[p. 265] Dalton’s Country-Justice. A well-known work by the celebrated lawyer Michael Dalton (1554-1620). It was long held in great repute and regarded as supremely authoritative. On a page of advertisements (Some Books printed this Year 1677. For John Amery, at the Peacock, against St. Dunstan’s Church in Fleet-street) in the Rover I (4to 1677), occurs ‘The Country Justice, Containing the practice of the Justices of the Peace, in and out of their Sessions, with an Abridgment of all Statutes relating thereunto to this present Year 1677. By Michael Dalton Esq; Fol. price bound 12s.’ cf. The Plain Dealer (4to 1676), iii, I:
Widow Blackacre. Let’s see Dalton, Hughs, Shepherd, Wingate.
Bookseller’s Boy. We have no law books.
[ Return to Younger Brother notes]
[p. 266] a Cagg. Now corrupted to ‘Keg’, a small cask. cf. Cotgrave (1611), ‘Encacquer’ to put in to a little barrell or cag. N.E.D. quotes this present passage.
Act IV: Scene i
[p. 279] Agah Yerkin. The various dictionaries and vocabularies of the Indian languages I have had resource to give none of these words. There is, however, so great a confusion of Indian jargons and dialects that they cannot be pronounced fictitious. Yet Mrs. Behn would hardly, even if she had learned the language, have retained any exact knowledge of such barbaric tongues, and one may almost certainly say that these cries and incantations are her own composition. Amongst other authorities I have consulted The Voyage of Robert Dudley ... to the West Indies, 1594-5, edited by G. F. Warner for the Hakluyt Society (1889). Dr. Brinton’s Arawack Language of Guiana, an exhaustive monograph, (Philadelphia, 1871.) M. M. Crevaux, Sagot, L. Adam, Grammaires et Vocabulaires roucouyenne, arrouague, piapoco, et d’autres Langues de la Région des Guyanes (Paris, 1882). Relation des Missions ... dans les Isles et dans la terre ferme de l’Amerique Meridionale ... avec une introduction à la langue des Gabilis Sauvages (Paris, 1655), by Father Pierre Pelleprat, S.J.
[p. 279] Quiocto. Mrs. Behn probably meant to spell this word ‘Quiyoughcto’, the sound being identical. There is in Virginia a river which in the seventeenth century was called the ‘Quiyough’. The inhabitants of the banks of this river had mysterious or supernatural properties ascribed to them. In the Voyages & Discoveries of Capt. John Smith (1606), we have: ‘They thinke that their Werowanees and Priests, which they also esteeme Quiyoughcosughes, when they are dead, doe goe beyond the mountaines towards the setting of the sun.’ No doubt Mrs. Behn knew this passage. I owe the above interesting note to the kindness of my friend Mr. Gosse.
Act IV: Scene ii
[p. 284] Cadees. The original form of ‘cadets’ from the French pronunciation. N.E.D. cites this passage as the earliest occurence of the word.