If you are given to reading 19th century fiction, as Ann Crankshaw of Bangor is, you'll have noticed that detectives, suspicious husbands and the like snooped around looking for clews. Ann wants to know if clew is simply a variant spelling of clue, and would like to know a little about its history.Well, I suppose one should say that clue is a variant spelling of clew, because the latter is much older. When it first appeared in English it meant a ball (Old High German kliu) and soon it had the sense "a ball of thread". But as to the origin of the use of the word to mean something that enables on to solve a mystery, it can be traced to the story of Theseus, who went forth to kill the Minotaur, the monster who lived in the centre of the labyrinth of Crete.Theseus would not have got very far without the help of the king's daughter, Ariadne, who gave him a ball of thread to unwind as he went into the labyrinth, so that he'd be able to find his way back again. This, it is said, is how clue came to mean something that helps one to penetrate the labyrinth of a mystery.A friend who teaches in north London tells me that the latest in-word in the English of West Indian immigrant children is panic. "The black Spice Girl is panic, man": somebody very sexy.Well, it's good to know that the memory of the Greek god of nature is kept dimly alive in the school playgrounds of Brent. Pan, you may remember, had the rather nasty habit of making scary noises in lonesome places in the dead of night, and came to be regarded as the cause of sudden fright or groundless terror. Panicos is a Greek adjective meaning connected with or under the influence of Pan: when the English borrowed the word they discarded the termination.To the dusky lad. My friend asked his pupils how exactly she scared them. "She don't make you panic teacher: she make you excited, man. She is miserable (mischievous to us). She is panic." Their very own superlative, not in their parents' vocabulary - yet.Can any of my readers help Edgar Richie of Dooncree, Hettyfield, Douglas, Cork, in his search for the origin of the (obsolete?) northern expression "marriage over the tongs", one following an elopement, performed by a deposed clergyman? I have failed the man.