ÆLFRIC’S COLLOQUY.
In the Anglo-Saxon Gloss, to Ælfric’s Latin dialogue, higdifatu is not, I conceive, an error of the scribe, but a variation of dialect, and therefore, standing in no need of correction into hydigfatu (“NOTES and QUERIES,” No. 13.). Hig, hi and hy, are perfectly identical, and nothing is more usual in A.S. than the omission of the final g after i; consequently, hig=hy, di=dig, therefore higdi=hydig. Mr. Singer’s reading of cassidilia for culidilia, I consider to be well-founded.
His conjecture, that sprote=Goth. sprauto, has something very specious about it, and yet I must reject it. That useful and sagacious author, Dr. Kitchener, tells us, that there is only one thing to be done in a hurry (or sprauto); and even if he had not informed us what that one thing is, very few indeed would ever have imagined that it was fish-catching. The word sprote was a puzzle to me, and I had often questioned myself as to its meaning, but never could get a satisfactory answer; nor was it until some time after the publication of the 2nd edition of my Analecta that it occurred to me that it might signify a wicker or sallow basket (such as is still in use for the capture of eels), from Lat. sporta, whence the German sportel. My conjecture, of salice for the salu of the text, was based on the possibility that the apparatus might somehow or other be made of the salix.
I beg leave to inform “SELEUCUS,” that The Phœnix, with an English version, and with the Latin original, is to be found in the Codex Exoniensis, edited by me, in 1842, for the Society of Antiquaries. The Latin ascribed to Lactantius, is printed in the Variourum edition of Claudian, and, I believe, in the editions of Lactantius.
Jan. 30, 1850.
B. THORPE.