Replies to Minor Queries.
Commemoration of Benefactors (Vol. v., p. 126.).
—The office for commemoration of benefactors now used in the several colleges in the university of Cambridge, is prescribed by the statutes given to the university by Queen Elizabeth in the 12th year of her reign, cap. 4. sec. 38.
An earlier office (2 Eliz.) is given in Dr. Cardwell's Documentary Annals, vol. i. p. 282.
C. H. COOPER.
Cambridge.
King Robert Bruce's Watch (Vol. v., p. 105.).
—The watch known under this name is now, I believe, generally admitted to be a forgery. There is a letter in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. ii. p. 688., dated Forfar, August 20, 1785, and signed J. Jamieson, who therein states that the watch was offered for sale to him by a goldsmith hawker of Glasgow, who afterwards sold it for two guineas, and it was next sold for five. The letter does not trace this curiosity further; but I find in a little work by Adam Thompson, entitled Time and Timekeepers, that it subsequently found its way into the collection of George III.
W. W. E.
Hornchurch (Vol. v., p. 106.).
—Permit me to call the attention of your correspondents to some other peculiarities relating to Hornchurch. There once, I believe, were (are there now?) a pair of horns over the east window of the church; thence the name is probably derived. The great tithes were once the property of the monks of the celebrated monastery of St. Bernard in Savoy. Are not the horns connected with the arms of Savoy? New College received the great tithes directly from the monks, and have in their possession the license from the crown to alienate.
A. HOLT WHITE.
Buzz (Vol. v., p. 104.).
—Corruption of bouse or booze, to drink to excess. In Scotland they say "bouse a'," drink all.
J. R. J.
"Buzz," to empty the Bottle (Vol. v., p. 104.).
—The connexion between this and the drunken man, "with his head full of bees" (Vol. iv., p. 308.), must strike every thoughtful reader!
A. A. D.
Melody of the Dying Swan (Vol. v., p. 107.).
—A reference to Platon's Phædon, p. 84. sub fin., with Fischer's note, forms a tolerable answer to a Query on this subject. Fischer says—
"De cantu cygnorum, qui jam multis veterum fabulosus, v. Lucian. de Electro, c. 5.; Ælian. H.A. ii. 32.; xi. 1.; xiv. 13.; Pausan., i. 30.; Eutecnius Paraphr. Ixeut. Oppian., p. 78. 5.; Eustathius ad Il. βʹ., p. 254., aliosque qui a Jac. Thomasio laudati sunt in libelli singulari de cantu cygnorum."
[Where is this to be heard of?] Add Arist. H.A., viii. 11.; Ovid. Heroid. vii. 1.; Hesiod. Sc. 316.; Æsch. Ag. 1444.
A. A. D.
"From the Sublime to the Ridiculous is but a Step" (Vol. v., p. 100.).
—In MR. BREEN'S interesting article entitled "Idées Napoléoniennes" (p. 100.), is the following passage:
"It will be seen that the original saying has undergone a slight modification, Longinus making the transition a gradual one, κατ' ὀλίγον, while Blair, Payne, and Napoleon make it but 'a step.'"
Now there is nothing in the whole range of scholarship and philology that requires more tender handling than the Greek preposition, unless it be the prepositional adverb, which results from the combination of a preposition with an adjective. I would not be so bold as to assert that κατ' ὀλίγον does not mean "gradually, by little and little." I feel convinced that I have seen it so used before now; but I beg to submit that in the powerful passage quoted from Longinus it can only mean "presently, at once, with little" delay or interval. The purport of the passage seems to be this:—[The instances which I have cited] "exhibit rather a turbid diction, and a confused imagery, than a striking and forcible discourse. For, take them one by one, and hold them up to the light, and what first looked terrible shall presently take its true colour, and appear contemptible."
Longinus had quoted certain turgid and empty attempts at a very high rhetorical strain: he then in the passage before us condemns them for their confusion both of thought and phrase; and says, that they won't bear looking into for a minute (κατ' ὀλίγον).
