Negus

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Negus (Ge'ez: ነጉሥ, nəgūś IPA: [nɨguːɬ]; Amharic: nigūs^?; cf. Tigrinya: ነጋሲ^?negus) is a royal title in the Ethiopian Semitic languages. It denotes a monarch such as the Bahri Negus of the Medri Bahri in pre-1890 Eritrea and the Negus in pre-1974 Ethiopia. The title has subsequently been used to translate the words "king" or "emperor" in Biblical and other literature.

Overview

The word negus is a noun derived from the ancient language Ge'ez verbal root N - G - Ś meaning "to reign."

In more recent times, it was used as an honorific negus for life title bestowed on governors of the most important provinces (kingdoms): Gojjam, Welega and the seaward kingdom (where the variation Bahr Negasi 'King of the Sea', was the ancient title of the ruler of present-day central Eritrea) and later Shewa.

Both uses and the imperial dignity would meet in the person of a regional prince, Lij Kassa Hailu, the third youngest son of Dejazmach Hailu Wolde-Giyorgis, Governor of Qwara province, by his second wife Woizero Attitaggab. He rebelled against Empress Menen and her son Ras Ali II the Viceroy, in 1845 and spent the next nine years alternating between rebellion and submission until he was proclaimed as Negus at Amba Chera, (19 September 1854), and after the Battle of Derasge proclaimed himself Emperor 8 February 1855 and was crowned as Tewodros II, at Derasge Maryam the next day.

Negus (surname)

Negus can be a surname. For other meanings, see negus (disambiguation).

Negus (drink)

Negus is the name of a drink made of wine, most commonly port, mixed with hot water, spiced and sugared.

History

According to Malone (Life of Dryden, Prose Work. i - p. 484) this drink was invented by Col. Francis Negus (d.1732), a British courtier (commissioner for executing the office of Master of the Horse from 1717 to 1727, then Master of the Buckhounds). In

Negus is referred to in Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë, when Jane drinks it on arrival at Thornfield Hall; in Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, when Catherine is given it at Thrushcross Grange by the Lintons; in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol during the party at Fezziwig's, in David Copperfield, "Dombey and Son", The Pickwick Papers and Bleak House; and in Harriette Wilson's Memoirs and Grace Dalrymple Elliott's Journal of My Life During the French Revolution. Anthony Trollope in The Small House at Allington portrays the rustic Earl de Guest's violent disgust at the thought of the drink. Negus makes a number of appearances as a tonic in The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy, in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels, and Boswell refers to it repeatedly in his London Journal. It is said to be added to a white soup in P.D. James' Death Comes to Pemberley. In A Death in the Small Hours by Charles Finch, the character Frederick Ponsonby claims that a glass of hot negus "settles the stomach wonderfully." In W.M. Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Ensign Stubble "never took his eyes off her except when the negus came in". In Diana Gabaldon's Written in My Heart's Own Blood Young Mr. Bartram to Clare (Beauchamp) Fraser (Grey) "May I offer you some refreshment Lady John? I have some iced negus in the house." Arthur Conan Doyle has John give some negus to his sister Esther to quiet her in chapter 5 of 'The Mystery of Cloomber Hall'.