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The name of Antwerp denotes the town built at a "wharf"; but it sounds very much like the Flemish handt werpen, "hand-throwing": "hence arose the legend of the giant who cut of the hands of those who passed his castle without paying him black-mail, and threw them into the Scheldt."
There was risk of "her'ship"* from the neighbouring mountains, indeed, but the awful name of the Duke of Argyle would be a great security, and a trifle of black-mail would, David was aware, assure his safety.
It was the stronghold of a chief popularly known in his day as Johnnie Armstrong.* He was a mighty freebooter in the time of James V., and the terror of his name is said to have extended as far as Newcastle-upon-Tyne, between which town and his castle on the Esk he was accustomed to levy black-mail, or "protection and forbearance money," as it was called.
This species of black-mail is not so uncommon as it would seem, even the fathers of young and prepossessing girls are partners in these affairs. As a fact there is nothing that devilish ingenuity can devise to entice men and women into committing every kind of crime that is not practiced by the blackmailers of this city, and many are the fish that are landed and great the booty that is secured.
Then the vast swindles which now, from time to time, disgrace our cities, will be unheard of. No voting of public money that, on its way to some city improvement, falls into the pockets of those who voted it. No courts of Oyer and Terminer, at vast expense to the people. No empanelling of juries to inquire into theft, arson, murder, slander, and black-mail.
This forced many of the inhabitants into contracts of black-mail with Fergus Mac-Ivor, which not only established him their protector, and gave him great weight in all their consultations, but, moreover, supplied funds for the waste of his feudal hospitality, which the discontinuance of his pay might have otherwise essentially diminished.
And then he upbraided my father that he was under his banner, and paid him tribute; and my father was in a towering passion, for Bailie Macwheeble, who manages such things his own way, had contrived to keep this black-mail a secret from him, and passed it in his account for cess-money.
Experienced New Yorkers need not be told that there has existed among us for years a class of individuals whose only source of revenue is black-mail. Ever on the qui vive for real scandal or its counterfeit presentment, these cormorants levy tribute upon both sexes.
It belonged, they said, to a rich up-town family that the girl was trying to black-mail. But I don't see how that could be." "The child isn't about here?" "Oh dear, no! If it was, it would have been found long before this, for the police are hunting around sharp. If it's all as they say, she's got it hid somewhere else." While Mrs.
The villages are not large or numerous, but widely spread, consisting generally of conical grass huts, while others are gable-ended, after the coast-fashion a small collection of ten or twenty comprising one village. Over these villages certain headmen, titled Phanze, hold jurisdiction, who take black-mail from travellers with high presumption when they can.
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