ther form of _Slav_. The word
gives us an idea of the impression which the misfortunes of the Slavs
made on the people of the Middle Ages.

The words _Turk_ and _Tartar_ have almost the opposite meaning to
_slave_ when they are used in a general sense. We call an unmanageable
baby a "young Turk," and in this expression we have the idea of all
the trouble the Turks have given the people of Europe since they
swarmed in from the East in the twelfth century. The word _Turk_ in
this sense is now generally used amusingly to describe a troublesome
child; but a grown-up person with a very quick temper or very
difficult to get on with is often described also, chiefly in fun, as a
"Tartar." Tartar is the name of the race of people to which the Turks,
Cossacks, and several other peoples belong. The name by which they
called themselves was _Tatar_; but Europeans changed it to _Tartar_,
from the Latin word _Tartarus_, which means "hell." This gives us some
idea of the impression these fierce people made on mediaeval Europe--an
impression which is kept in memory by the present humorous use of the
word.

It is chiefly Eastern peoples whose names have passed into common
words meaning fierce and cruel people. Our fairy tales are full of
tales of "ogres." It is not quite certain, but it is probable that
this word comes from _Hungarian_. The chief people of Hungary are the
Magyars; but the first person who used the name _Hungarian_ in the
sense of "ogre" probably did not know this, but thought of them as
Huns, or perhaps Tartars, and therefore as very fierce, cruel people.
The first person who is known to have used it is Perrault, a French
writer of fairy tales in the seventeenth century.

The Great War has given us another of these national names used in a
new way. Many people referred to the Germans all through the war as
the "Huns." The Huns were half-savage people, who in the early Middle
Ages moved about in great hordes over Europe killing and burning. They
were at last conquered in East and West, and finally disappeared from
history. But their name remained as a synonym for cruelty. The Kaiser,
in an unfortunate speech, exhorted his soldiers to make themselves as
terrible as Huns; and when people heard of the ill-treatment of the
Belgians when their country was invaded at the beginning of the war,
they said that the Germans had indeed behaved like the Huns of long
ago. The name clung to them, and during the war, when people spoke