The Use of the Hour-glass in Pulpits (Vol. vii., p. 589.; Vol. viii., p. 82.).—Your correspondent A. W. S. having called attention to the use of the hour-glass in pulpits (Vol. vii., p. 589.), I beg to mention two instances in which I have seen the stands which formerly held them. The first is at Pilton Church, near Barnstaple, Devon, where it still (at least very lately it did) remain fixed to the pulpit; the other instance is at Tawstock Church (called, from its numerous and splendid monuments, the Westminster Abbey of North Devon), but here it has been displaced, and I saw it lying among fragments of old armour, banners, &c., in a room above the vestry. They were similar in form, each representing a man's arm, cut out of sheet iron and gilded, the hand holding the stand; turning on a hinge at the shoulder it lay flat on the panels of the pulpit when not in use. When extended it would project about a yard.
Balliolensis.
George Poulson, Esq., in his History and Antiquities of the Seignory of Holderness (vol. ii. p. 419.), describing Keyingham Church, says that—
"The pulpit is placed on the south-east corner; beside it is an iron frame-work, used to contain an hour-glass."
Edward Peacock.
Bottesford Moors, Kirton-in-Lindsey.
Derivation of the Word "Island" (Vol. viii., p. 209.).—Your correspondent C. gives me credit for a far greater amount of humour than I can honestly lay claim to. He appears (he must excuse me for saying so) to have scarcely read through my observations on the derivation of the word island, which he criticises so unmercifully; and to have understood very imperfectly what he has read. For instance, he says that my "derivation of island from eye, the visual orb, because each are (sic) surrounded by water, seems like banter," &c. Had I insisted on any such analogy, I should indeed have laid myself open to the charge; but I did nothing of the kind, as he will find to be the case, if he will take the trouble of perusing what I wrote. My remarks went to show, that, in the A.-S. compounded terms, Ealond, Igland, &c., from which our word island comes, the component ea, ig, &c., does not mean water, as has hitherto been supposed to be the case, but an eye; and that on this supposition alone can the simple ig, used to express an island, be explained. Will C. endeavour to explain it in any other way?
Throughout my remarks, the word isle is not mentioned. And why? Simply because it has no immediate etymological connexion with the word island, being merely the French word naturalised. The word isle is a simple, the word island a compound term. It is surely a fruitless task (as it certainly is unnecessary for any one, with the latter word ready formed to his hand in the Saxon branch of the Teutonic, and, from its very form, clearly of that family), to go out of his way to torture the Latin into yielding something utterly foreign to it. My belief is, that the resemblance between these two words is an accidental one; or, more properly, that it is a question whether the introduction of an s into the word island did not originate in the desire to assimilate the Saxon and French terms.
H. C. K.
A Cob-wall (Vol. viii., p. 151.).—A "cob" is not an unusual word in the midland counties, meaning a lump or small hard mass of anything: it also means a blow; and a good "cobbing" is no unfamiliar expression to the generality of schoolboys. A "cob-wall," I imagine, is so called from its having been made of heavy lumps of clay, beaten one upon another into the form of a wall. I would ask, if "gob," used also in Devonshire for the stone of any fruit which contains a kernel, is not a cognate word?