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achievement where they are due." These words, coming from so accomplished a scholar as Mr. Gladstone, are indeed comforting to all true lovers of Scott.

I do not know if any of your readers have ever noticed that Mrs. Browning, in her splendid Vision of Poets, in which she marshals the noble army of laurelled bards and causes them to pass before our eyes, each one introduced by a few lines of appropriate and happy description, finds no place for Scott, nor does she make the smallest allusion to him.

Notwithstanding, however, the prevailing disloyalty to the illustrious Scottishman, I am sure there is still a remnant left in the land who have not bowed the knee to the false deity of sensationalism, and whose feelings towards Walter Scott may best be expressed in the words of Tennyson's artist-lover, "My first, last love; the idol of my youth; the darling of my manhood." Perhaps I may be allowed to finish the quotation, and, remembering the wonder and delight with which some of us first read Scott's poems and romances in our sweet hour of prime, add, "the most blessed memory of mine age."

JONATHAN BOUCHIER.

["Amen!" to MR. BOUCHIER'S quoted words. The admirers of Scott, however, need not fear for the great object of their admiration. Mrs. Browning omitted Scott from her Vision of Poets. So Addison left Shakspeare unnamed in his Account of the Greatest English Poets (addressed to Sacheverell). So much the worse for

Addison, who also sneered at Chaucer and at Spenser!

The successive cheap editions of Scott's Novels are so many proofs of his undying popularity. The editions of his poems for less than a shilling show how thoroughly "popular" he is, in the best sense of that word. Within the last four or five years new dramas, founded on his works, have been successfully placed upon the stage. These include The Lady of the Lak, Kenilworth, Ivanhoe, and The Fortunes of Nigel. In the last drama Mr. Phelps proved his fine quality as an actor by his masterly performance of King James. For the coming season at Drury Lane a play is preparing, which is drawn from the same inexhaustible source, namely, The Talisman. The enthusiasm which the novelty and brilliancy of the treasures excited when they were first delivered by Scott to the public, -possessions for ever, has subsided, as a matter of course; but there is a wider sense now, and a profounder popular appreciation of their ines

timable value.]

SHAKSPEARIANA.

SHAKSPEARE'S NAME. - There would have been less difficulty in arriving at the derivation of the name of our great poet had it been viewed, not as one of an exceptional character, but as belonging to a distinct class of sobriquets that have become hereditary. The nicknames given to lower-class officials some centuries ago, such as "tipstaffs" and "clearers of the way," were all but invariably hits at the officious and meddlesome character of their duties. These duties were discharged mainly by

the display of t in their hand. crowd outside the well-fed officials through the medium of the baton which they bore. Various cant terms were employed, but the ingredient of all was "wag" or "shake." These terms came even to be used more generally. A silly swaggerer became a "wagfeather" (Halliwell); a woman with a trailing dress a "wag-tail" (Halliwell); while Smith, "the silver-tongued preacher," says of a "graceless boy" that he will prove a "wag-string," that is, like a bow relaxed. Thus of "shake" also. A bully was called a "shake-buckler" (Halliwell), and a turnkey a "shake-lock." Let us see how all this affected our nomenclature. Let us take "wag" first. "Robert Waggestaff" is found in the Hundred Rolls, "Richard Wage-tail" in Proc. and Ord. Privy Council, and "Mabill Wagspere" in the Coldingham Priory Records (Surtees Soc.). "Wag-horn" still exists. It was Captain Waghorn who was tried for the wreck of the Royal George in 1782. So far of the term "wag." Let us now turn to "shake." "Simon Shake-lok" occurs in the Parl. Writs, "Henry Shake-launce" in the Hundred Rolls, "Hugh Shake-shaft" in St. Ann's Register, Manchester (date 1744), and "William Shake-spere" in Bury St. Edmunds Wills (Cam. Soc.). Of course I could give other instances of all the above, but one I think will suffice. You will see that "Wag-spere" is but synonymous with the poet's name. Shakspeare, I cannot doubt, was descended from some officer of the law, or one who held service under some feudal lord; while his name must be viewed as belonging distinctively to the nickname class. I will say a word or two at another time about the poet's son "Hamnet," who bore a purely Christian name, although, if I be not mistaken, this has not been observed before.

symbol of office which they held can readily understand the sacred ring poking fun at these

"MARS

William

CHARLES W. BARDSLEY.