If these remarks are correct, I fear they must damage the parallelism so industriously instituted by your correspondent; but if he will not be offended, I shall not regret it: for I confess to some feeling of jealousy in favour of modern forms of thought, and their claims to originality. The field of thought is finite, and great minds have tilled it before us; so that scarcely in its remotest corners shall you find a patch of virgin soil, or a bud till now unseen. But originality is not excluded for all that. He that culls a flower in the nineteenth century, and has an eye for its beauty, is as original an admirer as he who did the same on the day of creation. And he who with quick perceptions combines the thoughts which have arrested his attention, and with a lively and apt expression, fresh and free from conventional formalism, gives them out to another, that man may be called original. The opposite of originality is not repetition, but imitation. When, therefore, we would prove that a writer is not original, it is not enough to produce similar thoughts or phrases in older writers, unless our instances are so numerous as to afford an appearance of systematic copyism, or historical evidence of the fact of imitation be forthcoming from some external source.
J. E.
Oxford.
"Carmen perpetuum," &c. (Vol. v., p. 104.).
—The words in Ham's Bible are from the Metamorphoses of Ovid (I. 3.):
"Primâque ab origine mundi
Ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen."
This book has been called the Heathen Bible. It should be studied with the Greek translation of Tzetzes (Boisaunade's edition), to show the identity of the gods and heroes of Greece and Rome under their different names in the two languages. Ovid was by profession a learned priest; and it is probable that the subjects of his verse were the subjects of scenic representations in the mysteries, to which probably moral and natural or theological instruction was added, much after the manner of the Greek choruses. That these mysteries taught something worth the attention of a philosopher and moralist is manifest from the encomiums of Cicero:
"Nam mihi cum multa eximia, divinaque videntur Athenæ tuæ peperisse, atque in vitâ hominum attulisse, tum nihil melius illis mysteriis, quibus ex agresti immanique vitâ exculti ad humanitatem et mitigati sumus: initiaque ut appellantur, ita reverâ principia vitæ cognovimus; neque solùm cum lætitiâ vivendi rationem accepimus, sed etiam cum spe meliore moriendi."—De Leg. lib. ii. c. 14.
"For amongst other excellent and divine things which owed their origin to your Athens, and in which we participate, nothing is more admirable than those mysteries which have caused us to pass from a wild and uncivilised condition to one of amelioration and humanity: or, to speak more correctly, they first brought us to life, as indicated by the term initiation (beginning), which the mysteries have retained; since this new kind of life (regeneration) is not only attended with happiness, but is succeeded by the hope of a better destiny after death."
T. J. BUCKTON.
Lichfield.
Sterne at Paris (Vol. v., p. 105.).
—In Mémoires d'un Voyageur qui se repose, by Mons. Dutens, or Duchillon, as he also called himself, is an amusing account of a scene between Sterne and him, at Lord Tavistock's table at Paris, on the 4th June, 1762.
M. S.
The Paper of the present Day (Vol. iii., p. 181.).
—A. GRAYAN'S note on the "First Paper Mill" reminds me of a too long neglected remark of your correspondent LAUDATOR TEMPORIS ACTI on the inferiority of the paper made in the present days as compared with that of olden times. As a matron, whose proper business it is to be curious in such matters, I venture to suggest that the universal use of calicos and printed cottons in the place of linen articles of dress, is the true cause of the deterioration of the paper of our books. The careful inspection of the rags of present days on their arrival at a paper-mill, will, I think, confirm my statement, if any gentleman who still clings pertinaciously to the linen shirts of "better times" is disposed to doubt the fact.
MARGARET GATTY.
Cimmerii, Cimbri (Vol. iv., p. 444.).
—If the belief which derives the Cimbrians from Gomer, son of Japhet, be on the increase, I fear the movements of our restless race are not altogether progressive.
But there is good reason to think, that the Cimbri were of the Brito-Gallic race and tongue. Morimarusa (Pliny, iv. 27.) does not belong to Indogermanic, or any such high categories as will prove nearly what you please. It is a piece of exact and determinate Brito-Gallic.
Pompeius Festus and Plutarch agree in stating, that the meaning of the name was robbers;—not, of course, as applied to individual offenders, or to any offenders, but as the hereditary boast of predatory tribes. "Thou shalt want ere I want" is the motto of the Lords Cranstoun, and was the motto of all Cimbrians.
