Mehercle and Herc(v)lvs

Extract

Everyone interested in Latin Etymology knows the last word on mehercle, that the old vocative of meus is prefixed to the old Second Declension form Herc(u)lus, Voc. -lě. Without discussing whether this explanation is wholly true or partly wrong, I wish here to disqualify two pieces of evidence. Both originate from a marginal annotation on Rufinus' translation of Eusebius' Church History (4, 9, 3 ‘illud mehercule magnopere curabis’) in, I think, a seventh-century English MS. These marginalia were used for the Leyden Glossary and for the common source of the E E (Épinal and Erfurt) and Corpus Glossaries. The compiler of Leid. transferred them unaltered to his pages; and in the section devoted to Rufinus glosses we find (§ 35, 19) Mehercule: mi fortis. The other compiler often recasts them for dictionary purposes. He gave this item the form Herculus: fortis (Ep. 11 A 26 = C.G.L. V. 364, 23 = Corp. H. 54). But of course the original annotation mi fortis was a mere lucky guess, and the substitution of ‘Herculus’ for Hercules was sheer ignorance.