"Tell him, in hope he'll prove a widower shortly,
I'll wear the willow garland for his sake."
As I find no note upon the willow garland in any edition of Shakspeare to which I have access, I should be obliged by having its meaning explained in your columns.
ARUN.
[The willow is considered as the emblem of despairing love, and is often associated with the yew and the cypress in the churchyard: hence, a garland made of the boughs of the willow was said to be worn by forlorn lovers. In Much Ado about Nothing, Act II. Sc. 1., Benedick says,—"I offered him my company to a willow-tree, either to make him a garland, as being forsaken, or to bind him up a rod, as being worthy to be whipped.">[
Name of Nun.
—Can any of your readers inform me on what principle it is that the name of Nun (כוּן), the father of Joshua, is expressed in the Septuagint by ναυῆ? I cannot help regarding the substitution of αυῆ for וּן as a very singular circumstance, more especially as it seems impossible to account for it by the conjecture that כ had been mistaken by the LXX for any letter that would be likely to be represented in Greek by ῆ. There are but few proper names in the Hebrew Scriptures that terminate in וּן; and the way in which these are expressed in the Septuagint affords, I believe, no analogy to the above case.
QUIDAM.
Gillingham.
[The explanation usually given, after Gesenius, is that early copyists mistook ΝΑΥΝ for ΝΑΥΗ; and as some MSS. have Ναβί and Ναβή, it is supposed that later copyists thought that it was the Hebrew כביא.]