HIS SWORD." -- In Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar, § 217, we find "His was sometimes used by mistake for s', the sign of the possessive case, particularly after a proper name." Professor Latham (English Grammar, "Pleonasm" in the Syntax of Pronouns), however, takes his in such cases to be the possessive pronoun, and I conceive he is right. In German such expressions as dem Professor seine Frau, "the Professor his wife" (dem Professor being the dative), are commonly used, though only in conversation. Again, we find it in Dutch: thus in the Maagden of Vondel, i. 1, we have Marsil zijn geest, "Marsilius his ghost," Van Vloten's note on this being, "As at the present day, in the language of conversation for ghost of Marsilius." Again, in the works of Fritz Reuter, written in the Mecklenburg-Schwerin dialect, such expressions are to be found in every page: thus we have Fritz Sahlmannen sin Wust, "Fritz Sahlmann his sausage" - Ut de Franzosentid, p. 233; sin olle Moder ehr Hart, "his old mother her heart"-Id., p. 226; den Möller sin Fridrich, "the miller his Fridrich," passim. Here, as will be observed, the noun which comes first is in the genitive or dative; it is difficult to say which, as the inflexions are the same. Again, turning to Quickborn, by Klas Groth, written in the Dittmarsch dialect, we find such expressions very frequent, as uns Herr sin Hus, "our Lord his House"-Quickborn, seventh edition, p. 139; Pock sin Fru, "Froggie his wife "-Id., p. 197. In this dialect it is impossible to say in what case the first noun is, as there are no inflexions. In these languages, or dialects, it is quite certain that sein, or sin, is the possessive pronoun and nothing else; why then should we find a difficulty in a corresponding usage in our own language?

Mr. Abbott, in support of his view, that his is used in such cases by mistake for 's, says, "After the feminine name Guinivere, we have in the later text of Layamon, ii. 511, 'for Gwenayfer his love." The passage at full length is

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FOLK-LORE OF THE THORN (5th S. i. 347.)-I am not able to offer E. J. C. much information in reply to the first part of his query, but may call his attention to some superstitions obviously re

* In the earlier edition it is "and al for Wenhæuere

lufe."

lated to that mentioned by him. In Suffolk, to sleep in a room with the whitethorn bloom in it during the month of May "will surely be followed by some great misfortune." And"If you sweep the house with blossomed broom in May, Y're sure to sweep the head of the house away."

Choice Notes, Folk-Lore, p. 113. Turning to the latter portion of the query, the origin of the superstition in question is part of a wide and curious subject; but three points seem to deserve special prominence.

The first is the connexion in the minds of the primitive Aryans of the thorn and fire, a connexion traceable, as in the case of the rowan, &c., to the red colour of the fruit of the tree. Much information as to ancient notions on the subject, and the conceptions in which they originated, will be found, if your correspondent cares to pursue the inquiry, in Kühn's treatise, The Descent of Fire and the Drink of the Gods (Berlin, 1859), and in Mr. Kelly's Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition and Folk Lore, an able sketch, not so well known as it deserves.

The next point is the association of the thorn, as well as rowan, &c., with the celebration of the festival of the returning Sun, May-day. That festival was apparently understood to mark the coming back of the Fire, through its supposed great source, the Sun, after the dark and cold winter; and one is prepared to find the fire trees, the thorn and rowan, figuring in the celebration. In Westphalia, the herdsman on May-day "quickens" his heifers, striking them over the haunches and loins with a rowan sapling, which has been cut at or before sunrise, and praying that, "as sap comes into the birch and beech, and the leaf comes upon the oak, so may milk fill the young cow's udder." A kindred practice survives in the county of Galway, where caorthann gads, i. e. withes of the rowan, cut before sunrise, and twisted into circlets, are placed on the churn, the churn-dash, and the plough. In the same locality it is the furze (which is expected to be found in bloom) which is used for the Dos-Bealtaine, or May-bush. In England the whitethorn was expected to be in bloom. "Το be delivered from witches they hang in their entries (among other things) hay-thorn, otherwise whitethorn, gathered on May-day." (Scott's Discovery of Witchcraft, in Brand, i. 217. See also i. 229.) Now, if the thorn was thus associated with the festival marking the beginning of summer, and its blooming connected in the popular mind with May-day, it is conceivable that the flowering of the tree before May would be looked upon as something strange and ominous, and we should have some explanation of the superstitious notion mentioned by E. J. C. that such early bloom bodes misfortune. It may be noted, in connexion with this idea, that the blooming of an apple-tree after the fruit is ripe is also an omen of death :

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An old saw, though the couplet embodying it is manifestly, in the form here given, of late date enough.

