[35] See the Revue Celtique, iii. 310, after Gruter, 570, 6. [↑]
[36] An important paper on the Tarvos Trigaranus, from the pen of M. Salomon Reinach, will be found in the Revue Celtique, xviii. 253–66; and M. d’A. de Jubainville’s remarkable equations are to be read in the same periodical, xix. 245–50: see also xx. 374–5. [↑]
[37] This, we are told, was a stone with a hollow in it for pounding corn, so as to separate the husks from the grain; and such a stone stood formerly somewhere near the door of every farm house in Scotland. [↑]
[38] The editor here explains in a note that ‘this was a common saying formerly, when people were heard to regret trifles.’ [↑]
[39] I have heard of this belief in Wales late in the sixties; but the presence was assumed to be that of a witch, not of a fairy. [↑]
[40] The word twt, ‘tidy,’ is another vocable which has found its way into Wales from the western counties of England; and though its meaning is more universally that of ‘tidy or natty,’ the term gwas twt, which in North Cardiganshire means a youth who is ready to run on all kinds of errands, would seem to bring us to its earlier meaning of the French tout—as if gwas twt might be rendered a ‘garçon à tout’—which survives as tote in the counties of Gloucester and Hereford, as I am informed by Professor Wright. Possibly, however, one may prefer to connect twt with the nautical English word taut; but we want more light. In any case one may venture to say that colloquial Welsh swarms with words whose origin is to be sought outside the Principality. [↑]
[41] See Folk-Lore for 1889, pp. 144–52. [↑]
[42] Ibid. for 1891, p. 246, where one will find this rhyme the subject of a note—rendered useless by a false reference—by Köhler; see also the same volume, p. 132, where Mr. Kirby gives more lines of the rhyme. [↑]
[43] See Choice Notes from ‘Notes and Queries,’ p. 35. [↑]
[44] A number of instructive instances will be found mentioned, and discussed in his wonted and lucid fashion, by Mr. Clodd in his Tom Tit Tot, pp. 80–105. [↑]