DOOR-HEAD INSCRIPTIONS.
(Vol. vi., p. 543.)
B. B. Woodward (urged, probably, by R. Rawlinson's question in Vol. vi., p. 412.) sends you the following inscription,
"Sit mihi nec glis servus, nec hospes hirudo,"
copied from over the entrance to an old hostel in the town of Wymondham, Norfolk. He says he quotes from memory.
Vol. vii., p. 23., you give an English translation of the inscription:
"From servant lazy as dormouse,
Or leeching guest, God keep my house;"
but suggest that "hirudo" should be "hirundo," and produce some apt classical quotations supposing it may be so, requesting Mr. Woodward to look again at the original inscription.
In a recent Number (Vol. vii., p. 190.) Mr. Woodward appears to have done this, and sends you the inscriptions correctly (as I beg to vouch, having often read and copied it, and living within four miles of the spot), thus:
"Nec mihi glis servus, nec hospes hirudo."
Permit me to add to this corroboration, that I should venture a different translation of the word "hospes" from your correspondent's, and render the notice thus:
"Good attendance and cheap charges:"
taking "hospes" not as guest but host, and the literal words, "My servant is not a dormouse, nor (I) the host a leech."
Ainsworth gives authority for "hospes" meaning host as well as guest, and quotes Ovid's Metamorphoses in support of it.
John P. Boileau.
Ketteringham Park, Wymondham, Norfolk.
With due respect to your correspondent A. B. R., the word "hospes" most probably means host, not guest.
"Sit mihi nec servus glis, nec hospes hirudo."
In Blomfield's Norfolk (but I cannot now lay my finger on the passage) the line is given as an inscription on the lintel of a door of an ancient hostelry, carved in oak. If so, the line may be rendered—
"No maid like dormouse on me wait,
Nor leech-like host be here my fate."
But, on the supposition that guest is the proper meaning, "hirudo" might be taken in the sense of a greedy guest, although this would not be complimentary to the older hospitality. And even in the sense of gossiping, "hirudo" would not be so inappropriate an imitation of the "recitator acerbus" at the conclusion of the Ars Poetica:
"Nec missura cutem nisi plena cruoris hirudo."
E. L. B.
Ruthin.