Apart, however, from what has been said as to the possible reference of the whitethorn superstition in question, and others like it, to the ancient character of the thorn as a fire tree, and its consequent connexion with the solar festival of May, there is a numerous and well-known class of popular notions which throw light on the matter, namely, those which associate the ideas of the soul and death with various white objects, butterflies, moths, lilies, and (white) pigeons and other birds (Choice Notes, pp. 17 and 61; Dublin University Magazine, Oct. 1873, "Folk-Lore of the Lily"; and Long Ago, 1873, "Butterflies in Folk-Lore"). Some curious items of folk-lore in connexion with this tree would, I think, be found surviving in Ireland, where it is often found, as a "monument bush," marking old places of sepulture, or planted about ancient raths. Any such scraps of old Celtic superstition, if got from the lips of the people themselves, and not from so-called treatises on the subject, would, I should think, be worthy of a place in "N. & Q.," where Irish folk-lore is not particularly well represented at present.

Hammersmith.

DAVID FITZGERALD.

CALOMEL. All the lexicographers and etymologists who mention this word* seem agreed that it is derived from καλός, beautiful, and μέλας, black, but they are by no means agreed why it was called so. Mahn (in Webster) tells us it was "in allusion to its properties and colour." Unfortunately, calomel, instead of being of a beautiful black, is pure white, so that it would seem as if Mahn had never seen calomel! Littré says cautiously, "ainsi nommé, dit-on, parce que le chimiste qui le découvrit, vit, dans la préparation, se changer une belle poudre noire en une poudre blanche."§ But is it the fact that such a change takes place? I expect not, but perhaps some one of the readers of "N. & Q." will tell us.

* Several etymologists, as Diez, Scheler, Brachet, Wedgwood, and Ed. Müller, omit the word altogether, either, I suppose, because it is a technical word, or because they had no satisfactory explanation to offer.

† Johnson, in speaking of the derivation, says nothing more than "calomelas, a chymical word."

‡ When impure, it is of a yellowish white, but it is never of any colour in the least degree approaching black.

§ When lime-water is added to calomel a blackish powder is thrown down, and the noted black wash is produced. But here the change is the converse of that noted by Littré, and the precipitate, so far from being of a beautiful black, is really rather of a dark grey colour (sub-oxide of mercury).

Pereira, in his Materia Medica (ed. 1849, p. 847), speaks a little more explicitly. He tells us that "the term calomel was first used

....

by Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayenne (who died in 1655), in consequence, as some say, of his having had a favourite black servant who prepared it; or, according to others, because it was a good remedy for the black bile."

But Hooper, in his Medical Dictionary, gives us what I conceive to be the true solution of the

difficulty. His words are: "This name was originally applied to the Aethiops mineral or black sulphuret of mercury; it was afterwards applied by Sir Theodore Mayerne* to the chloride of mercury [calomel], in honour of a favourite negro servant whom he employed to prepare it." Mahn (op. cit.) also refers to Aethiops mineral, s. v. “ Calomel," but he evidently thinks that they are two different names for the same thing, and therein he is mistaken.

We see, therefore, that it was really owing to a kind of joke or jeu de motst that the name of calomel beautiful (or good) black, became applied to a white powder; and confusion and error have been the result.

Sydenham Hill.

F. CHANCE.

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SNEEZING. I translate from the Pali text of the Gagga Jataka, published by Fausboll (Ten Jatakas, Trübner, 1872), the following curious reference to a very ancient superstition :

"One day, Buddha, while seated in the midst of a large congregation of disciples, to whom he was preaching the Law, chanced to sneeze. Thereupon the priests, exclaiming May the Blessed Lord live, may the Welcome One live, made a loud noise and seriously interrupted the discourse. Accordingly, Buddha addressed them as follows: Tell me, priests, when a person sneezes, if the bystanders say, May you live, will he live the longer or die the sooner for it? Certainly not, Lord. Then, priests, if any one sneezes you are not to say to him, May you live; and if any of you shall say it, let him be guilty of a transgression. From that time forth, when the priests sneezed and the bystanders exclaimed, May you live, Sirs, the priests, fearful of transgressing, held their peace. People took offence at this: What, said they, do these priestly sons of Sakya mean by not.

* Pereira, as we have seen, calls this name Mayenne, but as in Brockhaus's Conversations-Lexicon (10th edition, 1851-1855), I also find the name given as Mayerne (with the date 1550 instead of 1655), I presume that this latter form is the correct one.

† Sir Theodore must have noticed the contrast between the whiteness of the powder and the blackness of his servant.

uttering a word when we say, May you live, Sirs? The matter came to Buddha's ears. Priests, he said, the laity are the corner-stone of the church; when laymen say, May you live, Sirs, I give my sanction to your replying, Long life to you."