Cimmerii has certainly every appearance of being the same name as Cimbri. In like manner, Cymmry becomes Cumbria and (unaccountably) Cambria; Ambrosius becomes Emmrys, and Humber Hymmyr. What remains of the old word Cimbr, or Cimmr, as meaning Latro, is the verb cymmeryd (and its cognate words), to take, or, more etymologically, to apportion: Dividers of booty. The change of the sharp iota into that short vowel of which we possess not the long, but of which the long is the French eu, forms the difficulty; but the savages of Asia, and those of Caius Marius, may be conceived to have used vowels of shriller pronunciation than the Gauls and Britons.
The Brigantes of Yorkshire, &c., bore a synonymous appellation, still used in French and Armorican, and not wholly extinct in Welsh. Of a race named Cimbri, or Cumbri, in this island, nothing whatever is known from ancient geography or history. And probably no such name co-existed with that of the Brigantes. For, if the two synonymes were used together, neither would express a distinctive peculiarity. The fable of the Brut probably has a core of general truth, when it refers that name to the days of the Cambro-Scoto-Saxon tripartition, disguised as Cambro-Albano-Loegrian.
A. N.
Rents of Assize (Vol. v., p. 127.).
—Rents of Assize, Redditus assisæ de assisa vel redditus assisus. The certain and determined rents of ancient tenants paid in a set quantity of money or provisions; so called, because it was assised or made certain, and so distinguished from redditus mobilis, variable rent, that did rise and fall, like the corn rent now reserved to colleges. (Cowel's Interpreter.) Ob. q. mean respectively obolus and quadrans.
The great pipe is a roll in the Exchequer wherein all accounts and debts due to the king delivered and drawn out of the remembrancer's offices, are entered and charged. I presume the Bishop of Winchester's great pipe was a roll of all accounts and debts due to him in right of his bishopric.
"Ad regis exemplar, totus componitur orbis."
J. G.
Exeter.
Lord Coke (2nd Institute, 19.) gives this definition:
"Redditus assisus, or redditus assisæ: vulgarly, rents of assise, are the certain rents of the freeholders and ancient copiholders, because they be assised, and certain, and doth distinguish the same from redditus mobiles, farm rents for life, years, or at will, which are variable and incertain."
Ob. q. means three farthings, "ob." being an abbreviation of obolus, a halfpenny, and "q." of quadrans, a farthing.
The great pipe in the document referred to apparently means the pipe roll of the Bishops of Winchester, of which some account may be seen in the report of the case of Doe dem. Kinglake v. Beviss, in 7 Common Bench Reports, 456.
C. H. COOPER.
Cambridge.
Monastic Establishments in Scotland (Vol. v., p. 104.).
—In Picturesque Antiquities of Scotland, etched by Adam de Cardonnel, is a list of the different monastic establishments in Scotland. If your correspondent has not seen this volume, which I apprehend to be rather scarce (it was printed for the author in 1788), I shall be happy to supply him with a transcript of the list that Mr. De Cardonnel has given in his introduction.
M. S.
History of Brittany (Vol. v., p. 59.).
—MR. KERSLEY will find much information of the kind he wishes in the genealogies of the families of Bretagne by D'Hosier, "Chevalier, Conseiller du roy en ses conseils, Juge d'Armes de la Noblesse de France," circiter 1765.
My copy of the Genealogies of Normandy, by d'Hosier, was bought at Quaritch's, who also, I remember, a few months ago advertised other sets of the same herald, and I think Brittany amongst them.
I. J. H. H.
St. Asaph.
Marches of Wales, and Lords Marchers (Vol. v., pp. 30. 135.).
—In connexion with this Query, it may be interesting to G. to know that Mr. Thos. Davies Lloyd, of Bronwydd, Caermarthenshire, is the only "Lord Marcher now extant in the kingdom" (extract from a letter of Mr. Lloyd to me). Mr. Lloyd holds the barony of Kemes, in the county of Pembroke, which was erected into a Lordship Marcher by Martin de Tours, one of the companions of William I., who exercised the Jura Regalia, and other peculiar privileges.
I. J. H. H.
St. Asaph.
