure in the accidental resemblance to my own name in that of the architect whose opinion was first given in favour of the ancient fabric, Giovanni Rusconi” (Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. viii. § 28, Vol. X. p. 355). Another Rusconi (Carlo) translated Shakespeare’s plays into Italian prose (Padua, 1831).

³ See Dr. Reginald Sharpe’s Calendar of the MS. Letter Books at the Guildhall, Book G. p. 262 (1907), and H. T. Reilly’s Memorials of London and London Life, 1200-1500, p. 329. The name occurs also in an account of a siege of Calais in 1436 (“One Watkyn Ruskyn, a gentleman and a good spear”), in The Brut, or The Chronicles of England (in course of publication by the Early English Text Society from the Harleian MS. 53). I am indebted to Dr. Furnivall for these references.

⁴ See below, p. 607.

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