From this it appears that, in ancient Hindustan, it was customary, when a person sneezed, for the bystanders to exclaim, "May you live!" (jioa), and etiquette required that the sneezer should reply, "Long life to you!" (chiram jīvatha). The Jataka Book, from which this story is taken, is part of the Buddhist Scriptures, and belongs to a period far antecedent to the Christian Era. The superstition with regard to sneezing is a very widespread one. It would be interesting (if it has not been already done) to bring together references to it from the literatures of different countries. For instance, happening to look through Clodd's Childhood of the World the other day, I came upon the following passage :

"According to an old Jewish legend, the custom of

saying 'God bless you' when a person sneezes dates from Jacob. The Rabbis say that before the time that Jacob lived men sneezed once, and that was the end of them; the shock slew them. This law was set aside on the prayer of Jacob, on condition that in all nations a sneeze should be hallowed by the words 'God bless you." R. C. CHILDERS.

THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.-In the narrative of the voyages of H.M. ships "Leven" and "Barracouta," under Captain W. F. Owen, R.N., in the year 1823, the following curious story is published: "In the evening of the 6th of April, when off Port Danger, the Barracouta was seen about two miles to leeward. Struck with the singularity of her being so soon after us, we at first concluded that it could not be her; but the peculiarity of her rigging, and other circumstances, convinced us that we were not so mistaken. Nay, so distinctly was she seen, that many well-known faces could be observed on deck, looking towards our ship. After keeping thus for some time, we became surprised that she made no effort to join us; but, on the contrary, stood away. But being so near the port to which we were both destined, Captain Owen did not attach much importance to this proceeding, and we accordingly continued our course. At sunset it was observed that she hove to, and sent a boat away, apparently for the purpose of picking up a man overboard. During the night we could not perceive any light or other indication of her locality. The next morning we anchored in Simon's Bay, where, for a whole week, we were in anxious expectation of her arrival; but it afterwards appeared that at this very period the Barracouta must have been above three hundred miles from us, and no

other vessel of the same class was ever seen about the Cape." The writer of the narrative disclaims any intention to excite the supernatural feelings of his readers. Accepting the story as true (and it is vouched for by an irresistible weight of authority), it is a startling fact that, out of all the ships sailing on the ocean, the one which the law of refraction should have conjured up in view of the "Leven" was that ship's own consort in a deadly and perilous F. W. CHESSON.

voyage.

Lambeth Terrace.

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OLD FUNERAL CUSTOMS IN CAPE TOWN. -By an old colonial Dutch law, now almost forgotten, when a man died in debt, leaving a widow and family, the hearse was brought before the door in the presence of a large concourse of friends and neighbours, the widow came forth, locked the door, and placed the key on the coffin, thus being released from her husband's debts. The last record of this ceremony being performed is as far back as was formerly the practice, when any respectable person was interred, to have white sand

1823.

It

strewn in the street from the house door to the grave. This has of late years, in Cape Town at least, been discontinued, but may still exist in the more remote Dutch villages. At Dutch funerals, in olden days, two respectably dressed men (tropschluters), got up in cocked hats and black silk stockings, were generally engaged to form the last Stockings, couple of mourners in the funeral procession. The popular opinion was that the last couple took all the ill luck supposed to wait on the last couple into and out of the churchyard, no friend liking to figure last at a funeral. Formerly no respectable family buried their dead until after dark, when each mourner was attended by his slave carrying a lighted lantern. The appearance of such a procession was very strange to meet in the narrow, and then unlighted, streets of Cape Town. Hatchments of the arms of the principal deceased officials of the old Dutch Government were formerly suspended in the "Oude Keerk" on the Heerengracht, and presented some very curious and interesting specimens of old Batavian heraldry. They are now, however, nearly all removed, and lie rotting in a lumber room in the vicinity of the church, in company, it is said, with a few valuable pictures of the Dutch school, long lost to the public eye. These and many other primitive Dutch customs are gradually disappearing, and the modes and habits of English domestic life have almost superseded the quaint and homely manners which prevailed in the City of Van Riebeck to a period as late as the first three decades of the present century. I am indebted to an old friend and quondam correspondent of "N. & Q." for some of the above H. HALL.

interesting notes.

Lavender Hill.

