The question is, Did Rabbi Mayir Ben Isaac, author of the Chaldee ode sung in every synagogue on the day of Pentecost, flourish before or since the Mohamedan era?
J. W. Thomas.
Dewsbury.
"Hurrah!" (Vol. viii., pp. 20, 277, 323.).—It would almost deem that we are never to hear the last of "Hurrah! and other war-cries." Your correspondents T. F. and Sir J. Emerson Tennent appear to me to have made the nearest approach to a satisfactory solution of the difficulty; a step farther and the goal is won—the object of inquiry is found. I suppose it will be admitted that the language which supplies the meaning of a word has the fairest claim to be considered its parent language. What, then, is the meaning of "Hurrah," and in whet language? As a reply to this Query, allow me to quote a writer in Blackwood's Magazine, April 1843, p. 477.
"'Hurrah!' means strike in the Tartar language."—Note to art. "Amulet Bek."
So then, according to this respectable authority, the end of our shouts and war-cries is, that we have "caught a Tartar!"
Again, in Blackwood, 1849, vol. i. p.673., we read:
"He opened a window and cried 'Hourra!' At the signal, a hundred soldiers crowded into the house. Mastering his fury, the Czar ordered the young officer to be taken to prison."—Art. "Romance of Russian History."
Thus, in describing the "awful pause" on the night preceding the Russian attack on Ismail, then in possession of the Turks, Lord Byron says:
"A moment—and all will be life again!