The Broad Arrow (Vol. iv., pp. 315. 371. 412.; Vol. v., p. 115.).
—I can see nothing to connect this symbol with the worship of Mithras, but I have always fancied it of much earlier date than that commonly assigned to it. A coin of Carausius with a Greek legend would be an object of great interest to our English numismatists, but nothing of the kind has ever been seen! My reason for thinking that the symbol of the "broad arrow" is one of considerable antiquity is, that the name by which sailors and "longshore" people designate it, namely, the "Broad Ar," is clearly not a vulgarism, but an archaism. In the north of England "ar" or "arr" is still used for a mark. It occurs on very early Danish coins, and I entertained a hope that some northern antiquary would have told me how it originated; but my enquiry has ended in disappointment. Query, When was the Pheon, which it is supposed to be, first used as an heraldic device? I have before me a coin of Stralsund, minted in the fourteenth century, with the Pheon for the principal type. By German writers this object is called a fishspear, but I cannot help thinking that its origin may be connected with the broad arrow.
J. Y. AKERMAN.
Miniature of Cromwell (Vol. iv., p. 368.; Vol. v., pp. 17. 92.).
—In addition to those already mentioned, I have seen in the possession of a gentleman connected with a Presbyterian trust, a miniature of Oliver Cromwell by Cooper. The building connected with the trust, is one of those built after the passing of the Five Mile Act, and is near Yarmouth; with which place, as is well known, Cromwell was much connected.
X. Y. Z.
The Sinaïtic Inscriptions (Vol. iv., p. 382.)
have been deciphered by Dr. E. F. Beer. Vide his Studia Asiatica, Leipsic, 1840.
S. W.
Why cold Pudding settles One's Love (Vol. v., p. 50.).
—As no one has replied to the Query of "AN F. S. A. WHO LOVES PUDDING," may I be permitted to offer the following conjectural solution? In some parts of the principality it is customary on the morning of a wedding-day for the bridegroom, with a party of his friends, to proceed to the lady's residence; where he and his companions are regaled with ale, bread and butter, and cold custard pudding! I hope I have hit the mark! But, perhaps, it does not become me to speculate upon these dainty matters.
AN OLD BACHELOR.
Hoxton.
Covines (Vol. iv., p. 208.).
—A. N.'s inquiry for a reference not having been answered, I beg to name Sir Walter Scott's Demonology and Witchcraft, p. 206.; or, if he desires to "sup full of horrors," Pitcairn's Criminal Trials in Scotland, vol. iv. Appendix, p. 602., where the confessions of the witches of Aulderne are given at length. It appears by these confessions that a covine consists of thirteen witches ("the Deil's dozen?"), of whom two are officials, the Maiden of the Covine, who sits next the Deil, and with whom he leads off the dance (called Gillatrypes), and the officer, who, like the crier in a court of justice, calls the witches at the door, when the Deil calls the names from his book.
Covine is conventus. Covent Garden. See Dr. Jamieson on the word Covine-tree.
W. G.
"Arborei fœtus alibi," &c. (Vol. v., p. 58.).
—Had the "head master" been as well versed in the subject as he undoubtedly was in the words of the Georgics, he would have explained to the "sixth form" that, in the lines
"Hic segetes, illic veniunt felicius uvæ;
Arborei fœtus alibi, atque injussa virescunt
Gramina."
the intention of the poet was to contrast an agricultural with a pastoral district. The alibi which he establishes in the case of "arborei fœtus" he applies equally to "injussa gramina;" and his obvious meaning is this:—One district is naturally fitted for the cultivation of corn; another for that of vines; whilst a third is more adapted for woodland, or rather, perhaps, orchards, meadows, and pastures: the sowing down or formation of which, if indeed the hand of man has had anything to do with them at all—being a thing of the past, and, perhaps, not within the range of the oldest inhabitant's memory, their produce may with propriety be termed "injussa," or spontaneous.
W. A. C.
Ormsary.
Poniatowski Gems (Vol. v., p. 140.).
—A.O.O.D. is informed that the first sale of these gems took place in 1839, by Christie, and they were bought by a Mr. Tyrrell for 12,000l.
M——N.