"BONNIE DUNDEE." - From a small volume which professes to teach boys the history of Scotland, I have extracted the following account of the death of Lord Dundee, written in a style nearly as stilted as that of the mendacious his

torian Wodrow :

"Claverhouse never knew that he had won a victory. He fell at the beginning of the action pierced by a musket ball, which entered beneath his arm. When one in a pack of hungry wolves is killed, the rest turn upon him and eat him up. Claverhouse's own men, true to their savage instinct of plunder, stripped his body, and left it naked upon the field, where it was with difficulty distinguished from the other bodies of the fallen."

Lord Dundee, created a viscount in the second year of James II., did not die on the field of Killiecrankie. He was mortally wounded, but not in the beginning of the action, and was carried to the house of Old Blair, at that time the inn, where, quite aware of the success of his master's troops, he sank the next morning, and was buried

"For a sable shroud

Sheathed in his iron panoply,"

in a vault in the old church of Blair. Had the Highlanders, likened by the reverend historian to hungry wolves, "true to their savage nature," wished to treat with such brutal indignity the body of their venerated "Black John of the Battles," would they have put off time in doing so, when they had such a flock of runaway sheep (without a shepherd) as Mackay's army to fall upon?

My friend Mr. Robertson, of Old Blair, has kindly furnished me with the following curious tradition :

"My information regarding the circumstances of Claverhouse's death, was derived from an old man who died at Aldclune last winter, about the age of 70.

"His story was that he had been told by an old woman who lived at Aldclune, and was, I think, his grand aunt, that her father, who was a boy at the time of the battle of Killiecrankie, lay concealed on the hill above Urrard (Rinrory) during the engagement, and that he followed the party who carried Claverhouse to the inn at Old Blair, and that Claverhouse died in the inn the following day."

A. A.

CURIOUS TREASONABLE LETTER. -The man who wrote the following letter had been long suspected of giving treasonable information to the enemy; and Government set a spy over him, by whose exertions they procured the letter directed to a house at Paris. At first they imagined they had hit on the wrong person, when a few days afterwards a second letter, directed by the same hand, to the same person, containing only the figures, as under it, was brought by the informant to Government; when, after a little consultation, they discovered it was a key to the first letter, and accordingly had the writer in close confinement till, at the earnest intercession of his friends, he was suffered to leave this country, under a promise of not returning during the war :

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teen last week, has an offer; the man is a sail maker, honest and industrious; he is very sober, and of respect. able family; as to the trade we do not object, since workmen in that line are sure of employment. My wife has been almost ready to go distracted with pain at her stomach; after suffering for some days, she spit up some sharp matter, which greatly relieved her head; then became again afflicted, and how long her illness may continue, Heaven knows. Any commands you may have to execute will be carefully attended to by,

Yours truly,

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This curious document, together with the preceding particulars regarding the detection of the writer, appears in the European Magazine, 1814, vol. lxvi. pp. 21, 22. The first column of figures indicates the words, and the second column the lines in the original letter. The words conveying the treasonable information are printed in italics, though of course in the original no words were underlined, or otherwise marked, the list of figures which followed the letter admirably serving the purpose. It will be observed that the information conveyed to the enemy in this letter was "There are seventeen sail of the line ready at Spithead.

Howe commands."

Glasgow.

PARALLEL PASSAGES.

W. A. C.

"Dryden says prettily of Ben Jonson's many imitations of the ancients, you track him everywhere in their snow. Menage adds, that he intended to compile a regular treatise on the thefts and imitations of the poets. As his reading was very extensive, his work would, probably, have been very entertaining."--Warton's Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, p. 89.

"Let us see how far we are got in this inquiry. We may say of the old Latin poets, that they all came out of the Greek schools. It is as true of the moderns in this part of the world that they, in general, have had their breeding in both the Greek and Latin. But when the question is of any particular writer, how far and in what instances, you may presume on his being a professed imitator, much will depend on the certain knowledge you have of his Age, Education, and Character. When all these circumstances meet in one man, as they have done in others, but in none perhaps so eminently as in Ben Jonson, wherever you find an acknowledged likeness, you will do him no injustice to call it imitation." Bp. Hurd, On Poetical Imitation (Critical Works, ii.).

"You track him everywhere in their snow." Were these words of Dryden's an original thought, or did he recollect "leporem venator," &c., in Horace, Sat. 2, lib. i.? Who has been supposed to have translated totidem verbis an epigram of Callimachus, a translation of which is subjoined from Dr. Wellesley's Anthologia Polyglotta, cxiii. On this question, see Fabricii Opuscula Literaria, p. 29; Tanaquilli Fabri Epistolæ, p. 229; J. J. Scaligeri Opuscula, p. 464; Horat. Delphini, a Valpy

:

"Ωγρευτής, Επίκυδες, ἐν οὔρεσι," &c.

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